Death to the Mumu Button!

A fact of life that has built many a career is that we love. We love deeply, strongly and disastrously, and more often than not to no point or wholesome destination. When it ends we come up with words that summarise the relationship and why it must end. Beautiful reductive sentences that cover up how hurt we are, or how hurt we will be.

On the blog, we wrote, “space is the request of the confused. You cannot both want me and not want me.”

In the film, Annie Hall they said, “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we’ve got on our hands is a dead shark.”

In 500 days of Summer,

“I just woke up and I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“What I was never sure of with you.”

Relationships come in various shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’re sweet nothings, and sometimes they’re destructive toxic somethings, either way when they must end, they end, in a beautiful fight, with a cutting line and a series of blocks on multiple social media accounts. Such is the reasonable way.

When a relationship doesn’t end when it should to preserve the sanity of one or both parties, it is likely that the mumu button is at play.

The mumu button is a thing that exists in the hearts of most of us. Once activated we become emotional or physical masochists. There is no cruelty orchestrated by the person we love we won’t endure. We’ll be unhappy, but happy that we’re in love. And we’ll be broken but we’ll celebrate the fact that the reason for our smashed up heart is there even if he or she continues smashing and breaking. Your friends will ask, “Why is he an idiot?” or “How could she be so daft?” The answer is usually the same, it’s that you’ve given your mumu button to your personal devil and they’re pressing it like its a remote control.

After our review of Toke Makinwa’s book went up we got a few messages asking us why we thought she stayed in her relationship with Maje Ayida for so long. After a heated debate, we came up with an answer. He had her mumu button and he hammered at it like a carpenter.

If the person you’re with is sensible and good, they’ll realise that they’re destroying your destiny and end it with you. But, more often than not they won’t. Human-beings are love addicts and good love is hard. It involves difficult things like sacrifice, respect, and consideration. So it’s a good deal when someone gives you all the love you could ever want and you don’t have to give any of the hard parts back.

We asked a couple of friends about their experiences with the mumu button and this is what two of them said.

Maria with a west-side story.

“I used to see this guy. He was the one that let me know I could be a bloody moron in the right circumstances. He was older and I was convinced that he was the one, and he may have been but I wasn’t his one. We dated for a month then he dumped me. I found out a week later that he’d got back with his ex. A month after that we started hanging out again and before long we were fooling around. He was still with her. When they broke up I was happy, I went from side chick to main babe. We were six months in when he went on a trip to the States and got married. He came back and broke up with me. His marriage didn’t last long. When it was done, he came back to - you guessed it, me. Me too I agreed, but the Mumu button had been broken. Two weeks later, I walked away. Two years of my life.”


 
I think this dude may be Jhene Aiko’s ex husband.

“I was talking to this girl… No, let me not trivialise it, I was with this girl for like 3 months, and it was good for the most part. There were times when she’d disappear on me, but apart from that it was fine. My mates started hearing stories about her and they told me. Apparently, while she was with me, she was fixing to hook up with some other guy. I didn’t do anything because I didn’t believe them. The shituationship continued until she broke up with me and hopped on him like that same day. Fam, I was distraught but I’m glad she ended it when she did because I’d have been there like an idiot before I realised that we weren’t working.”

From stories like these it’s clear that the Mumu Button must be feared. And one way or another, we must be able to identify when it’s being pushed, lest we lose months or years in emotional hell holes all because of the crazy stupid thing we call love. If there’s one thing worth asking for at Christmas this year, it’s the death of the mumu button because ain’t nobody got time for that.

Happy Days,
The troamteam