Love is a shopsoiled word. Over the years, poets, playwrights, novelists, and essayists from many different countries had written great works, whose thematic concern is love. William Shakespeare wrote great plays on the theme of love, which probes the inner workings of the human mind. His Shakespearian sonnets talk about love, too. D.H Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ is a great love story that teaches us about human natures. Till now, writers are still churning out great works, whose themes centre on love.
But, what is love? According to the Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English, love means ‘a strong feeling of liking and caring about someone, especially combined with sexual attraction; a strong feeling of caring about someone, especially a member of your family or a close friend’. To me, love is an inexplicable emotion. Love is one’s performance of an act of benefaction for another person without expecting or demanding that the person should requite one’s benevolent deed. Loving a person entails caring for him or her genuinely and deeply.
Daily, some people fall out of love, while others fall in love with their friends. People enter into intimate relationships with other people of the opposite sex, who fill their bills for friends. A man’s hirsute body, baritone voice, finely-hewn face, and muscular body can set a lady’s heart aflame with passion. And, a lady’s soft voice, curvaceous body, great height, and angelic face can fascinate her male colleague in their office. So, with time, they may become great and inseparable friends. And they may consummate their union with the performance of wedding and traditional marriage rites.
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All over the world, marriage is a thing of joy for those tying the nuptial knots, and their well-wishers. The joys of parents, relations, and friends are unfathomable and boundless as they witness the solemnization of the marital union of the people, who are their own. In Africa, marriage is a societal obligation and necessity. We marry to fulfil a societal obligation and expectation. For example, relatively rich male adults, who do not have marriage mates, are viewed with disdain, condescension, and suspicion. Here, in Nigeria, a well-off man, who is not married, is believed to be involved in the money-making ritual.
And, old spinsters are believed to be suffering from an ancestral curse, which has prevented them from getting married to men. So, they frequent new-fangled Pentecostal Churches where the pastors pretend to possess the power and gift of clairvoyance. Oftentimes, those unfortunate ladies, who do not want to become ladies on the shelf, are beguiled of their money by the pastors, who exploit their desperation for marital mates. Africans believe, though erroneously, that their entering into the marriage unions initiates and ushers them into the revered club of responsible and respectable people. That’s why, nowadays, two people who are a mismatch, are joined in holy matrimony. Although they have dissimilarities as to their interests, morality-codes, likes and dislikes, they got married to each other to escape the odium and stigma of being single.
Are marriage breakups that are commonplace today not related to men marrying ladies, who are not compatible with them? A scarlet lady with warped morality –code cannot live happily with a man, who is a martinet for a disciplined -lifestyle; likewise, a lascivious man who cannot rein in his excessive libido cannot live peacefully with a chaste lady, who has high moral standard. Nowadays, accusations of sexual infidelity are at the root of the breakup of many marriages in Nigeria. The erosion of family values in Nigeria is the reason why married people have bits-on-the side. But a cuckolded man will feel enraged if he finds out that his wife of many years has been two-timing him. Today, wives stabbing their husbands to death for allegedly committing adultery seem to be the fad. Driven by jealousy and feelings of rejection, those ladies in a moment of madness kill their husbands only to regret their rash actions, later.
But, one’s engaging in the crime of passion to avenge oneself on a cheating spouse is not the better alternative. If your marriage relationship is characterized by incessant physical fights, you should know that it is time to call it quits with the marriage. When a third person comes into your marital union to settle fights between you and your marriage mate oftentimes, it is a portent of doom for the marriage. It is better to walk out of a troubled marriage alive than to die in it while trying to salvage it. The fact is this: a man who is set in his evil ways cannot change overnight to become an angel.
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When a man or a lady inadvertently kills his or her marriage mate in a moment of madness, they will lose their freedom of movement as they will be clamped into detention. Serving time in prison can blight one’s future and ruin one’s career. Oscar Pistorious, the blade runner, had a successful athletics career until he killed his girlfriend with whom he quarrelled. Has his sporting career not come to do an ignominious end?
More so, Barrister Yewande Oyediran, a promising Nigerian-born lawyer, killed her husband some years ago over the allegation that he was an incurable philanderer and adulterer. And, just recently, a high court judge in Nigeria handed her a light jail sentence. Bilayamin Bello, the son of a former PDP chairman was murdered with a knife by his wife, Maryam Sanda. Ms Sanda is being detained in a prison facility, now. Those that commit the crime of passion will still serve time in prison after their trial even if the charge preferred against them is amended or changed from murder to manslaughter. After serving time in prison, they can still make a fresh start in their lives as they are young. But can they bring back the wasted long years they spent in prison?
It is better to opt-out of troubled marriages than to stay in them hoping against hope that the two-timing wives or habitual wife beaters can change their evil ways. My own marriage was as short-lived as those of actors and actresses. I opted out of it as it’s characterized by violent fights and quarrels. Today, I am still alive to continue telling my tale. My advice to those intending to enter the marital union is this: marry your friend with whom you share the same interests, morality – code, likes and dislikes.
CHIEDU UCHECHUKU OKOYE
Okoye, a civil servant, Poet, and social commentator writes from Obosi
