Marriage: Moving Out of Reach for Sisters 
 

It has become apparent that getting married no longer comes easy. It used to be automatic, nearly. Girl is born, goes to school starts dating, albeit clandestinely from about 16 years old when men and boys start to take more than a passing interest. Then on completion of secondary school, there is usually one of those 201 suitors (they say that every woman has two hundred and one suitors before she marries the one additional to the two hundred) that would have become tagged as ‘the one’. The one would be nurtured along with girl by her mother, in readiness for the marriage that takes place at the earliest opportunity.   

Failing other obstacles like further education etc, the young lady would get married in her late teens to early twenties and that would be it, another family established for posterity. However this obstacle called education began to feature more and more in most young women’s lives and they began to delay marriage until after tertiary education. They were encouraged by their families and communities to do so because time spent in a tertiary institution would provide more opportunity to get slightly more than the original 201 suitors, expanding the horizon from the motley collection of lack lustre home boys. Hopefully the trophy that would be snagged as husband would be established or have potential enough to support the ‘educated’ wife and bring honour to her family. Mothers and aunties began to encourage their girls to get an education to better their chances of getting that alpha male. 

Perhaps because education awakened other desires in the young women or maybe because they saw what befell their predecessors who exclusively embraced home making as a career, young women started to want careers for themselves. The reason mostly given was that they would be able to support the husband but should the unthinkable happen, then they would be able to support themselves and their children. Gradually careers were put ahead of getting married because young women also found a satisfaction in a successful career for themselves and the independence it bought for them. 

Not surprisingly the art of courtship soon became relegated and is all but forgotten. 

It used to be that the father decided who the daughter would be given to in marriage and it was not unusual that a girl would be used to seal a friendship or given as reward for deeds done. Those were the good old days, when women understood and accepted their place. There was little need for the art of courtship that would culminate in marriage. Barring seriously debilitating ailments, no woman ended up on the shelf even if all she got was the village idiot. Someone had to ensure that the genetic line of the court jester was continued so the village would remain entertained. The very beautiful women naturally got the princes, the kings and the very brave hunters or warriors. It is all in the folk tales. 

What the folk tales do not tell us is that women who may have been short changed and done out of marrying the men they desired, ending up instead with the village idiot, must have vowed that the same fate would not befall their daughters. Young women were taught the wiles of attracting, snaring and holding on to the men they desired. They  learnt to help nature and the era of cosmetics was born as nubile beauties strutted their stuff  for the benefit of young men and randy old men that had passed their sell by date but still slavered after a piece of the action. Many of the old men successfully posed as alpha males and old wives no matter how beautiful in their prime did not stand a chance against the young girl who learnt well the art of wooing her preferred mate even if he was married to her mother’s friend. 

Knowing how to cook was no longer enough. It had to come accompanied with an overt promise of better things at the end of the meal. Men became over pampered and considered this their God given right. The reason women were created was for their pleasure.  No matter how schooled a woman she must continue to know her place, dutifully serve her husband and take on her role as his private courtesan. She would be kept in service only for as long as she could remain attractive and stir his loins. Maybe sometimes his intellect if there was no beer swigging pal immediately available to discuss politics with. After all, women are easy to replace with new improved models and they often are, with ignominy. 

Once again women fought back and taught their daughters to stand for themselves, to let their education count for something. What do you want from a man? Social protection and financial security? You can get that for yourself if you make good enough money.  

So young women picked up the gauntlet and focussed more on personal and career success. Yes the suitors came, but it became more difficult, it appears, to hold that one additional to the two hundred. Reliving the experiences of mothers and aunties, they may have thought it was not worth the try – all men are the same. No wonder he slips the noose, usually at the very last moment, moving on to another who may not be as nice, as decent or even as beautiful. Worse still, it could be one with less social and financial prospects. Men look at those things too but not many will admit it. 

It is now common place to find women in their 40s who have never been married. It is also not unusual to hear them give as reason that no one asked. Are men suddenly in short supply? What happened to the 201 multiplied by however many women who were out there? Surely mothers did not stop having sons.  

Many single women would tell you that they had their fair share of boyfriends, the relationships just never ended in marriage. Some would even explain how the boyfriends were snatched from them by other women.  A few have been known to say that they were so taken with careers that they never stopped to think about marriage, time and opportunity just slipped by.  The curious thing is that majority of these women who are no longer so young, by their own admission, would have liked to get married. They however don’t know what they should be doing differently if given another chance. They learnt to cook and to look beautiful. By trial and error they came to know well how to pleasure a man and when the number of suitors thinned out and they got desperate even adopted servile attitudes, using the holy books and successful marriages of old as justification for the subjugation of the self. On top of that many provided financial support to potential suitors who turned out to be failed investments.  

