We were all tired. All four of us. It had been a tedious day at the office. We sat in the Uber car quietly as we journeyed home. The Uber driver wasn’t even playing any music but no one was talking either. The car was quiet like a mouse but though we were all quiet, I knew everyone was busy in with their thoughts, or more like I was busy in my mind. Then one of us broke the silence. “What am I going to cook”? It was meant to be a monologue. However, it became a conversation when another lady also said “hmmm, that is the question”. Then the one who spoke first asked the other quiet person “Charley, what are you going to cook?” She replied, “I have no idea. I will decide when I get home”.
The last thing on my mind was what I was going to cook. I don’t cook after work. I only go home to eat and work on a few things and sleep. I went like “Eeii, so that is what you ladies are thinking of”. One of them replied, “When you marry, you will understand”. When she said that I remembered something I wrote some months ago about marriage.
Marriage is boring. Boring defined as “not interesting or exciting and tedious”. That’s what single men and ladies sometimes try to make the world believe. On social media, they can post a beautiful and sexy picture of a single lady and vice versa for a married woman. I don’t know if it is because they are not “privileged” to be married to someone special or it’s just fun trolling married folks on social media. Being a single lady, I sometimes agree that marriage looks boring. As a single person, I can be selfish and not feel bad about it. All I think of is me. I can be lazy in bed the whole of Saturday and not think about preparing a big meal because snacks will do for me. I will be okay with a smoothie or noodles. This laziness will sure not cut in marriage. In this part of the world, it is expected that a married woman will be responsible of getting her family fed; snacks, smoothies and noodles is a no. When I think about marriage in this light, I think it can be boring. I have to let go of my alone times and actually, learn to put others (husband and children) first sometimes…most of the times. That seems the humane thing to do but let’s be frank with ourselves, it can be annoying. Missing out on football nights, game nights, hanging out with the guys and enjoying the view of fine girls, just to be home with your wife can be boring. The joy of flirting with the opposite sex all has to end or be done discretely after marriage.
So yes, marriage is boring, but what is not boring in this world? Everything gets boring at a point. No matter how much you love your work, it gets boring. Being single eventually gets boring and sometimes lonely. Truth!!! You can’t keep on sleeping with different men and women all the time no matter how fun it is, for those who claim getting married to have sex with just one person is not for them. At a point you get tired, you want something real. Someone to commit to. You can’t keep on enjoying your alone time and lazing around for the “I love my space” people like myself. At a point, you would want to actually cook a good meal and have someone over to dine and talk with. Yes, we do get tired of people but we can’t live without them either.
I suppose it would be totally wrong to say marriage is boring. It is not. But it sure can be boring. That’s what I want my married friends to admit to. The divorce rate is going up every other day and I believe some of these are the causes. Married people trying to make the world believe their marriage is perfect, that it cannot be boring. Social media is doing a great job of helping with this facade. In Billy Graham’s write up, “The problem of boredom”, he asked a question. Do you know what nearly all sociologists say today in their study of young people? The greatest problem facing young people today is not sex- it is boredom. When life has no purpose and meaning. When your life is not interesting. Yes, that is boredom. So we have a lot of young people getting married, having great sex and yet having failed marriages. They find no purpose in their marriage. It’s not interesting. After the sex, what next?? There’s no meaning to their relationship. But they will never admit to it, that they never found a purpose to their lives before they actually got married. They didn’t have a good reason to marry so find no meaning in their marriage. I believe there are people who wonder why they married and where their marriage is headed to.
There are a lot of marriages with no purpose. In our part of the world where marriage looks like icing on the cake of life, people just marry to gain recognition. And it feels like once you get married, you are not allowed to say anything ‘nasty’ about it like the good old proverb, “don’t wash your dirty linen in public”. So they do not just stay in there quiet but try to prove beyond reasonable doubt that marriage is the best thing that ever happened to them. It’s not wrong to say it can get boring. I have a friend who admits to it that sometimes she loves her husband, sometimes she gets bored with him. That’s the truth I expect to hear. That’s the truth our single ladies and gentlemen need to hear. No one is perfect. No one is super exciting. No marriage is perfect. No marriage is super exciting. We all get bored with ourselves and with people. It’s our human nature. Stop making single people think the grass is greener at the married side of life. I believe in marriage. I believe it’s possible to have happy marriages. Let’s not allow boredom to kill wonderful relationships. Let’s learn to be interesting on our own. When we learn to be fun, we can make our relationships interesting and be more interesting with our partners. It’s not just about sex. It’s something more. Something I will find out when I get married.
Francis
18 May 2019Truth of life.