By Chisom Asogwa
That caption must have grabbed your attention, and you’re here to find out if this piece is in support of a single woman living a polygamous lifestyle. I’d advise, to take a deep breath and shut down that judgmental rebellious part of your brain and let’s be logical about this.
Award winning novelist Chimamanda Adichie rightly opined in her ‘We are all feminists’ TEDx speech, “Because I am female, I’m expected to aspire to marriage, keeping in mind that marriage is a source of love, peace and joy.”
Women, especially African women have been psychologically wired to look up to marriage. Raised as competitive beings not for jobs or accomplishments but to get the best deal off the husband market. I know, that tiny weak argument that this is the 21st century and women are attaining more in career and business but still, all those women at the apex of their careers are married.
The feminist cheerleader herself is married. Let’s not get carried away, as Africans, having a family of your own is in itself a great feat that social accomplishments is yet to surpass. Since it’s bound to happen, why not get the best deal?
Dating is the pre-requisite to marriage (at least that’s the way it should be). This is where the picking, sorting, selection and transfer of the heart organ is done. Silly girls will tell you fast fast that they are double dating because if one should disappoint them,the other could be there…But that’s a silly logic or is it?
Having more than one partner introduces the concepts of choice, scale of preference and opportunity cost into your love-life.
You gain more experience in the field of dating, relative to your one-partner counterpart.
There is the notion, that a lady who is in a relationship with more than one man at a time is a flirt and untrustworthy. She is often termed as someone who ‘sleeps around’. While they maybe a flicker of truth in this ideology, this perception works only for relationships. Would you restrict yourself to one source of income, knowing you have the opportunity to make diverse investments and reap profit? You know it’s possible to be in a relationship and not sleep around right? Keep your options open, life can be funny, it can change course in a jiffy.
Then there’s the issue of loving both partners equally, like it or not, we’re different versions of ourselves with different people. You may meet someone who brings out the excited playful child in you, whilst someone else relates more to the business lady embedded in your core. It has also been proven by research, and a lot of broken homes; love only, doesn’t sustain a marriage, understanding and temperament does.
That is not all, considering that women are on a invisible time clock (the age factor), the deal needs to be signed before 30- tops 35. There are countless stories on the internet, newspapers, magazines; of women disappointed by men they thought would marry them. There is the one of the lady who trained her boyfriend in school with proceeds from her business with the affirmation that they’ll be married upon his graduation.
The boyfriend graduated successfully but turned around to say he couldn’t be married to an illiterate, that he was going to get a job and pay her back all her money. Imagine the heartbreak. Or the story of the lady who had a very jealous lover and didn’t let anyone else come close to her. They were in a relationship for seven years. On the eight year, he suddenly broke up with her, he had fallen out of love with her.
It is unwise to put all of your eggs in one basket, you mustn’t sleep around to have more than one option. Don’t chase other people away because ‘you have a boyfriend’. If there’s no ring on the finger yet, you don’t BELONG to anybody.