The numbers of women who would like to get married but can not seem to make the match keep swelling. Biological clocks continue to tick, in spite of new fashions and healthier habits that have brought about lasting beauty and youth. Women still meet men, men still take more than a passing interest, but these relationships are not ending in marriage. Even when both parties want marriage, the man seems to want it with someone else. In many cases they relish every thing on offer and then move on. So it is easy to see that there must be something missing, a vital ingredient that helps other women make that transition into marriage.  

It is evident that women are still getting married. Young and old, some continue to get more than their fair share of suitors even in the arid sea of opportunists posing as suitors. These women get married and continue to hold on to the hearts of other men who keep embers of desire burning for them and refuse to commit to the rest of us even as second choices. They must be doing something right but our married sisters are not telling and the men in our lives are saying even less. 

That elusive something is obviously not about how well you can cook - many women given half a chance would cook up a storm and a bit. It must not also be what can be learnt from the pages of the karma sutra since the sex is out there for all takers and men and women, to the chagrin of puritans, are getting plenty with or without marriage. 

Over the years women have saturated all ears with information on what they want from the man, the criteria for the ideal husband, and on and on.  The new man has agreed to be moulded. He has become more sensitive and accommodating to the needs of women, he has expressed emotion that would be taboo to his ancestor the great warrior. He has even been known to shed a tear or two in the course of true love but he has remained ominously silent about his own needs that go beyond good food and a good lay, about that quality that will make him take the plunge into the uncharted and arguably dangerous sea of marriage.  

Robot  Villager

# 1 Marriage: Moving Out of Reach for Sisters It h...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 12.09.2006 23:06

what?

# 2 They must be doing something right but our married sisters are not telling and the men in our lives are saying even less. The truth is that other women will not tell you the secret you will then turn around to snatch their men. Instead they will counsel you to give your reasonable boyfriend hell in the name of "equal rights"(while treating their so-so husband like a prince), or tell you to be patient with the "big boy" that is married with girlfriends all over town. It's a jungle out there. Posted by what?| 13.09.2006 04:38

Rose  Villager

# 3 A good number of women are also making a conscious decision to "give up" for whatever reasons and simply plan their lives to suit themselves. STEVEN IVORY: Women Without Men March 21, 2006 Occasionally I run into Margot at Farmer's Market right where we first met a year ago--at this bench, on which she usually waits for a taxi and where I take in the sights and sounds of the Market. I enjoy Margot's company. She's hip in a classic way--curious, open, cosmopolitan and quietly dynamic. Doesn't seem easily seduced by what goes on around her. And, she's an impeccable dresser. When I told her she doesn't look seventy-eight, Margot, a professor of early American literature, admonished me: "Of course, I do. This is what seventy-eight looks like." Our conversation--the weather, politics, the arts--comes easy. Not wanting her to be discomforted by the queries of a stranger, I don't ask much. But one day the subject of men somehow came up, and I asked Margot if she had one. "I gave that up thirty-five years ago," she replied, with the detached nonchalance of someone recalling when they stopped smoking or swore off sweets. Literally? "Literally. I was married for almost thirty years to a man I loved dearly and gave three children. We divorced while in our forties. He remarried and I raised the kids. For me, that was the end of men." What she'd just said, I told Margot, has long fascinated me. I've always wondered how a woman can break up with a man and never again allow themselves another relationship. Generations of women in my family have done this. Mama, after she and Daddy divorced, did this. So did one of her sisters, as did their mother, after leaving my grandfather. It's as if one relationship can finally take such utter and incontestable toll on a woman's heart that she declares herself done with it. All of it. Forever. Margot shook her head. Marriage left her hopelessly disillusioned. "I felt like I had failed," she said, taking what seemed like a nervous glance at her watch. "All our lives women are told our purpose is to find our 'soulmate.' You find a man and guess what? He's not the one. Or maybe you're not HIS one. After my divorce, I dated a little bit, but men, no offense, are crazy. I just said, 'Oh, shoot, I don't want to do this anymore.' Sometimes, you have to understand, it is more...DIGNIFIED to give up. "Now," she said with absolutely no trace of irony, "I leave my soul to Otis Redding." According to Margot, the choice of many older divorcees and widows to go it alone is bound by the archaic notion that she dutifully fill her life with tending to her kids. Or developing a career. However, Margot is saddened that the age of women who are "giving up," is, in her opinion, getting younger. "I'm meeting women on campus in their forties, even thirties, who are planning their lives around the idea they may not find a suitable partner after all. They're saying, 'It's okay,' but they don't mean it. Privately, we are all very disappointed with the revelation that a decent man is so hard to find." I wanted to say to Margot, Now wait just a minute, but I didn't. After all, I did ask. And I appreciated the insight. Besides, her taxi had arrived. "There is an upside to being alone," she said, gathering her plastic bags of produce and baked goods. "When you marry, there's this sense of being done with self exploration and discovery. It's like you cross some finish line. Why? You shouldn't stop growing just because you're married. But this is what can happen." Raising up from the bench, Margot conceded that she would have enjoyed her journey with the right man. However, being single, she insisted, thrust her into a rich life she could never imagine experiencing with her husband: travel; her professorship; deep relationships with her children and with a family of friends entirely of her own choosing. What about sex, I wondered. To myself. "And," she winked, sliding into the taxi's back seat, "I get to have conversations on benches with people like yourself." That, I couldn't argue with. Posted by Rose| 13.09.2006 08:03

