Dear Husband-to-be,

You may not know me yet, but I am very much alive and not any ‘beautiful one that hasn’t been born yet’. I am a Nigerian of the Yoruba tribe and a Christian. I have decided to write to you today on some pertinent issues concerning when we finally get joined in holy matrimony and start living together as husband and wife.

I am assuming you are also a Nigerian, I am not so sure about your tribe though. But for the purpose of this letter, I would make you a Yoruba man. Remind me to rewrite this part if you end up being from another tribe. Or country (Lord, help!)

First, no matter how rich you are and how generous and kind hearted your parents are, our wedding ceremonies (church and traditional) would be strictly by invitation. I am not stingy or selfish, I just prefer order and organisation to chaos. Besides, we don’t need the whole world as witnesses to validate our union. So, start telling your uncles and aunts who were previously non existent to please remain so. I will convey the same message on my side.

Next up, we must have a “you may now kiss the bride” moment during the church wedding. I mean, why have I been hiding and keeping these luscious lips of mine all these years? And I don’t mean a peck on my cheeks like a 5yr old being kissed by her dad. Don’t worry about the audience, our love is not shy.

When we get to the reception, we have to dance. I don’t mean walking in, clapping and smiling. I am talking about digging dance steps that would even be nothing compared to our joy. We would ensure our DJ has awesome songs to accompany our dance steps. He just would have to keep up with us. We cannot have any dull moment together. I trust you anyway.

After the wedding ceremony, we are married and we continue as the lovers/friends we’ve always been. Nothing like that ‘marriage cloak’ that descends on people and makes them forget all the words and actions that endeared them to each other during courtship. There’s a week allowance for the wedding presents to come in and other such pleasantries after which it is just you, myself and God. We would have our honeymoon which would spread to every day, month and year of our forever after.

We would ensure that we show love to our parents and relatives on both sides. We would visit them, buy them presents and pray for them diligently. But, my love, they must never become a third wheel to our bicycle of marriage. God would use them as blessings to us, yes. But, both of us are Christians, right? We are both filled with the Holy spirit, right? We would listen to God concerning our marriage and if He chooses to speak through our parents and relatives, we would not hastily make decisions without coming together as husband and wife to discuss and pray. We love each other like that.

When the children come, we would love them and teach them everything good. By His grace, we would both have great jobs that we love but we won’t be married to our jobs. We would not make mountains out of molehills. We would talk politely and sort out issues that come up. We won’t make our private matters public, not even to the children.

Please note, we (i.e both of us) have no idea what divorce is. We don’t even know it exists and we can’t even try to understand it. We will stay together indeed till death do us part. Else, we won’t get married at all. You see, the moment we say, “I do”, we make the decision to keep loving, choosing and trusting each other. Just as nothing can separate us from the love of God, nothing can separate us from our love for each other while we are on this blessed earth.

Dear husband to be, there’s a lot more. But, I’ll stop here. Summary is, it would be our wedding. Our marriage. Ours to keep. Ours to love. Ours to build. Ours to make the best of. Ours.

Yours in love, your wife to be.

*****

I am not sure of the exact figures but check up divorce rates in the world and you might just be shocked. It makes me wonder if these people were actually in love before getting married. Or, more scary, i wonder if  love is real. 

Could it be that they never wanted marriage? Maybe they just had to get married because a baby came along. Maybe they had to become husband and wife to help their families and/or businesses. Or were they just under pressure to get married because of their age and the husband/wife was the closest and available option?

Or were they actually in love but their love was not strong enough? Strong to withstand infertility, parental/external interference, financial problems, sickness, death of a child, infidelity, etc?

 Could it be that they never took time to discuss possible issues and controversies that could come up in marriage during their courtship? Like I heard recently, any thing, no matter how little it is, that makes you uncomfortable about your fiance/fiancée should be addressed during courtship. There’s nothing like, “it would be dealt with later” or “he/she would outgrow it” or worse still, “marriage will take care of it”. Get it taken care of before you say, ‘I do’!

Finally,  do people get divorced just because they are lazy and not ready to make it work? Did they give up on ‘the marriage’ seeing as it had ceased to be ‘their marriage’? 

If you ask people who have gone through divorce why they did, you would get many reasons. You may even get some reasons for which you would totally agree that divorce was the only way out. But, if you listen carefully, you would also discover that some marriages were doomed to fail even before the marriage vows were exchanged. While some others allowed things or people happen to their marriage. 

I think marriages can stand. What do you think?

*****

1. There’s a literary contest worth N100,000 going on by DesignedLife, a blog I am honored to contribute to. Check it out today (http://www.designed.life/designed-life-literary-awards/) and send in your entry.

2. I really appreciate you for reading and sharing, liking and commenting on my blog. It means a whole lot.

3. Next up, 1Samuel25.

#peo