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I DON'T...


I was only eight years old when I told my mother I didn’t want to get married. Her reaction is quite hard to forget considering the fact that I still have a scar to remind me. She calmly went outside, plucked a whip from the tree in front of our home and gave me the swiping of my life. (Just kidding)



What she really did was burst into tears.


Needless to say, I never said that to her again. Fast forward nineteen years and a five year relationship later and my views about marriage are still pretty much the same. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to marry Joe...He is like the sweetest man I have ever known and besides, he’s the only man who even made me reconsider my vows to stay single for life; If I ever do get married, it would be to him.


That doesn’t mean that if this five year relationship doesn’t end up in marriage I would go on a frantic man hunt to still the wagging tongues of fellow colleagues or to smoothen out the disapproving glances my relatives throw at me during family gatherings.


Lots of my friends are getting married and while many of them seem to know exactly what they are doing, a good number of them seem not to...so, I’ve been asking myself the question would I feel incomplete or unfulfilled if I NEVER got married?


I mean, think about it. Women start work after school and the next thing they start thinking about is getting married. Guy has a steady job and a nice pad and one day looks around after a meal of bread and garri and goes ’I think it’s time I got married. While marriage is a stage of life, is it THE stage of life? If it was I think the divorce rates would have been a tad lower than the fifty percent divorce rate we have now. Don’t you?


I was browsing through the romance section of nairaland.com when I came across the topic, AFRAID OF BEING THIRTY AND UNMARRIED.The first thing I thought to myself was ’you have got to be kidding me! Sure we live in a society that makes you feel being unmarried at a certain age is akin to having AIDS but come on!


Really what’s wrong with being thirty and unmarried if God hasn’t led you to the man that compliments you? What do you do in the meantime? Pine away? Scare men off with your looks of desperation? Lose your morals? With so many people rushing into marriage and then diving out of it, you would kind of expect that people take their time to walk down the aisle matter how long that takes!


Even before I became aware that Jesus had paid the price for me and I was his, I had always been passionate about the issue of marriage because I had seen firsthand the pain and despair that two people unwilling to walk with God in their marriage could unleash on themselves and their kids.


I’m single and in all honesty, I’m having the time of my life! More so since I found God. Before you think of getting married, you need to ask yourself if you are truly single enough to get married.


Being single enough simply means that you have attained a level in your life where you know you will be an asset and not a liability to the one you will marry. It’s not about having more money or having all the houses in the world. It’s not about being tired of being lonely.


It’s about being secure in yourself and in your identity in God and not looking for someone to ‘’complete you” because the truth of the matter is that no one can. It’s selfish of you to think that the man or the woman you marry will make you feel whole when she or he is less than whole. Being truly single is being able to take care of yourself and things around you. The first time I paid rent on my little apartment, you could have hurled a tornado at me and I would have still been as tall as a tree! I was so proud of me and thankful that God had given me the opportunity to experience that phase in my life.


Don’t get me wrong. I would have loved to have a man pick up that tab but he wasn’t on the scene so to speak. What was a girl supposed to do? Sleep around for the money? Bag a sugar daddy because girls are so helpless and need a big strong man? Get my drift?


If you’re getting married make sure it’s for the right reasons.


I don’t want to get married because my biological clock seems to be running on a new brand of batteries called ‘speed’.


I don’t want to get married because my childhood friend just got hitched.


I don’t want to get married because I feel alone and need someone to warm my collapsible couch.


I don’t want to get married because I’m tired of paying the bills on my own.


I don’t want to get married because I’m afraid of what people are going to say about me when I’m thirty and still unmarried...


I simply want to get married because God says it’s time to...after all, he is the one who makes all things beautiful in their time and that includes marriage.
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  1. AnonymousApril 20, 2010 at 4:20 AM

    This beautiful write up and no comment!...my prob exactly wit bloggin!...look up my own work, www.otattler.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete

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