Naija for life  Villager

# 4 Look no further for the culprit of this problem than the over consumption of feminist nonsense and the always reliable self hatred so endemic among blacks. Marriage, in spite of the upheavals in inter gender social relations, enjoys robust patronage among Whites, Hispanics, Asians and Arabs. The only race where marriage is encountering a bulwark of single motherhood and confirmed batchelorhood, is the, you guessed it, Black race. A race slow to concord but always steadfast to discord. A race that never saw any retrograde, disfunctional phenomenon it didn't like. When you are confronted by a race of people embodying a disturbing representation of men who measure their manhood in terms of the multiplicity of their sexual conquests, and not their facility for achievements, or their capacity to provide for their women and children, what consequences, other than the disastrous kinds, can ensue from such a nihilistic orientation? We have been content to ecstatically discard our cultural values for the inimical aspects of foreign cultures, while rejecting the progressive components of these cultures, like accountability, R&D and selflessness, for instance. Whenever one evokes the virtues of our country's conservative past, or makes any statement prescribing a reversion to our conservative past, one is often chastised as myopic, paternalistic and backward. So what characterization can one assign to the increased tendency towards license, as exemplified by the rampant prostitution, covert and overt, and the upsurge in unwed motherhood? Progress? We've got to recapture the progressive aspects of our culture, otherwise tick tock will steadily tick the countdown clock to our doomsday. Posted by Naija for life| 13.09.2006 08:14

Exxcuzme  Villager

# 5 As former President Clinton would campaign back in the day, "It is the economy, stupid!" Marriage is also moving out of reach of brothers as well. In Naija it takes 7 or more years to finish a Bachelor degree. Even, this is not enough nowadays that most male and female go for Master degrees. Even, this is not enough to find employment in Naija. Most men and women are under-employed or unemployed no matter what you read. Especially for most men, if you were not gainfully employed to sustain a marriage, a man would not marry. Can you tell me if those successful sisters you talk about would like to marry any of these unemployed brothers out there? If so, I have a cousin with HND degree, about 44 now, decent but is under-employed or unemployed the last time I check this year. Give me a holla and we can hook em up! NO JOKING. Posted by Exxcuzme| 13.09.2006 08:59

Rose  Villager

# 6 =Naija for life;130054>Look no further for the culprit of this problem than the over consumption of feminist nonsense and the always reliable self hatred so endemic among blacks. Marriage, in spite of the upheavals in inter gender social relations, enjoys robust patronage among Whites, Hispanics, Asians and Arabs. The only race where marriage is encountering a bulwark of single motherhood and confirmed batchelorhood, is the, you guessed it, Black race. A race slow to concord but always steadfast to discord. A race that never saw any retrograde, disfunctional phenomenon it didn't like. When you are confronted by a race of people embodying a disturbing representation of men who measure their manhood in terms of the multiplicity of their sexual conquests, and not their facility for achievements, or their capacity to provide for their women and children, what consequences, other than the disastrous kinds, can ensue from such a nihilistic orientation? We have been content to ecstatically discard our cultural values for the inimical aspects of foreign cultures, while rejecting the progressive components of these cultures, like accountability, R&D and selflessness, for instance. Whenever one evokes the virtues of our country's conservative past, or makes any statement prescribing a reversion to our conservative past, one is often chastised as myopic, paternalistic and backward. So what characterization can one assign to the increased tendency towards license, as exemplified by the rampant prostitution, covert and overt, and the upsurge in unwed motherhood? Progress? We've got to recapture the progressive aspects of our culture, otherwise tick tock will steadily tick the countdown clock to our doomsday. I don't think it has anything to do with self-hatred but the inability of men and women to compromise. Japan's population is plunging because of these very same issues. Here's an excerpt I found quite interesting. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-02/10/101r-021000-idx.html Japan's New Material Girls 'Parasite Singles' Put Off Marriage for Good Life By Kathryn Tolbert Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, February 10, 2000; Page A01 TOKYO—Miki Takasu is 26 years old, beautiful, drives a BMW and carries a $2,800 Chanel handbag--when she isn't using her Gucci, Prada or Vuitton purses. She vacations in Switzerland, Thailand, Los Angeles, New York and Hawaii. Happily unmarried, living with her parents while working as a bank teller, she is what people here call a "parasite single." There are so many women like Miki that they have become the focus of a heated controversy. Depending on whom you ask, they are good for the economy because they spend their salaries on clothes, cars and dining out, or they are destroying society by refusing to get married and have children. They are young women with no responsibilities, or they are trailblazers, trying to find a path different from their mothers'. Posted by Rose| 13.09.2006 10:10

