By David Maillu
Published September 4, 2023
In the modern world in which we live, which has been heavily influenced by the White man’s culture, the perimeter for getting married is for a couple to fall in love. The gate to marriage is falling in love strictly between two partners who have been brought up to acknowledge that, once you have reached certain age, you are free to make your personal decision regarding your lifetime companion.
However, human nature has it that, notwithstanding, falling in love takes place under many motives. A young man can fall in love with a girl because she is very beautiful. He can fall in love with her because she comes from well-up family. He can call in love with her because of her educational status. He can fall in love with her because she is famous. He can fall in love with her because he is in a predicable position and she can help him out of it. He can fall in love with her because she can be the mother of his children.
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This falling in love is without realization that neither physical beauty nor material things, nor personality status can guarantee that the person he has fallen in love with is a beautiful person at heart. A criminal can fall in love with someone. A witch can fall in love too.
Equally too, a girl can fall in love with a man because the man has a well paying job which guarantees her safety in livelihood. She can fall in love with him because he’s famous; because he is well educated; because he looks strong enough to defend her; because she is running away from a problem that she thinks he can solve. Or she may fall in love with him because she can’t fend for herself, and so on.
Those who fall in love don’t appear to consider seriously that he who can fall in love can also fall out of love. The condition under which you fall in love can change tomorrow. He who has material things today can lose them tomorrow.
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Falling in love, therefore, is guesswork of lasting lifetime companionship. Falling in love drugs the person to see only bright things tomorrow. Unfortunately, reality on the ground frowns at people falling in love because the way of life is beset with many problems most of which can challenge that love brutally to the extent of causing regret and divorce. This is why it is a commonplace saying that the journey to marriage has got as return ticket.
Love, based on no practical reason, is dangerous. This explains why divorce, which hardly existed in traditional Africa, has almost become fashionable. It has made many foundations of marriages become week.
The story about marriage is that each of the courting partners has a problem which he or she thinks the other person can help to solve. In other words, marriage is a trade of problems between the two partners. If one of them fails in helping the other solve his or her problem, the marriage outlives its purpose. Soon they discover sex alone can’t make the marriage survive. From the traditional stand of Africa, the culture of marriage made out of falling in love is primitive.
