A few thoughts on Marriage

1. Marriage benefits men more than it benefits women.
2. There are slightly more males in Nigeria than females. There are slightly more males on earth than females. (I’m bored of arguing this. Before you argue this fact with me, do a little research. Google can help you here.).

Based on points 1 & 2, men are supposed to be more desperate for marriage than women, but it is the other way round.

Do you know why?

Over the years, many societies have socialized women to believe that marriage is what validates them. These societies brainwashed women into desperately wanting marriage. This “brainwash” damage will take years to undo.

In simple terms, women are more desperate for marriage because of how they were raised and socialized by their families and societies at large. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with population or what they stand to gain.

Marriage in patriarchal settings actually reduces women. Still, these patriarchal societies make these women crave this institution.

Whenever I make a post stating how marriage validates men and how there’s wife scarcity, Many men argue it with the last drops of their blood.

Because they might not tell you, but most of these men are actually happy that women are desperate. It gives them the feelings that they are doing any woman a favor by marrying her.

Besides and without societal restrictions, widows cope better than widowers.
It is much more easier for a widow who has a child to remain happily unmarried for the rest of her life than it is for a widower to remain unmarried for the rest of his life.

A lot of women get married mainly to have their children within wedlock and to be validated by their societies, and to avoid being judged as useless. Not necessarily because they fell in love and wanted to be married to a man.

The widow already has her children within wedlock, and so, the society will not judge her so hardly.

Men crave marriage. It benefits them more. It’s an injustice that a gender who benefits less from marriage has been made to be more desperate for it.

I want to get married, I asked myself sometimes “Nkechi why do you want to get married?”. Maybe I’m a hypocrite, but I think I want to get married so that I can have my children with same man. And because as a Nigerian, I need to be married in order to achieve some of my dreams.

I’ve got dreams of politics in the future. Nigerians won’t vote a never married woman, even though she was recommended by God as the most qualified person on earth. Yes, we can be that silly.

Maybe in the future I might genuinely fall in love, and my main desire to get married would be because I really do want to spend the rest of my life with some man or maybe I am actually already feeling that way. But at some points in my adult life, the ONLY reasons I wanted to get married were to give my children the best family environment I can possibly give them, and for the social validation, as it relates to me being born a Nigerian. A lot of Nigerian women who are married felt and still feel this way.

Take away the socialization and the validation, most Nigerian women will NOT want marriage.

I know this is difficult to digest, but it’s the truth.