“You take careful note next time you see a seeming moron tagging after his wealthy and brilliant wife who earns considerably more than he does and you’ll discover he’s only playing the adage that it takes a wise man to play the fool, so he could lay his greedy hands on her money”, so declared a friend recently during a heated discussion.

After the heart had cooled off…the topic of toy boys a bit, and how the public had left them to their money-making and randy devise, the discussion these days usually swing back to the age-old situation of some men who don’t give a hoot how much their wives earn as long as they get a piece of the action! “Such men are spineless”, one of the girls concluded indignantly, but this good friend disagreed. “Let’s face it”, she continued; “Making it in this country depends on pure luck – and how well connected you are, of course”. Take the case of a colleague of mine, for instance. When the Federal Government started selling plots of land ages ago, she bought about five in different locations for next to nothing simply because, her boyfriend then was on the committee allocating plots of land. Some of the plots were in the seedy areas of town that very few people showed interest in.

“In the meantime, she got married to a man who earned a lot more than she did, but some ten years later, she had more money than her husband. Thanks to her ‘mentor’, she got transferred to a local government and she made more than her salary every month; don’t ask me how! The plots of land she bought in the marshy areas turned to gold dusts as they were now built up areas and she sold three of them. Two years later, she was the proud owner of a house she built with the proceed from the sale of the plot of land whilst her husband was made redundant.

“At first, he wanted to be bitter but, his wife bought him a fairly used mini-bus and that took the heat off his resentment. The bus was to help him start a business.

Unfortunately, he is a bum and has wrecked the bus. He now lives off his wife under the guise of helping her run the business she solely owns but, she tolerates him. “He is useful”, she defended her husband. “He takes the kids to school, runs around for the business and helps me sort out difficult customers.

‘He has his nuisance value and, if I were to employ two or three men for the sort of job he does for me, I wouldn’t get the same satisfaction and dedication”.

Unfortunately, men who earn less than their wives can never shake off the stigma that they are nothing but leeches. Remember Joan Collins and her toy-boy of an ex-husband? After being often unfaithful to her, he had the guts to take her to court for irregular ‘maintenance cheque’. After they separated, the court awarded compensation in his favour after he’d whined that he was to be put back in the luxury to which he was accustomed whilst living with Joan. Joan refused to pay and he stole some of her money in lieu! Some years later, Joan got married to a younger thirty-something husband at 69; thanks to her money. Seems the love of money can easily make a few men lose their self-respect. And they still remain married after almost two decades!

Nearer home, there is this fifty-something-year-old who got married a couple of years ago to a man who could hardly make his pay packet-stretch a week after payday. Our ‘new’ bride, on the other hand, has a manufacturing company and is loaded. So, instead of asking her for money whenever he needed some, he would just wait until she was fast asleep, open her wardrobe and help himself to as much as he needed.

“I caught him at it once”, said the wife “but I never confronted him. He thought I was fast asleep when, in fact, I was waiting for him to sleep so I could say the special prayers my pastor asked me to say at 2a.m! As soon as I pretended to be snoring, he crept to my wardrobe with a torch. I was annoyed at first and wanted to confront him, but what would be the point?

So, these days, I just put in the bit of money I could let go as ‘public relations’ and he takes what he needs – never the whole thing at a time though! Clever rogue! Let’s face it, things have changed from our childhood concept of marriage. Matrimony is not as sacred as it used to be, and if all it takes for you to be happy is to spend money you can afford on your man, where is the ‘harm’. Afterall, we women spend fortune on fashion without batting an eye-lid.

“Paying less than that to keep a serviceable husband is what I consider a good investment! It also guarantees a warm bed every night!”