My little girl is now a big girl. A former staff who passed through CrossRiverWatch. She is getting married and I am excited. Like a couple of others who have taken that bold step, they always expect me to say something. And the thing is, what is really there to say?
There is no perfect textbook for marriage. People only share what their personal experiences in marriage have been, or those of others they have experienced or heard about, or read about. A combination of all these can be aggregated to predict a stable home but it is always not the case.
There is no stable home anywhere. Nothing in life is stable. Even science will tell you that nothing is stable. Everything is in constant motion or turmoil. It is that turmoil within the particles in motion that creates what we refer to as stability. Marriage is not excluded from this natural process. The physics applies to all departments of life.
I am not yet qualified to talk with authority on marriage and I make no claim to it because I have only spent 15 years after dating for 10. If we clock a golden jubilee and Okemena still accepts to manage me, then I can talk with all authority. But for now, let me share my thoughts on the matter with you.
I am an African. I believe and continue to have faith in the institution of marriage as the safest place to build healthy and balanced offspring for the future of our world. I also believe that to MARRY, you must learn to love unconditionally. Leave all the textbook advice about marriage. If you cannot love that person unconditionally, then wait! Don’t run into it. ‘Murife don’t run’.
I use the word “UNCONDITIONALLY” several times. I believe in God and I believe that God loves us. If God did not love us unconditionally, God would have abandoned us long ago. If you have to love your neighbor as yourself, how much more are you willing to love a spouse that will sleep on the same bed with you, almost every day, for the rest of your life? It’s a question. The question has no marking scheme. It’s an answer you need to give every day in that union.
That is what distinguishes the generation that actually got married from this generation that only wants to cohabit for convenience. The two are different. For most of the generation born from the nineties, most of the guys just want to scam the women with means and take off and the females just want who will impregnate them and have a cute baby, run away, and start asking for child upkeep to pay their bills elsewhere.
They have been told that marriage is a war zone and they both believe it. Draw down and you will notice also that most of these young people don’t even have respect for or care to build good relationships with even their parents or siblings or even bosses, not to talk of spouses. It’s a general trend around here now with the so-called “self-love” generation. We need to return to telling this generation to learn to build quality and unconditional relationships like kids. Most especially in marriage.
Love has to truly be blind to last. Love the person you say you love unconditionally. Like kids, get angry and let it go. If there are issues, elders, not social media inlaws, will sort it out for the kids and the kids grow up to become best of friends even with all their quarrels. There will never be two compatible persons unless the two make themselves compatible. The story of the missing rib is a fairytale.
By the time you get in there, whether the rib you found is the one that was missing or the one belonging to Adam, you will be hurt. You will be bruised. You will be loved. You will be missed. You will be pampered. You will be deceived. You will be trusted. You will be confided in. You will be disappointed. You will be heartbroken.
There will be mad days and there will be happy days. There will be peace and there will be storms. There will be enjoyment and there will be endurance. There will be days bills can’t be paid and there will be days of abundance. There will be sunlight and darkness. There will be days of long doubts occasioned by prolonged expectations. There will be anxious moments and blissful lulls. But in all these, if you still cannot find a reason to love unconditionally, then you think of some other form of cohabitation other than marriage.
Citizen Agba Jalingo is the Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, a Cross Riverian, and writes from Lagos.
NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.
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