QUESTION for Lovelife.ng: When can I say I am Eligible for Marriage?
When a woman is done
with school, we expect her to bring a man home. In our opinion, she’s eligible
for marriage.
As soon as you start earning money and find some level of comfort, we expect that marriage should be the next thing in your life… Because you are ‘eligible for marriage’.
Eligible? According to
the dictionary it is ’having the right to do or obtain something;
satisfying the appropriate conditions’. It gives us a second definition which
is ‘(of a person) desirable or suitable as a partner in marriage.
How do you define
‘suitable’ or ‘satisfying appropriate conditions’?
We live in a world
where a man with a good job, a house, and good looking is termed suitable. A
man who can give great sex and ‘shift womb’ is deemed to have satisfied
appropriate conditions.
The problem with this
assertion is that there are many men who meet the above conditions and got
married but have been terrible husbands.
A Yoruba adage
erroneously says ‘owo lafi nse oko obinrin’, interpreted as
‘money is what we use to ‘husband’ a woman’. No wonder we have made rich
boys becoming husbands and making a mess of the marriage union.
What about
the Woman?
It’s not so different from the same conditions we place on men. When a woman can cook, dress well and has come of age, she is deemed suitable and eligible for marriage. It is not surprising that we now have a sharp rise in broken marriages and broken women.
When you place the
burden of being a wife on a woman who is not suitable for the role, you are
simply sending her into a war she has no capacity to win. Don’t blame her
when she chickens out.
If all these (degree,
job, money, ability to cook etc) are what defines your eligibility status,
sadly, you have just been indoctrinated into the school of recurrent myth
designed to get young people married without care for their happiness and the
consequent negative impact their union will bring on the society.
Age has nothing to do with being ELIGIBLE for marriage
You can be old enough
to get married but that doesn’t make you eligible for it. Age qualifies you for
the wedding experience but it doesn’t qualify you for the marriage experience.
The reason why many marriages break up almost as soon as they start is that we
have one or two of the partners who are old enough for the wedding but not
eligible for a happy and lasting happy marriage.
It’s the reason why you
can meet a man today, fall in love at first sight, get wedded the next day but
have a stressful marriage. Anyone is free and should be free to get wedded,
enjoy the night and experience together but not anyone should take the vow of a
lifetime with kids gloves – if you don’t have the capacity to be happy and make
the other person happy every day for the rest of your life, you are not
eligible in any way for marriage.
Note that I said
‘capacity’? Let me explain why
Marriage is like an
organization
The institution of
marriage can be likened to a corporate organization with a vision and goal to
succeed and meet their targets. For them to achieve their objectives, they need
competent staffs that will do their job well enough to get the organization good
result.
When such an
organization hires incompetent staff, it will naturally experience a loss and
if nothing productive is done about it, will close shop.
When you hire
competent staff, your organization will make a profit and continue to thrive.
How this relates to
you
As a man, you are
hiring a woman for the role of a wife into your ‘marital institution or
organization’. As a woman, you are hiring a man for the role of a husband into
your marital organization’. The quality of your hire will determine the result
you get. When you are perpetually sad in marriage, check your own quality and
the quality of your hire.
When you hire the
right one, your marriage will be happy and long-lasting but when you hire the
wrong one, your marriage will suffer the consequences as well.
You are the HR (human
resource) personnel of your life; you should never hire a person who will run
your organization aground or at a loss.
Already married to an
ineligible spouse
Just like any
organization that hires incompetent staff, you really don’t have many choices.
You can take the staff through the process of learning and relearning till he
or she masters the rope, sack the staff or be patient and hoping that
maybe the staff will eventually get it. These are the same three options
you have if you are already married to an ineligible spouse or if you are
ineligible yourself.
Calling for the head
of your spouse
I have worked in
organizations where the boss keeps calling everyone incompetent and unhappy
about the productivity of the staff but when the same staff moves to other
places, they suddenly become competent and productive.
Sometimes, you are the
one who is ineligible and not your spouse. And sometimes, it’s both of you.
Before you point an accusing finger at him or her, be upfront about your own
level of eligibility as well.
Becoming Eligible for
a Happy and Lasting Marriage
I no longer have the
space to finish this here and even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to explain
them in details. This is why I wrote the book, The High-Value Partner (Love and
Relationship Secrets You’ve Never Heard Before) and why I am writing a new one
‘MR & MRS ELIGIBLE – The template for hiring a husband or wife
that guarantees happiness’
You need four
competencies to be able to eligible for a happy and long-lasting marriage:
- You need to master
yourself and emotions
A person who hasn’t
solved the issue of identity will struggle to accommodate another in his or her
life. Many relationships and marriages are failing today because one or both
partners have no self-awareness and no ability to put their emotions in check.
The day we have couples who have mastered themselves and their emotions we will
have couples who will be happy every day.
- Identify and break negative
patterns
What people are going
through in relationships and marriages are simply replicas of what one or both
their parents went through. They are repeating a cycle (pattern) they should
have broken free from.
We are a product or
our environment and will replay in our lives the negativity we are consuming if
we don’t identify and break them.
- You need to acquire and activate your personal assets
Once, a friend broke
up with another friend and when I ask why the response was ‘This person is not
bringing anything to the table of my life’. If you are to meet the man of your
dreams with all the qualities any woman or man can ask for, do you
have the qualities to make his or her life heaven on earth?
- You need to become unyielding teachable
When we start having
people who have gotten to the point where it doesn’t matter if their
suggestions or opinion is used as long as we arrive at the best result
together, we will start having happy and lasting marriages. To be teachable is
not learn, unlearn and relearn habits, skills, values, cultures, and
worldview.
I throw you a
challenge as I round off this piece, show me an unhappy or broken marriage and
I will show you how the lack of one or all of these four eligibility
criteria are responsible for their love-state.
P.S: The eligibility criteria is an intellectual property of Gabriel Olatunji-Legend as referenced in his books, courses, and products. It should be used with appropriate reference.
Authored by Gabriel Olatunji-Legend but first published on bellanaija