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YOU CANNOT ‘MARRY YOUR FRIEND’

I used to go to this church when I was in part one in the university. I liked the church because it was youth-based and I got to dance, the choir was fire.

 

One day, the pastor said a lot of young folks were afraid of marriage and if we belonged to that category, we should come out for prayers.

 

I ACTUALLY went to the altar for the prayer! 😅

 

I know I know, we’ve all done foolish things in our lives, haven’t we?

 

The pastor prayed the fear of marriage away but apparently, the prayer didn’t work on me.

 

I don’t just hate that institution (because my eyes keep opening to how much I get to lose if I should ever enter that cult), I’m very afraid of it.

 

I look at my grandparents’ marriage, which lasted very long FYI, but I definitely do not want to waste my life being in that kind of situation.

 

It was a patriarchal marriage, with the usual setting of the man being the head and the wife, the neck or tail or whatever is designated to the woman.

It was a boss-employee relationship.

 

What am I saying?

 

It was a master-slave relationship.

 

They were not friends.

They cannot be friends because in friendship, nobody is meant to be placed above the other which is the exact opposite of what the marriage institution entails. 

 

You cannot “marry your friend” because the patriarchal superior/inferior arrangement that governs marriage is contradictory to the idea of friendship where the participants have equal powers. 

 

Immediately you “marry your friend”, the systemic power dynamics have changed and even if there are some people who struggle to not have the socially acceptable hierarchical relationship, there is the society bearing down on you all the time, ensuring that you stick to the rules of the marriage game. The man still trying to not assert dominance on the woman and continue to be her friend because afterall “marry your friend”, is labelled a simp, a weak man that cannot control HIS woman, who is not a friend anymore but his property to control and set in line.

 

His property to do with as he pleases.

 

Every idea governing marriage institution is absent in healthy friendship. 

 

Your friend cannot stop you from going to that club or concert and be comfortable watching you in pain at being stopped. Your friend will not be comfortable watching you lamenting on the social media about something that happened years ago. The pain is so deep you remember and that person is the cause and they’re cool with it and you call that person your friend? And emptily chant “marry your friend” to single people?

 

If you look at a seemingly thriving couple, you would notice that they don’t have the conventional patriarchal marriage or relationship. The woman is freer and is not mandated to “stay in line.” And the man is happier because his happiness is not dependent on another person in any way whatsoever. He doesn’t need to control another person before he’s happy.

 

What sort of happiness depends on controlling other people anyway? Have you ever been close to sexists, both males and females? They’re miserable baskads.

 

Thriving couples are close, they’re friends and they have managed to break away from patriarchal ideas, even when they’re not conscious of it.

 

A patriarchal marriage ‘lasts long’ and thrives on the misery of one party, usually the woman. Once a party decides they’re done with being miserable, usually the woman once again, that marriage will crash.

 

And with consciousness improving in the human race, and our eyes opening that marriage is not so necessary anymore, marriages crash faster and more frequently.

 

Nobody tells you exactly what’s wrong with the marriage institution. Nobody addresses your fears about marriage.

 

They just ask you to beat it and take a gamble, because somehow, yours will miraculously be better.

 

I’m telling you that you’re not special in any way. You’re not better than those people whose relationships and marriages have crashed. As long as you enter an institution riddled by different crazy ideas like someone having to lord over the other person for the institution to hold, your relationship or marriage will either crash, or one of you will be miserable and feel caged for the rest of your life.

 

This shows it’s not about the people but about the ideas policing human relationships with one another.

 

For humans to have fulfilling and happy relationships with one another, we need to start questioning these ideas that make just about everyone miserable and scared.

 

SISÍ AFRIKA.

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