By Francis Ehwerido
Many young people are increasingly getting disillusioned with the institution of matrimony. Some have seen situations in other marriages, and even in their young marriages, that they did not bargain for and they tell you that marriage is a scam or fraud. Today, we want to interrogate marriage and find out if it is actually a scam.
Many years ago, a man was obsessed with a beautiful young girl. From age 14, he started hovering over the girl. He was worried that another man would deflower her! More worrisome to him was the fear of another man marrying her. By the time she was 18 and out of secondary school, he managed to convince the parents to give her out in marriage to him. He promised to fulfil the wish of the parents to send her to the university.
Once they got married, the first pregnancy came, followed by another and four subsequently. The song then changed to “if you go to school, who will take care of the children?” By the time she got her first degree, she was already in her late 40s. Her father did not live to see her as a graduate. In fact, her first two children graduated before her. What do you call the husband’s action? Deceit, which is another name for scam.
Some Nigerians, who currently live abroad, did arrangee marriages to get their legal status, sometimes with the consent of the legal wives they left in Nigeria. For some, it worked; they are presently citizens of those countries and living happily with the wife and family they initially left in Nigeria. But for others, play, play don turn to eat and go; the arrangee wives have become real wives and the wives they left in Nigeria are left in the lurch to rue their failed gamble. For the latter group, whatever the original intentions of their spouses, marriage has become a scam.
Good courtship gives marriages a good chance of survival. But no courtship can reveal everything about your fiancé/fiancée. Some people are adept at deceit and will hide certain traits from you, especially if they are coming into the marriage with a preconceived game plan, not an open mind. Such spouses are scammers. But there are certain traits of spouses that will become manifest due to changes in circumstances. Even the spouse with the traits might not be conscious of them. Let us take two examples.
It is often said that give a man (woman) power and you will see his/her true colours. We have seen many examples of it in the past 20 years since the return to civilian rule. That is how it is on the home front also. A man becomes incapacitated and power shifts to the wife and you see a different woman. The other one is money. Riches bring out the true colour of some people.
When they come by money, you find out that the person is very arrogant brat and was only humble all this while because of lack. If it is the husband, all of a sudden, the wife of many years is no longer good enough; she is not polished and sophisticated. For some women, they begin to wonder how on earth they married their husbands. They wonder whether they were under a spell. Are such marriages scams? No, circumstances changed and the dark side of the spouses manifested.
Again, these days, some young people are going into marriage as a stepping stone. Some marry to get a pie of their spouses’ family wealth. Some marry to get to a certain social status or get into a particular social circle. Some marry their spouses to get the good education that their poor families background denied them. Once they get to that destination, they discard their spouses like used tissue paper. These are pure scams, not marriages.
The other reason why some young people feel marriage is a scam is because of illusory expectations and perception of marriage. Some think that after you get married, you live happily thereafter. Who told you marriage is a bed of roses? Even if it is, roses have prickles (shukushuku). Sweetest-smelling marriages also have prickles and couples have to deal with the occasional prickling. The problem with some marriages is that the prickling is not occasional, but the order of the day, making the marriages hellish.
Now let us look at a scenario of a young couple. They do lovey-lovey and get married. Soon after the wife gets pregnant. Pregnancy hits some women hard. They vomit and spit all over the place; who is supposed to clean the mess? The husband, of course. No be your pikin she carry? Can you do lovey-lovey with a woman in such circumstances? Yes, of course, but not the regular mind-blowing sex you were having before the pregnancy.
Now, you need to prepare food for her that she might not even eat; clean the floor if she throws up on it, provide and empty the bowl she will spit into, run water for her to have her bath and generally be there for her. That is part of the “for worse” aspect of the “for better, for worse” vow you took during your marriage.
Some young husbands did not prepare themselves for this. They abandon their wives and go and hang out with the boys. Then when the baby is born, you want to hang around as the proud father. And you think your wife will forget that you abandoned her in her moment of need? Then later you want her to get pregnant for a second baby. I have had to settle disputes among young couples over having more children. This is one of the reasons.
Also, some young men are fixated on the external beauty of their girlfriends/fiancées. We all like beautiful women, but you must realise that external beauty is ephemeral. Have you seen the photos of some of these “ugly” old mamas (some people dare call them “old witches”) when they were young? They were stunning beauties. The “deterioration” starts once wives start having babies. The first two casualties are their flat tummies and breasts.
How a pouch forms in the tummy and how the breasts suddenly collapse is still magic to some young husbands. Men also undergo changes that their wives have to cope with. These are some of the changes, which some young people did not prepare for before getting married, that are making marriage look like a scam to them.
Now, this is my take on the matter. The marital institution is not a scam. It was created by God and everything God created is good. But like many of other God’s creations, the marital institution has been polluted by humans. So, some marriages are actually scams, pure deceits.
It is the responsibility of everyone going into marriage to shine his/her eyes to ensure he/she is not scammed. Unfortunately, many people going into marriage are beclouded by lust during courtship and are unable to shine their eyes.
