Society dictates that a girl should be married after she finishes university. It also dictates the favorable ages for marriage. While most parents believe this, they not only tell it to your face; they help you in the search for a husband. At one of our end-of-the-year family prayer meetings, one of my mother’s prayers was for her 3 daughters to find husbands. This was 2019 as 2020 was beginning. For some strange reason I thought she was above all of this. She often joked about it but this time she was so serious. She even went ahead to tell my paternal aunt that she doesn’t understand why we aren’t introducing her to our boyfriends. This is when it dawned on me that the woman was serious.
I hardly ever pictured being married until I met Ethan’s father. Being with him opened my eyes to the possibility of walking down the aisle in a white dress. Well to be honest I wanted a different color – black. This always made him laugh whenever we visited this topic. I had the wedding all figured out. My bachelorette party was going to be an all-black with a touch of gothic to it kind of party. Yes, I was into gothic stuff until Jesus saved me. I hadn’t decided if I wanted bridesmaids because I was torn between bridesmaids and just flower girls. Ethan of course was going to be a page boy. The color theme for the décor was going to be black and white with a touch of red or just black and white. There would be more than enough food and alcohol as well as lots of water to hydrate. I often joked that during our first dance, while dancing to whatever boring slow song he chose, it would be interrupted by some hip-hop song and I would do a choreographed routine. That part always made him anxious. I can’t count the many times he begged me not to think about it. Apparently in his culture its forbidden for the bride to behave in such a way.
Most girls always have their weddings planned to the dot. The movie bride wars is one of my favorite wedding movies. These two best friends start to imagine their weddings from the age of about 6 after attending a wedding together. They had all the details including venue, color schemes, bride’s maids, wedding planner, even before they had met their husbands. They wanted to be each other’s bridesmaids too. They got engaged almost a week apart and both rushed to their dream venue – which was a very posh hotel in the U.S. The wedding dates unfortunately were mixed up and all put on the same day. As much as they begged the wedding planner to move another date, there were no free dates because the hotel was booked for the next 2 years. This left them with one choice, one of them had to move their wedding date for the other to attend. This led them to trying to sabotage each other’s wedding plans; now you can imagine why the movie is called bride wars.
Weddings are such a joy especially for parents. It’s so fulfilling watching how their faces light up particularly when their respective children are happy. So, I knew how my mother felt. She wished we would get married and I knew it was coming from a good place. But here I was finally enjoying how to be single and my mother was reminding me of ‘my obligation’ to society. She did not stop there. My mother also took the bother to ask me if I was dating anyone. I told her I wasn’t. To which she replied I should begin, what was I waiting for? I should start. Truthfully at 26, after the breakup, I had not seriously dated anyone. I may have kissed a few frogs just to fill the void but nothing serious. For lack of better words, I wasn’t interested. And so here I was at 30, and my mother now asking for a husband. The pressure!
Never in a million years did I ever think the pressure would catch to me. I had watched it in the movies and around me – how girls at an age, mostly 30, just wanted to be married. And it gets worse especially when all your friends are getting married and you don’t even have any prospects. At least these movies had such happy endings. That was consoling. But I began to crave more. ‘Maybe I should date’, I thought to my 30-year-old self. The worst part is social media doesn’t help either. I had begun following a page on Instagram called Bellanaija Weddings and they featured such cute stories. Most of the narrative was nice Christian girl meets handsome Christian boy. Why wasn’t this me? Why don’t these things happen to me? I thought to myself. oh, and the weddings were exquisite and very exotic.
Two friends who had both watched relationship goals and I were having conversations in the car on our way back from the mentorship class we both attended. We talked about how it was such a good series, then we began to ask whether such men existed. It’s funny that one of these friends was my age mate and the other was a baby – just 21 years old. My age mate and I literally shared the same story of our mothers both wondering what’s going on. It was funny. We laughed it off but still went back to asking if these men exist. We both agreed that we want good Christian men but who wants a very reserved church boy to be honest? Most women love a little adventure and so we wanted a bad-boy-gone-good. One that’s found Jesus but isn’t too conservative and has made a life for himself, that is, has money and a career. It turns out, these ones are mostly married. This conversation was hilarious but also a little sad. We mostly laughed because this was the story of our lives. If we want good Christian men, must we look in church and what if these Christian men are so conservative that they don’t allow their wives to go out on dates with her girlfriends or want you to kneel down each time you’re serving a meal (taking the wives should submit to your husband’s verse literally). The dating world had now turned into something scary.
Rebel Heart 