Are Weddings now pop-culture?

How is it that people are just able to say “yes” to someone ‘popping the question’ after just a few weeks? How can they comfortably say they want to spend the rest of their lives with another person after such a short period of time? Can they truly know what kind of person they’re dating?

The honeymoon stages of a relationship happen in the first few months. Everything is mushy and romantic. You guys hold hands and go everywhere together and then the fights start because he starts to find your attitude irritating and vice versa. In that one month it took for you to say “yes”, had you even had a proper fight? Had you gone two days without speaking to each other? Were you able to tell him his mother overstepped when she did one thing or the other?

How can you commit the rest of your life to someone you haven’t spoken freely with? Your innermost secrets, the times when your family struggled to make ends meet are still unknown by your spouse because you naturally expect to be taken to dinner at least once a week. He still doesn’t know about the time you couldn’t afford to eat for a week because you give off the vibe that you have never suffered.

She still doesn’t know that your father physically abused your mother so she cannot watch out for those tendencies. She can’t really know what makes you tick and then you tick tock till your anger explodes like a nuclear weapon in its own right. You do not know her live in uncle raped her consistently, so that night when she tells you no initially and after much persuasion she gives in and begins to cry after the fact, you don’t know what that reminded her of.

She does not know her mother-in-law puts up a sweet smile only when her son is in the room, whilst inwardly saying “over her dead body will her son stay with this woman.”

My point is: what do you really know about the person you are marrying? After two long years together you may find that your husband Peter has been pretending about something for years or your wife Jessica has been harbouring an intense secret. I just feel like with more time, it becomes harder and harder to hide his/her idiosyncrasies, family burdens and secrets.

Lord knows there were things I would NEVER discuss with a boyfriend within months of dating so he wouldn’t really know the real me till much later. Of course that is something that could happen in a marriage. You become more open with your husband and lover but I feel there are things you may learn about a person that would make you less likely to want to stay with them in the long run. Why would you rather learn that in marriage when you could have just broken off the relationship?

I’m not saying there aren’t marriages that happened super fast and the marriages didn’t crumble. I just feel like those marriages are anomalies. About 85% of the stories I’ve heard about divorce and separation thus far, the couple got engaged/ married within months. Paraphrasing some of the reasons I’ve heard for divorce/separation in recent times “the struggle was too much, I didn’t expect it to be this hard”, “I found out he’s been borrowing money to support his lifestyle”, “he was constantly berating me” yada yada yada.

Aunty! Wouldn’t you have realised this if you had waited a little longer to make that discovery? At least do your due diligence. Women find out after they get divorced or during the marriage that their husband/ex was once married. Somehow this information passed you by, extremely VITAL information- that your husband’s ex wife left him cause he consistently knocked her lights out. If you investigated a little before saying yes I find it hard to believe (although not impossible) that you wouldn’t have discovered this already. Protect yourself!

Don’t be sad when Janet and Julie get engaged. If two months later you meet Herbert and he tells you he is ready to marry and is looking to settle down with you, tell him “Heyyyy boo, I will still be here next year if you’re willing to wait”. If he waits, fantastic! You develop a relationship, build and solidify those walls of trust. If he doesn’t wait, alarm bells no dey ya head already?

I am not afraid to get married, in fact, getting married is one of those life events I eagerly anticipate but I am in no hurry to do so. I’m so excited for the day I get to put on my white dress and say yes to the man of my dreams but I’d rather take my time and find the right man to spend the rest of my life with than regret my choice for the rest of my existence.

I really pray I don’t make any mistakes in choosing a husband. I desperately want to be one of those people who say to Brandon’s son (who’s now taken over from his dad) on Humans of New York when I’m on holiday, “we’ve been married for 60 years and it still feels like our second date” or some other vomit inducing comment. Each to his own at the end of the day. These are just my two cents!

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.