Like most young people living at home, Mary Francis put iron-clad passwords and a complex pattern on her phone, to protect her p-r-i-v-a-c-y from the Mom who had started to act like a monitoring spirit over her.
One day, she left the phone on her bed and forgot to lock it before going off to the kitchen to prepare noddles for herself. The mother seized that rare opportunity to go through the phone and stumbled on her chat with a man unknown to her. As the young lady stepped out of the kitchen with the plate of noodles topped with a summary crunch, spiced chicken thigh, the type that Americans call drumstick, the mother thundered: “Mary, who is Jerry? Why is he requesting you to come back fast because he is missing your company and food especially? Did I send you to school to keep a man company and be his chef? I sent you to school to get a good degree.”
Mary was startled, wondering, how on earth did she commit the ‘original sin’ of leaving her phone unlocked. Whole ruminating over her carelessness, she hoped the mother did not see her nude pictures with Jerry. Mollified, Mary sent the rest of the day in a daze, shell-shocked as the mother huffed, muttered over the lifestyle of present day youths.
In this age of Instagram, TiktTok and other social media platforms, young are redefining the norms when it comes to sexual relations. Young people now engage in live-in love affairs, telling themselves they are having a good time. Some years ago, cohabiting was associated with unmarried working class males and females, who were considering marriage. The unfortunate reality is that hundreds of students in the universities have taken to cohabiting in the private hostels built off-campus close to the tertiary institutions.
When a woman attains marriage age, the thing is to settle down with a serious marriage-minded man rather chasing shadows by cohabiting and pretending to be a couple. One pertinent to ask ladies is this: must you move in with him in a trial marriage baptised as cohabiting? When you cohabit with a man, the neighbours will naturally make you the focus of gossip.
One wonders what is the real benefit of cohabiting for the lady involved. You, the lady, spend months or perhaps years, giving bedroom privileges that ought to be reserved for your husband, to a man who has not made you an honourable woman, by taking you to the altar, in the full view of your kinsmen.
In real terms, cohabiting accords no respectability to the lady involved in the relationship.
It is just possible that ladies who cohabit with men do not understand the depth of embarrassment and shame it breeds. That is why it is better to be a responsible single lady rather than a cheap live-in-lover. You should know that until you are lawfully married, a single lady is simply a single lady, it does not matter the length of time she had cohabitted with the man.
Again, being a responsible single is not a crime, and neither is it punishable under any law. In fact, there are single ladies who are happier than married women. The offensive aspect of being single is when a lady allows herself to be deceived and coerced into a fake marital status, while she covers up and gives excuses for the situation.
When a lady takes to telling people that she live with her boyfriend, such a lady is only deceiving herself. Should one be proud to live with her boyfriend? Your boyfriend should not take long to change status, to become your husband. While in your boyfriend’s house, you are still single, ageing, wasting precious time, labouring for nothing and giving free sex without having the status of a wife in his heart and mind as well as in the eyes of his relations and friends. This situation is not applicable to only women even though in the African context, the weight is naturally heavy on women to settle down. Men are not exempted from this sin, neither are they authorized by any culture to co-habit with a lady whose dowry he has not paid. Paying the bride price makes you the landlord and holder of the oil mining licence.
When a lady regular line is, “I call his mother often and she calls me too, “ as well’, I want to ask, should the exchange of calls stand in the place of wedding plans and related arrangements? You should not allow him be a dog in your manger; marry you he will not, but would make way for a serious man to come in and make you a wife and his jewel of inestimable value.
“He posts my pictures on social media and use my pictures as his DP” is such a hollow consolation. Dear single babe let me quickly remind you that people also use the pictures of their departed loved ones on their DP to memory of them alive. While he displays your DP picture, his third leg could well be busy somewhere else. What you need is for him to change single status, make you his wife and crown you as ‘madam with capacity.’
For all those who keep and watch over a transatlantic relationship with a man overseas, who has made promises to you, be careful so as not to wait for Mr. Abroad forever and remain single because not all that glitters is not gold. Once upon a time, it was a marriage boom between our foreign based brothers and Nigerian nurses, a phase that tore most friends apart and kept some ladies still single till date. Dennis, a handsome hunk visited his mother in Owerri, while trying to catch up with the city where he once lived as a young boy, he ran into many girls. He was at a crossroad and smartly played the marriage card until he returned to his base. All four ladies thought they had caught a big fish and waited for the D-Day. It was smart Evelyn who suspected the plan was nose-diving and searched him out through the FBI to discover Dennis was happily married with two children in New Jersey. She screamed over the discovery, saying the guy wanted to keep her single. She was filled with gratitude to God for being able to uncover his trick in time. Some engaged and dumped ladies after getting what they wanted.
To all the Baby Mama’s, yes you have a child or children for him, and all his friends call you ‘our wife’ know it that you are extremely single. All the pet names do not translate into marriage because the moment your guy walks down the aisle with another lady, you are forever his single ‘baby Mama.’ It will just end pathetically if marriage is not nipped at the bud immediately. I have not forgotten beautiful Tola and Dayo in school then, their meeting and dating heated up almost immediately and fast, before one could say Jack, Tola was put in a family way and she delivered a bouncing baby girl named Oluwatobi. Years after we met at a Spa in Ikoyi and screamed at our sights. We hugged and a young lady was with her, she said ‘do you remember Tobi, I had her in school with Dayo my ex-boyfriend; all grown up and pretty as well. Why and how did he become your ex? It didn’t work out, so we went our separate ways. No other Mr. Right came? I wasn’t really interested; I am single and happy.
‘I stay at his place.’ Well, for starters, staying at his place is not a marriage certificate. It is not an enlarged photograph of a married couple to prove it did happen. Staying does not make you his wife because there is no legal instrument of marriage around you. Someone else can come and kick you out, and no law is protecting you. If you are staying at his place and all his family know you as his future wife, you are wasting your precious time. Quality time you would have used to do better things are converted into staying in his house. Just know you are single. Men also bear the name single. There are so many instances where both men and women get it wrong. A man who brings in a lady, keep in his custody without doing the needful will also reap the fruit of his wrong labor. It is not only the woman that reaps the repercussion, but the men as well. There have been men whose machine-gun are super active, but with time, it dwindles because that energy and packs has also lowered in tempo.
Dear all, please let us stop the fake marriage called co-habiting and do the honourable thing, which is to get legally married. Until you are lawfully married, single is single.