Nkechi hated losing. As a child, she was very competitive. She raced her brothers to the gate every morning, and if she didn’t win, she sulked the whole day. At the dining table, she gulped food faster than everyone else, just so she could shout, “First!” Even homework turned into a race; who could finish times tables the quickest, who could get the best grades. In her house, winning was how you stayed seen. Losing felt like vanishing.
So when she got married, she carried the same fire with her. Only this time, she didn’t recognise it as fire; it was the normal she grew up with.
At first, it showed up in small things. If her husband complained about how stressful his day at the office was, Nkechi immediately countered: “You think your work is hard? You should try running this house and chasing after the kids all day”
If he bought her something nice, she would search for a way to outdo him the next week. “He bought me shoes? Fine. I’ll surprise him with something bigger.”
Even their quarrels weren’t about resolving issues; they were about who would land the last word. Winning mattered more than peace. Slowly, her marriage became a scoreboard no one had agreed to play on.
Her husband, tired of competing in his own home, began to withdraw. Conversations turned into debates. Laughter reduced to silence. Even intimacy began to feel cold, as though the softness between them had been swallowed by rivalry.
Nkechi couldn’t see it. To her, this was life as usual. This was how she had always lived, until one evening at her parents’ house.
She sat in the living room, scrolling through her phone, when she noticed her father in the corner. He was peeling an orange slowly, carefully, then placing each slice neatly on a plate for her mother. It was nothing dramatic, nothing grand. But when he passed the plate to her mother, Nkechi caught the look in her mother’s eyes.
It wasn’t the look of someone keeping score. It wasn’t the look of someone who needed to win. It was the look of someone who felt safe. Something in Nkechi cracked open.
For the first time, she saw her reflection. Her constant need to prove herself, to one-up, to argue until she had the last word–it wasn’t normal. It was childhood that followed her into adulthood. It was the little girl who couldn’t bear to lose, still running her home. That night, she went home quieter than usual.
Her husband started talking about his day, and for the first time in a long time, she listened without interrupting. She let him finish. She let silence breathe. And when she responded, it wasn’t to prove she had done more, but to connect. His shoulders relaxed. The tension in his eyes softened. He looked at her as though something invisible had shifted.
It wasn’t easy for Nkechi. Habits formed in childhood don’t vanish overnight. She still caught herself wanting to argue, to prove, to win. But she began to notice the difference. Each time she chose listening over competing, softness returned. Each time she dropped the scoreboard, laughter returned.
It took time, but she learned what no one had ever told her: that in marriage, there are no medals for outdoing your spouse. You either win together or you lose together.
So much of what feels “normal” in our marriages isn’t really normal–it’s childhood patterns speaking through us. The way we grew up, the habits we formed, the ways we learnt to survive. They don’t disappear when we say “I do.” They follow us, quietly shaping how we argue, how we love, and how we show up. But here’s the good news: once you see the pattern, you can choose differently. You don’t have to let your childhood write the script of your marriage.
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Featured by Polina Tankilevitch for Pexels.
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