I wonder if he will one day hit me like Fred – the Esan guy I dated in college – if I become his wife.

Dear Darci,

While he was driving me home yesterday, Odigwe proposed to me. In a freezing moment, I was unsure whether to smile, frown or keep a ‘poker face’.

I would choose to smile because I am now 26 and have a mother clamouring to be a “grand-ma in jeans”. A colleague at work thinks I will receive more respect from clients and junior staff if I were a ‘Mrs. Something’; and my doctor tells me to have all my kids in my 20’s so that I can arrest the Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome I was born with.

Socially, I have to be married to have children since that is the very definition of a ‘Nigerian girl raised right’. So I tried to smile while Odigwe drove and spoke.

I could have frowned because, in my teenage years, I had dreams of getting married as a 30 year old woman. Before age 30, I hoped to enroll for and obtain an MBA and an MFA. With a husband and kids, I might be compelled to just shelve those dreams. I am not sure if the same Odigwe who cooks me dinner now, bakes me Sunday treats and kisses my feet before pulling off my sandals after a hard day’s work, would still do same after I say “I do”. I wonder if he will still carry my purse, call me his ‘Tomato Jos’ or accept my opinion during decision-making if we get married. I wonder if he will one day hit me like Fred – the Esan guy I dated in college – if I become his wife.

Darci, I know I should be happy. In fact, I am happy. A great proportion of women in my society go to church daily, enduring torturous fasts just to receive husbands from the Almighty. My flat-mate is currently on a ‘find-a-husband’ mission too and half the time, she recounts her outings with various men – men who are unlikely to make it to the end of a week without squinting at her divorced and independent status – I feel sorry for her. I almost wish she would stop trying too hard and just take Odigwe so that I could continue with the rest of my youth before I’m whisked into the maximum security prison called marriage.

 The saddest part is that if I married Odigwe, I would have to listen to him all the time without complaining. I would also have to let him have his way in making all the “family decisions” because he is the man. Does this also mean that if we ever encountered a challenge in our marriage, like my inability to conceive early or if he’s cheating on me with his secretary, that I would have to accept it and not contemplate a divorce because he is a man?

The other day when we spoke on phone (a nightly ritual since we got engaged), I told him that I couldn’t imagine coming home from a long day at work to cook him dinner, clean up after him in the kitchen and also catch up with my late night writing projects. You know what he said? Hmmm! He said I forgot to add that I would have to spread my legs for him shortly before going to bed! You know, when I read those Ladybird story books as a little girl, the end of the story always said “they got married and lived happily ever after”, but Odigwe’s description doesn’t sound much like a “happily-ever-after” story`.

Please don’t ever show this email to Odigwe. I just think that if I tell any of my friends in Nigeria how I really feel about getting married, they may think I am a crazy, spoilt brat. Darci, I’m really worried that I would have to change my last name as a married woman. In fact, I am not sure that I can. I may have to amalgamate it with my maiden name. But that my name would then become too long to write or even pronounce. Last Sunday, his father said “God forbid” that a woman would be in her husband’s house and not bear her husband’s name solely. What makes me confused is – the fact that I don’t bear my husband’s name, does this mean that I don’t love him as much as I would have if I bore his last name instead? I just feel like I have achieved so much with my maiden name and I would be traumatized if I had to give it up … for the rest of my natural life.

Marriage seems to be a miraculous celebration in Nigeria. I still find it difficult to buy into that idea. Marriage seems like a lot of hard work, Darci. But everyone around me seems to be luring me into it. I wonder why I am supposed to be married in the first place. Is it because the Bible says so, or because the society says so? The other day, my land-lady said that if I waited two years more to be married then I would be considered a late blooming flower, as my time would have gone by. Then I wondered, “Is there really a deadline for marriage?” If there is, then how come no one ever mentioned it to me, all these years? If I knew there was some kind of deadline for me as a Naija spinster, I would have placed it in the blue print for my life. But I am only just realizing this deadline now and I don’t quite feel like I am done with being a spinster.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not hanging unto my spinsterhood because I want to attend more night parties, go clubbing with the girls, maintain multiple male friends etc. It’s just that I am having a hard time adjusting to the fact that I have to take care of myself now and be responsible for myself financially, physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually. So how am I supposed to add the extra of being responsible for someone else when I haven’t mastered my own self yet? And how can I tell this to Odigwe? Will he even understand?

Odigwe is my best friend. I cannot think of a day when I won’t have him to drive me around, hold my head when I cry, cook for me because I am too busy writing, pray with me because I need the peace of God in my life, share with me because I am too broke to take care of my pocket, and above all sit quietly with me because sometime I like to listen to the silence of his presence or just look in his eyes and know that I have found the rest of my life in someone. But do I have to marry him to have these forever?

 

Yours Truly,

Single Woman Turned Married Girl.