The next morning, Rosie woke up next to her husband in the guest room to find him watching her pensively.
She groaned in frustration, the morning-after glow evaporating when she saw that he obviously regretted the sex marathon they had the previous night. She had been surprised but game when he had reached for her again and again, but obviously this morning had brought him clarity, and he was regretting succumbing to the desire he had been tightly holding on to.
“What is it now?” she snapped, annoyed that he was ruining her mood.
“I’m so sorry!” he apologised profusely, looking shamefaced.
Rosie racked her brain to find out what could make him so ashamed, but the only thing she could remember from last night was epic sex.
“What are you sorry about?” she asked him with a frown.
He glanced away nervously. “For…for misusing your body that way.”
Rosie was speechless. “Misusing my body? What does that even mean in this context? We had great sex, and you had my full consent. Why do you feel that way?”
“Reverend Akrong said —”
Rosie hissed out an annoyed breath. “Oh for God’s sake, what business does Reverend Akrong have in our sex life?”
Kofi hesitated. He didn’t think his wife would understand matters of the spirit as much as he did.
“Well?” Rosie demanded when he didn’t answer.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Kofi hedged.
“Try me,” she hissed.
“As men of God, we cannot allow matters of the flesh to rule us. The more we engage in worldly activities, the less spiritual we become.”
“I see,” Rosie murmured. “Is that why our sex life has been almost nonexistent?”
Kofi looked uncomfortable. “I need to take my spiritual life seriously.”
Rosie sat up on the double bed, pulling the covers up with her. This wasn’t a conversation to be had lying down.
“Hmmm…so are you saying that because you want to be a pastor, I should endure a mostly sexless life?”
His eyes darted away. “It is your duty as a pastor’s wife to support me and follow my lead.”
When she didn’t respond, his eyes snapped back nervously to Rosie to find her watching him with an expression he couldn’t decipher.
“Is that so?” she finally asked him in a deceptively soft tone. “In the first place, you’re not a pastor yet, you’re a deacon. Secondly, if you think I’m going to put my whole existence on hold to be just a supporting character in your life, you’re sorely mistaken. It’s not going to happen. Do you remember what I told you when you expressed the desire to be a deacon and a pastor?”
He nodded nervously. “Yes?”
“Kofi, is that a question or an answer?” Rosie demanded, trying not to get too upset.
He sighed. “I remember, Rose.”
“Good. I told you that I wasn’t cut out to be the wife of an overly religious man, and you assured me that nothing would change. That I should just be myself because that was what attracted you to me in the first place. So don’t expect me to become another woman now.”
He took her hands. “You don’t understand, Rose. It’s for your own good that I have to treat you differently. We’re married now. You’re a good woman, my wife. I can’t treat you sexually the same way I treated you before we got married. I have to curb my unclean desires for you.”
Rosie sputtered, speechless. “What in the Madonna-whore complex is that?”
“What is that?”
“The idea that a woman is either marriage material or a whore, and once you marry a woman, she becomes a mother, nurturer, and prim figure who can’t also be seen as sexually attractive or desirable. Where did you get this ridiculous notion from?”
“Well, Reverend Akrong —”
“Reverend Akrong again?”
“He’s my spiritual father,” Kofi answered as if that explained everything.
“And he has been teaching you to what? Avoid having good sex with your wife?”
“It’s not like that,” Kofi protested.
“Then enlighten me, Kofi Brobbey. What is it like?”
“I was preparing my body as a ready vessel for the Lord, pure from degrading and unholy acts of worldly pleasure while also treating you like the queen you are.”
Rosie was dumbfounded. Her husband was a smart man — or so she had thought before she married him. But what she was hearing now was making her have serious doubts.
“Kofi, are you listening to yourself? Do you think that Reverend Akrong knows better than God who created sex, which is the natural way for procreation?”
“Yes, but God created sex for procreation, not pleasure,” he argued, parroting his spiritual father.
“If God wanted sex to only be for procreation, he wouldn’t have created orgasm in the first place,” she snapped back.
He was struck silent for a second, pondering over her words.
“Don’t you miss us? Didn’t you enjoy what we did last night?” Rosie asked, slanting him a look as the covers slipped from her body.
His eyes drifted to her body, exposed in the lace nightie she had worn the previous night. She snorted when she caught him staring at her boobs.
“You know I enjoyed it,” he admitted gruffly.
“So did I, Kofi. And great sex should be part of every marriage — unless, of course, asexual people are involved.”
He looked torn. “I want to. I desire you all the time, that is why I had to move out of our bedroom. But I don’t want to jeopardise my spiritual growth with worldly desires.”
Suddenly exhausted from the conversation and out of patience with him for the moment, Rosie got off the bed and pulled on the long, unisex robe in the guest wardrobe.
“Well, since you’re obviously fine with jeopardising our relationship, I don’t have much to say to you except that you might wake up one morning with no wife if things don’t change.”
With that warning, she flounced out of the bedroom, ignoring his calls of “Rose!”
She needed a cup of coffee pronto, and she needed to think. Now that she knew the source of the problem, she couldn’t wait to share her discovery with the rest of the women. If Reverend Akrong was putting ridiculous Madonna-whore complex ideas into her husband’s ears and making him believe that sex could interfere with his spirituality, she did not doubt that he had also influenced her new friends’ husbands as well.
Sunday couldn’t come fast enough.
It wasn’t until later when she was running some errands, that Rosie remembered that she had forgotten to quote Songs of Solomon to her husband to help her cause.
