God Marriage.

Beauty they say is in the eye of the beholder, however, when it comes to marriage, a good one is defined by those who live it. See, as a writer I observe a lot. I have come to believe in nuances. There is rarely any black or white in relationships. I have observed that a lot of marriages have many shades of gray in between. I have also observed that there is no one size fits all. A mistake Funke Egbemode seems to have made in her article titled “Public Lies Married Women Tell.” This article, recently brought to my notice, was written back last year but you can say it’s a timeless piece, seeing that it is on marriage. Funke Egbemode, I understand, is a popular Nigerian columnist and writes for one of the most widely distributed newspapers, The Sun.

Now I am a married woman, my mother is a married woman as are so many women, friends, colleagues and mentors. So while I appreciated the humor in the write-up, it rubbed me the wrong way that someone was propagating the idea that so many women would usually lie whenever they talk about their marriages in public. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to rubbish the article, I have no doubt that it is very valid in its own right. After all, there is still almost a 50% rate of divorce in the country I live in and more and more divorces and separation in Nigeria and other countries in Africa.

It is also not far-fetched to think that some of the women who ended up divorced spoke of their marriages in glowing terms a few years, maybe months and even days before their marriages crashed. The question to ask though is how we can be sure that these women and even those who remain in their marriages were or are lying? Now that would be a very difficult one to answer I tell you. The thing is, a marriage you as an observer would call an unhappy marriage, may have its happy moments you may not be privy to. It may be those happy moments the women refer to when they say those things Funke Egbemode’s article considers public lies. Who are we, the outsiders to call them liars then?

I know that in the same vein, this means that it can be said that the happy marriages also have unhappy moments. Do you think I would deny that? No way! LOL…of course there are ‘down’ moments in every marriage. There are those times when you feel lonely, when you feel crowded, when you feel misunderstood, when you ARE misunderstood, when you agree to disagree with your spouse and even disagree to agree. Yes, there are those moody days when you blame all and everything including your marriage for your misery. But this does not negate the general happy state of the marriage. It also does not mean that your marriage or your spouse was the cause of the unhappiness. Let’s face it, you also felt like that when you were single, whether you are a student, a worker, or in between jobs.

I used the divorce statistic earlier and everyone seems to like quoting that 50%. What you will not find so common is people referring to the other 50%. Yes, we find it easy to forget that more than half of the people who get married do not get divorced. Most of that 50% remain together and celebrate their 20, 30, 40 and even 50 years of happy marriages. Yes I said happy marriages. If we are so quick to assume that all the ones that got divorced did so because they were unhappy, we should extend the same courtesy to those that remain together, no? What is good for the goose and all, LOL.

But I didn’t write this article just to rant. I wanted to respond to some of the issues raised by Funke Egbemode and make some points of my own about the mostly negative perspectives we usually see in the media about marriage. One thing I will say here is that you do have to marry the right person for you to reap the benefits of a good marriage. I did not say or mean a perfect person because none of us is perfect but it has to be someone we can cooperate with, someone we trust, someone we see in our future, whom we can be honest and open in communication with and best and over all, someone we love. These points are not just about me, right now, they are from the marriages I’ve seen and have learnt from, and where I hope my relationship to be in the years to come.

Being a better person in so many ways.

Partners who are smart, honest and share their opinions and outlook with their spouses will improve them. They will challenge you on so many levels and this will bring out the best in you. There are the sayings that two heads are better than one and about iron sharpening iron, and they are true in a marriage. Spiritually, intellectually and all of the other -allys considered, the only way is up. Being married grounds you in a different way from just taking care of yourself. This is even more so when the children begin to come. You learn one of the best attributes of life, self sacrifice and commitment.

Being much happier and healthier.

When you marry a person you are compatible with, the chances are very high that you’ll be happier than you were when you were single. No man is an island. Most of us have been biologically and socially engineered to want a partner. This desire when attained will in the right conditions continue to yield fruits of happiness. Apart from that is the matter of spending lots of time with someone who cares for you, and who makes you happy. This is a major boost to your self esteem and will probably spill over to other aspects of your life, making you take more joy out of things you may not had even considered otherwise. Statistics have shown that this happiness translates to better health for married people and may even contribute to them living longer lives.

Having better and more sex

Yes you can quote me on this one, lol. There are also statistics to back me up. Most single people get little or no sex, especially when they are abstaining or are not in relationships. Even when hooked up, because relationships which do not quickly lead to marriage tend to break up after a while, many singletons experience long dry spells with no sex. This is not the case when married. While you may not make love every day of every week, you do get your regular doses and lovemaking being one of those activities that gets better with practice; you will definitely see an improvement and more enjoyment with time as you both learn each other, your likes and your dislikes.

Being more attractive

Married people tend to take more care with their appearances, not just to please their spouses but because of the boost that comes with being happier and getting regular doses of the chemicals released when someone has lots of sex. Anecdotes abound of men who say they begin to get hit on by women after they get married and the same goes for women. You are cleaner, take more care of yourself, begin to use the appropriate hygiene products you may have disregarded in the past and possibly you are also trying to keep fit and in shape at the local gym or in quality time with your spouse.

Being married to the father of my children

Let’s be honest here and tell ourselves the truth. There may be so many other ways and circumstances in which to have children and bring them up these days but experts still agree that the best way is in households with two parents in a committed relationship. There is a special joy in working together with a spouse to raise your children, the shared highs and lows, the pains and happiness, knowing that these offspring are from both of you and that if one is not there, the other would do any and everything humanly possible to take care of those children.

Having better financial benefits and my earning power increased.

When you look at it from the big picture, it is cheaper to cook for more than one, ditto for air line tickets and hotel rooms, also apartments and houses cost the same no matter how many people live in it, you get the general idea. Look at it this way; you are pooling resources together with your spouse and in some cases, getting an extra income into your household. While it is less likely (not impossible) that marriage may get you a promotion at work, it will sure get you tax breaks in America and maybe even access to better health plans and mortgages. The financial benefits while more for women who marry upwards are also true for men irrespective of how they marry.

By Myne Whitman

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