By Olubokun Otame
Sir: There is a quiet enigma surrounding the human creation we call marriage—an ancient architecture whose foundations lie somewhere between memory and myth. At times, I sit with the thought and wonder: Who first imagined this binding? What longing or fear shaped its earliest form? For all its ceremony, it remains a puzzle of expectations, a delicate web spun from threads we inherit long before we understand them.
Unlike other creatures of the earth who love without witnesses and part without judgment, humans seem tethered to the need for validation. We gather crowds, sign documents, invoke the heavens, and call it a wedding. Yet beneath the vows and veils lies a softer question: Why must love be certified before it is believed?
Marriage often feels like a grand choreography—subtle, persuasive, and deeply rooted in the psyche. It promises stability, maturity, and belonging. It whispers that only the married are complete. But these whispers are echoes of centuries, not truths of the soul.
Society cloaks marriage in sacredness, pointing to scripture and tradition as though they were unchanging stars. “This is how our ancestors lived,” they say, as if the past must forever dictate the present. But sacredness imposed becomes a weight, not a blessing.
In a place like Ozoro, where I grew up and other places in Delta State, I have watched how the narrative bends unevenly. When a woman brings home a suitor, the first question is, “Where does he work?”
A simple inquiry that becomes the doorway to a lifetime of financial expectation. When a man brings home a woman, the question shifts to, “Does she have good character?” And so the journey begins—one partner measured by provision, the other by virtue.
The man becomes the bearer of resources; the woman becomes the keeper of grace. Yet as the road stretches on, life rearranges the script. Expectations evolve. Equality becomes a negotiation. The man, striving to uphold his role, stretches himself thin. The woman, observing the world through curated screens and whispered comparisons, begins to measure reality against illusions.
And somewhere in this quiet storm—between the bills, the roles, the silent competitions, and the unspoken disappointments— some of us with sane minds return to that sacred moment before the “alter” of blessings. Some of us remember the warmth of that Saturday, the vows spoken with hope, and we know with certainty:
What we promised was never “Till debts do us part.”
Olubokun Otame wrote from the United Kingdom.
In this article