STOP PUTTING THE MARRIAGE CART BEFORE THE STANDARD HORSE

This IG page belongs to my friend who works as an event planner, so this post is not to be intended as an attack on her person. She's a businesswoman who lives to plan events. It makes sense that she wants as many people as possible to get married and to hire her to plan their wedding. So if you are one of those people who need an event planner, please, hola at your girl.

About this particular image: I wish people didn't focus so much on getting married and instead just focused on having a great relationship with the other person. In my opinion, the main objective of a relationship should be finding the right partner, who may or may not fit into the marriage box.

I personally believe that there are other forms of relationships that can be just as satisfying as being legally tied to a person. Besides marriage is not really about commitment. It's mostly about assurance. Assurance that your spouse won't just wake up one morning and walk out of your life. But even then, people still do that. This means that commitment has nothing to do with signing a piece of paper, or throwing a big party for families and friends. It's an individual choice. Many dating couples are more committed to one another than many married couples.

Amongst Nigerians, I see people pursuing marriage and trying to fit every person they come across into the marriage box. And let's be honest, our criteria for who is marriageable and who is not is very poor. For the men it's just financial stability, for women it's domestic capabilities and the ability to swallow crap. That is basically a small portion of men versus a vast portion of women. It makes sense that women will struggle more to find a partner. Which is why the moment they find a man that is above average in terms of financial strength, they throw all cautions to the wind, and start pushing for marriage.

How many more of "Dear Blogger, my husband did this, did that, but he's a good man and provides for my needs" do we need before we understand that we need to change our mindset towards relationships?

Relationships should be fun, exciting and stress free. I couldn't be with someone who was constantly putting pressure on me to get married. Let's enjoy each other's company, know each other and have loads of sex. Let's build our individual lives, and if it comes to the point where it makes sense to merge, then we can merge. But merging should not be the main focus.

When you focus on what a person has to offer against what that person is like and how they came to be, you take a risky gamble. Gambling is already risky, so this is particularly risky.

This doesn't mean that you shouldn't have standards. This mean that you shouldn't allow the standards that you can control or assist to build, overshadow the ones that you can't. You can help someone to become financially stronger. You can help someone to become more domesticated. But you cannot help someone to become kinder, more loyal, honest, empathetic or faithful. That's what therapists do, and they too will tell you that changing someone's character is not a walk in the park.

Anyway, this is just my opinion. And you all are free to do what you like. Blogger and Co. live to receive those inboxes.