Rose  Villager

# 7 http://www.thepowerofthepurse.com/blog/atom.xml FW: The rise of the single women isn't an American phenomenon. It's a global sensation. Can you give some examples of countries where solo women are breaking the rules of their societies? AL: Japan is a big one. They have a higher percentage of single women between 20 and 40 than the U.K. or the U.S. A commonly used term for single women in that country is "wagamama," which actually means "selfish." But these women embrace their independence and self-focus, and are slowly re-defining wagamama to mean more empowering "choosy." Citigroup, a brand that has been at the forefront of marketing to women in the U.S., is also really tapping into the single women's market in Japan. If the ways of the U.S. still lead other westernized cultures, my guess would be that single women greatly affect consumer trends in cities from Stockholm to Paris to Santiago. I will definitely be doing more research on this. FW: Do you believe single women recognize their power? AL: Younger single women may recognize their power and use it, because many of them were raised by working or more independent moms, who were themselves transitioning from the ways they learned from their own traditional mothers. So, younger women could easily see the "newer" ways of women and men – and not be stuck in old "rules." However, older Baby Boom and mature/senior solo women grew up in such different times that their habits of behavior more likely stem from living in a more patriarchal society. As I've talked with solo women who are 40+, however, I have really seen evidence of a gaining momentum toward greater independence in life, work, travel and beyond. FW: What is the biggest myth about single women? Two I can think of are that these women "hate" men that we can't get someone to marry us...maybe, just maybe, we like being single! AL: You are right – that seems to still be the biggest myth. In general, unmarried women today are in no way sitting at home alone, thinking "woe is me." The opposite seems to be true. On the whole, the solo women I'm talking with now, and those interviewed for recently published books like The New Single Woman, by E. Kay Trimberger, QuirkyAlone by Sasha Cagen, as well as the one I mentioned earlier, What Women Really Want, expressed contentedness, if not full-on happiness, in their largely thriving lives of rewarding work and experiences. Friendships or relationships with men are in and around these women's lives in all the usual ways, definitely, but there is less and less of a drive to partner up. Even women who are in long-term relationships of some sort, are choosing to maintain separate households, for instance, in order to keep their cherished independence. Women are staying single by choice, and choice is not a negative or anti-male thing. The tide has simply changed, and while men may still thrive when they are married, studies have shown (again, as reported in What Women Really Want) that "women tend to be happier and more successful and live longer when they're single." Posted by Rose| 13.09.2006 10:45

Meticulous  Villager

# 8 Whenever I read stuff like this, or hear people talk about marriage being "out of reach", etc. I always wonder where they live? Or what they are talking about? From my experience, there are too many guys hitting on women left right and center, begging women to marry them, and being a nuisance and we women have to constantly drive men away! So what's wrong in your neck of the woods, Mutti?...?? Anyway...I know quite a few well to do guys looking to get hooked up. So pass the word around to those women who keep saying marriage is "out of reach"! :) Posted by Meticulous| 13.09.2006 10:57

DoubleWahala  Villager

# 9 Mutti, this is a classic. You weave your words into such a beautiful tapestry to behold. I think we have to look deep within ourselves to determine the cause(s). There are no easy answers here. However, I would venture to suggest that the menfolk are still trying to come to terms with the new 'hyper-modern' woman, and all her accoutrements. The womenfolk, on the other hand, may be caught up in the heady rush that comes with economic emancipation soley based on their personal decisions and within their control, and therefore may not neccessarily view or treat men with the 'servile' mentality that came easy to their mothers and grandmothers. With time, men and women will embrace the inevitable changes. Or not. DoubleWahala Posted by DoubleWahala| 13.09.2006 10:58

Namio

# 10 Good men are hard to find among Blacks for reasons already started so stop fooling yourselves. Those who are claiming there are many hitting on them are the same one crying home at night because they can not find that unreachable one they want and refuse to settle for the reachable ones. If you are satisfied with the one you want, how did you notice those in the market - married but not dead? As for Japannese women, their culture mixed with economic success may have something to do. Is that true of Black women in America? Or some Black women in very few cases? In those cases they complain that most Black men are either married, gay or in jail so they become White men kept "whatever". Black women need to rediscover themselves and subject themselves to the same standard White women do, not the one they preach. In spite of the fact that White men kill them more than any other men, they stay put. Oh for their children? Posted by Namio| 13.09.2006 11:53

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