Will a car drive, or crash your relationship?

By Irene Nabusoba

“I delayed in the house only to find his sister occupying the front seat. I headed for the front door, expecting her to vacate the seat for me but instead my husband ordered me to squeeze in the back with the children. Even when I had a baby to breastfeed!” says Linda.

Lindah says she did not speak for the whole journey. She wondered how an outsider (to her nuclear family), who had asked for a lift to the village, had more right to the comfort of ‘her’ front seat than she did.

“To avoid future confrontation, I have decided to always go for the back seat, especially when I am alone with my husband. He now feels uncomfortable and asks me to join him in front,” she says.

The front passenger seat is known colloquially as the ‘death seat’ because it is apparently more accident prone. In political and military protocol, it is the bodyguard’s seat. The boss sits behind.

But in the family, things change. The seat belongs to the spouse who is not driving. And in most cases, it belongs to the wife. It is assumed that the lady in the front seat has a special relationship with the man behind the wheel.

“Why should someone else seat in front with my husband when I’m in the car?” asks Annette, 28. “It is my seat unless I volunteer to sit behind like I often do for my mother-in-law,” she adds.

Viola narrates: “There is this brother of his who always dashes for the front seat and annoyingly jokes, ‘I know you women like behind.’ One time, I found him removing my bag which I had put on the seat to mark my territory and told him off. He was humbled to his place.”

It is not a woman thing. Men also know this. “My gal (his wife) definitely has to sit with me,” says Martin, a marketing manager. “Unless, of course, one of my parents is around. She has to respect their choice of the car seat. But the rest; friends, brothers, and sisters, nobody interferes with her seat.”

But Daudi, an engineer, says he would not even allow his mother in the front seat when his wife is around. “I need to sit with my wife so we can talk, plan and feel each other’s proximity.”

Peter, a banker, agrees. “There is no debate here. I have argued with friends who call it the ‘mother-in-law’s seat,’ because as a kid, I remember that we sat in the back seat with everybody else as my mom occupied the co-driver’s seat. We were naughty kids, capable of throwing out anybody else, including our grandma, from mummy’s seat,” he recounts.

From a peer survey of a dozen husbands, only one said he didn’t mind. “Why the fuss?” he wondered. “Bosses never sit in front. That mentality (of wife’s seat) is for rural fellas who think that the front seat is prestigious. Really, does sitting behind make you less of a wife?”

Annette Kirabira, a counsellor at Makerere University, explains that the politics of the wife’s seat may reflect many things.

A man may ask his wife to sit behind, not due to his degree of respect but because he wants to show the rest that he is the boss, in control and his will gets done.

“There are certain cultural beliefs imparted into men during their upbringing. Even when he gives a hand in the kitchen, he doesn’t want his relatives or friends to know because he believes they will think he is hen-pecked.

Same with the car. It could be his macho way of showing authority by deciding the wife vacates her place for a relative. Such men are simply functional stereotypes.”

Kirabira advises spouses to avoid confrontation in such scenarios. “The husband already has his fears as an egocentric man. the best thing is to oblige and stay that way until you get a private opportunity to talk and resolve it calmly,” she advises.

Kirabira also believes the front seat belongs to the wife. “Even his mother has no right to your seat at the front. You can leave it for her out of respect or because your naughty kids will disturb her if she sits with them at the back,” Kirabira advises.

Joshua Musalo, a counsellor and psychologist with Uganda Christian University in Mukono, says where a woman sits in a family car depends on background and grooming.

“To some people, it is respect. To others, sitting at the back is honourable. Personally, if I sat in my son’s car, I would love to see my daughter-in-law in front. I respect her,” he says.

Nonetheless, Musalo argues, when a man asks his wife to sit behind, it could be an indication of a break down of communication.

“Maybe he realises they cannot even hold a conversation and would prefer someone he is going to talk to. maybe she complains a lot and would distract him.

“In fact, contrary to what we think that them sitting in front is continued communication, it has been observed that when you see a man and woman sitting in their car gloomy, just know they are husband and wife. If they are engrossed in conversation excitedly, it is either a girlfriend or they are just catching up,” Musala notes.

Otherwise, Musala says, he has heard so many of these stories concerning the front sit and who has a right to occupy it and hastens to advise that men need some counselling to understand that women attach importance to it.

“Many do not understand that a woman’s place in a family car is the front seat because experience is the best teacher and we have not grown up observing this. How many of our parents had cars any way?”