I got married a year and a half ago. I was thirty-one and a virgin when I got married. Keeping a relationship was very hard for me because of my stand when it came to shuperu. I didn’t want to do it before marriage but every man I met and said yes to wanted shuperu before marriage. They spent their days trying to convince me to do it. One even told me, “If you don’t change your mind, you’ll grow old and die without a husband because no man will accept a relationship without shuperu.”
He lasted for three months before leaving the relationship. I wasn’t bitter. I knew he wasn’t for me but I was worried. I was worried what he told me could be true. I was thinking about marriage as the one thing I needed to make me whole, to prove that it’s possible to get to the end without sex. I thought about all that and didn’t think about what really marriage was about.
Martin came along. He became the man who finally got married to me. We dated for a year. He made things easy because he understood what I needed and he gave it to me. When we came back from the honeymoon and started living as a husband and wife, I asked myself, “So is that all that marriage is about? Things are going to be like this until death do us part?”
I wasn’t regretting my marriage. I had an exaggerated perception about marriage and it was the reason I was seeing things differently. We went for counselling but I don’t think counselling was enough to tell me everything I needed to know about marriage. My mom said, “No one can tell you everything about marriage. You get to know a little about it before marriage but the huge chunk is learnt on the job. You need to marry to know.”
These are the five things I wish I knew before I got married:
1. That being married would sometimes make you jealous of your single friends
I didn’t let my friends go when I got married. They let me go. They made plans without me. They met and had fun without me. In their mind, I was married and no longer like them. They thought we had nothing in common again and as such can’t relate like we used to. I married a man who didn’t put me in a cage. I was free to do whatever made me happy but my friends didn’t understand that.
They went out, had fun, uploaded photos on their status to tell the world how fun their lives were. I was jealous but I understood them. They could go on a weekend trip together but I didn’t see myself on a weekend trip without my husband. A married woman can’t leave her husband there and chill with her friends. Your husband becomes that one friend you can’t live without. I wanted to be there with them but I couldn’t because I had a husband.
My friends were looking at me as lucky because I was married. They were looking forward to the day they would get married too but I was envying them. I was envying their freedom, their free spirit and the ability they had to go anywhere without asking permission. I still envy that but I can’t go back to being single again.
2. Children are a blessing when you don’t have them yet. Once you have them, they take all the little things you call blessing away. For a while
Don’t get me wrong, I love my son. We conceived him on our honeymoon, something that hurts me up to today. I was a virgin. I planned to really enjoy all the shuperu I didn’t enjoy while I was single. In my mind, I was going to wait for at least a year before a child but my husband hit it once and I got pregnant. Everyone called me blessed when they found out I was pregnant. I was happy too. I felt blessed.
I thought breaking my virginity was the most painful thing I could go through until I went to the labour ward that day. I thought I couldn’t make it. The pain was hell. I had a beautiful baby boy but he has been making things ugly for me. I don’t sleep at night because he doesn’t sleep at night. It was the same when I was pregnant. I’ve been depressed, sick and lonely since I had him. Everyone wants to help me but it looks like no amount of help is enough. Sometimes I wish someone will take him away and bring him back only when I need him but when he’s not with me, I don’t feel whole. It doesn’t look like a blessing every day. I wish I was told that.
3. That once you have a baby, you have to split your attention equally between the baby and your husband.
This has been very difficult for me to do since the baby came. We had a baby too soon and I believe I didn’t spend enough time to know my husband. I knew him as a boyfriend and a fiancée but I don’t know him too well as a husband. Once the pregnancy happened, all my attention went to the pregnancy and then the baby until I made a conscious effort to pay attention to my husband too.
When the baby is asleep, I don’t want to sleep. I want to be with my husband but the unfortunate thing is, our baby doesn’t sleep for too long. He doesn’t ask for attention. He takes it. My husband asks for attention through the way he acts but doesn’t get it. Sometimes I’m hurt to see him alone in the corner working while the baby is on my lap and crying.
So one night, he started touching me and being naughty. I knew what he wanted. I was sleepy. I woke up with a migraine but I was determined to give it to him. Just when we started, the baby woke up with a loud cry. I told him, “Keep going. Don’t stop.” He was behind me while the baby was in front of me sucking my breast and crying at the same time. I couldn’t help but give both of them the attention they needed. I don’t know if my husband enjoyed it but I was happy he didn’t stop until he hit gold. If I knew that was how it’s going to be, I would have made special preparations for it. Sometimes I feel I’m failing as a mother and a wife.
4. I wish I knew marriage doesn’t make everything beautiful
When I was single and looking for love and marriage, I thought once marriage comes my way, everything would be fine and I wouldn’t go through the stress single me went through. I’ve been married for a year and a half but I’ve felt everything I felt when I was single. I’ve felt broke, I’ve felt lonely, I’ve felt scared of the future and I’ve felt single though married. Marriage didn’t make everything new. It didn’t change these feelings. It didn’t make me a special woman because I’m married. I go through the same struggles I went through while single, the only difference is that I go through them now while wearing a gold ring–my marriage band.
5. Sometimes love goes through the door and struggle to come back through the window when you need it the most. It’s not always lovey-dovey in marriage
I don’t love my husband every day and I know he doesn’t love me every day. Sometimes we live as friends. Sometimes it’s like we are two rivals. We fight, we argue over petty things, we walk around angry at each other because of what the other person did or said. We’ve gotten to the extreme before, where I asked myself, “Why did I even marry this man? What did I see in him?”
What sustains our marriage is not the love we felt when the relationship was new. That love is faded by the many responsibilities we have as a couple. It takes conscious effort to remind ourselves about that love so we can go and visit it time and time again. It’s not ever-present. What’s ever-present is our commitment and loyalty to each other. We will fight but we know that fight is temporary. We’ll disagree and argue but we know we’ll come back to the point where we both agree on one thing; our love for each other. I was told love is everything when I was single. In marriage, I’ve learned a new thing. That love is something but not the only thing. Commitment is everything.
This is my experience in marriage. It doesn’t represent all marriages. Yours may be different. Yours may be the beacon of light that spreads wide and far because we are different people in different marriages. And one thing I’ve also learned is that regardless of everything, marriage is worth all the hype it gets. You get to do life with someone by your side. You go through troubles together. You spread the weight of life evenly so it becomes easy to carry. You grow old together. You become a witness to another person’s life. You grow up with stories of places you’ve been and places you couldn’t go. That to me, makes marriage worth it.
—Edna
