Or a woman says she married this man because he was taking care of her family financially, paying her school fees, and “one day he bought me a car after he lost his temper and punched me”.
I always call them out; I mean, people meticulously prepare for boardroom interviews and ace them, but later prove to be terrible, hapless employees. What makes you think they won’t prep for a domesticity/bedroom interview if marriage is what they really want from you?
By the way, we almost always have these conversations because the union in question ended in tears. It turned out, people were not as crazy about cooking, sex and cleaning as they claimed; they were not that generous and responsible after all, or even that into you, after all.
The problem? Dating couples thinking they are married; courting couples not talking about or even preparing for marriage; married couples thinking they are dating.
One puzzled man I recently talked to about this asked me in a genuinely shocked way, what then he should do during dating, if not watch her scrub his pots after having hot sex with her. Eye-roll emoji. That, my friends, is how many people ended up with spouses they cannot even hold a decent conversation with.
Well, try having fun! I told him. In fact, the reason why born-again Christians discourage dating and advise couples to go straight to courtship, is because dating is the adventurous, explorative part of the relationship. And in adventures, things are fun, but someone could get hurt.
You do crazy things together, hang out with friends, lose your virginity if you roll like that… but at the end of the day, there are no promises that it will end in marriage.
It is a relatively new concept, because back in the day when families brokered marriages between their children and chastity was a given, dating just never happened, because it allows for cars to be test-driven without being bought.
That is why some people go into marriages all cried out and broken, because they put so many hopes and effort into everyone they dated. They scrubbed, they cooked, they gave their best sex, they invested heavily all in the hopes it would progress to courtship and more, but alas!
True, sometimes dating can progress to courtship, but more often than not, people meet someone they truly want to marry even while dating you. It does not necessarily make them the devil. Dating is an experimental stage. In the West, you even have to decide together whether you are dating exclusively or you are allowed to see other people.
Yet there you are, paying her siblings’ school fees, scrubbing his pots and tiles, and still calling it dating. LoL. What you really want is courtship. This is seeing each other with full intentions of marriage. Whatever you do in courtship is supposed to be fun and romantic, but also steering both of you closer to tying the knot.
Some call cohabiting their way of courtship; mmmm… well, each to their own…
But courtship allows you to discuss sex, finances, children, dreams, keeping house, spirituality, etc, all while seeing the world together, meeting each other’s families and friends, getting counselling and advice and comparing your views on everything as you go along.
Again, depending on how you roll and what your beliefs are, courtship for some includes sex, for others, it is intentional celibacy till marriage. And then comes the marriage, and the real deal starts.
Marriages that handled the dating and/or courtship stages well will have no hang-ups or stakeholders behaving like they skipped a stage.
You will still have fun together, lots of romance and sex, but also comfortably accommodate the inevitable hard work that comes with making a marriage work, as opposed to behaving like a ‘married bachelor’ or a ‘married slay queen’.
Depending on how you handled the dating and courtship part, your marriage will be on a swiiiii (in minister Matia Kasaija’s voice), or a constant case of woowee! woowee! (in Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago’s voice).
carol@observer.ug
