Marriage, hmmmm. There is a peculiar silence that descends on a wedding reception after the cake has been cut, the champagne flutes emptied, and the last guest has collected their take-home pack. The bride, still radiant in her gown, sits alone for the first time in twelve hours. The groom loosens his bow tie. Tomorrow, the clothes go to the dry cleaner, the gifts are catalogued, and something else begins, something the Instagram captions never quite capture.
This is not cynicism. This is reality.
We have become a nation obsessed with weddings, not marriages. We curate engagement shoots with military precision, memorise hashtags months in advance, and rehearse first dance routines until our feet ache. Yet for all this preparation for a single day, we remain startlingly unprepared for the ten thousand days that follow.
Marriage, let us be frank, is a pressure cooker. It is not because love fails, but because life insists. The roof leaks, the car breaks down, a parent falls ill, careers plateau, children arrive exhausted and demanding. These are not interruptions to marriage; they are the substance of it. And pressure does not reveal character, it reveals the absence of it.
What concerns those of us who observe these patterns, not as moralists but as realists, is the mounting evidence that many Nigerians are not entering marriage at all. They are fleeing into it.
We flee from the loneliness of our apartments, from the persistent inquiries of aunties at family gatherings, from the creeping sense that life is passing us by while we wait for “the right time.” We flee from the embarrassment of being single at thirty-three, from the group chats where everyone else has moved on to parenting advice while we still send memes. We flee from ourselves.
And here is the cruel irony: marriage, entered as an escape, becomes a cage. Because two people running from something cannot build anything lasting. They can only collide.
Let us speak plainly about the role of social media in this crisis of readiness.
The platforms we scroll through daily have not merely distorted our perception of marriage, they have fundamentally altered our motivation for pursuing it. The question has shifted from “Am I ready to build a life with another person?” to “Does this look the way it should?”
We have watched too many “soft life” reels featuring couples who appear to spend their weekends exclusively on private islands, their conflicts resolved in thirty seconds, their homes perpetually bathed in golden hour light. We have internalised these productions as benchmarks. And so we pursue the aesthetic of marriage, the ring, the engagement shoot, the “finally” post, without pursuing the competence it requires.
A wedding is an event you plan. A marriage is a capacity you build.
One requires a venue, a caterer, and an emcee. The other requires emotional regulation, financial literacy, conflict resolution skills, and the mundane, unglamorous discipline of choosing the same person every morning, even when they have left their wet towel on the bed for the seventh consecutive day.
There is a persistent myth that marriage transforms people. That the ring confers maturity, that the ceremony sanctifies readiness, that love alone will bridge the gaps that therapy, effort, and time could not close.
This is nonsense.
Marriage does not heal you. It reveals you. It does not complete you; it exposes where you remain incomplete. The anxious attachment style does not dissolve at the altar. The avoidance of difficult conversations does not miraculously resolve during the honeymoon. The financial irresponsibility that seemed tolerable during dating becomes untenable when joint accounts and shared liabilities enter the frame.
Too many Nigerians enter marriage expecting their partner to function as a rehabilitation centre. “Take me as I am,” we declare, mistaking accountability for judgment. But the truth is that marriage requires two whole people who are not seeking salvation in each other, but companionship. Partnership is not rescue. It is construction, and you cannot build a house with someone who is still surveying the land.
The Loneliness Paradox
Perhaps the most devastating reality of modern Nigerian marriage is this: you can be deeply, achingly lonely while legally bound to another human being.
We share beds, bank accounts, and children. We attend events together, post anniversary tributes, and present a united front to the world. And yet, for countless couples, the space between them has become an ocean.
The Gallup study referenced earlier is instructive here. When spouses were asked about household contributions, each consistently believed they were doing more than their partner recognised. This is not merely a measurement problem—it is a symptom of disconnection. When we cease to see our spouse’s labour, we have ceased to see our spouse.
The “who does more” debate is not just unproductive; it is evidence that something fundamental has broken. You cannot argue someone out of loneliness. You cannot spreadsheet your way back to intimacy. The question is not who loaded the dishwasher; it is whether either of you noticed the silence growing between you.
Readiness as Capacity
What, then, does readiness actually look like?
It is not age. I have met twenty-five-year-olds who possess more emotional intelligence and practical preparedness than forty-year-olds still waiting for their parents’ approval. It is not income level, though financial stability matters enormously. Rather, readiness is demonstrated capacity across several domains.
Financially, readiness means knowing what you spend, understanding your debt, and contributing to a shared life without resentment or martyrdom. Love is sweet, but the electricity bill is not negotiable, and nothing corrodes affection faster than chronic financial anxiety.
Emotionally, readiness means being able to tolerate discomfort without fleeing or freezing. It means hearing criticism without becoming defensive, expressing needs without manipulation, and sitting with your partner’s pain without immediately trying to fix it.
Practically, readiness means having lived independently long enough to know how to maintain a home, manage your time, and take care of your own physical health. It is alarming how many adults enter marriage without ever having prepared a meal or scheduled a doctor’s appointment.
The Question You Must Answer
Here, then, is the question that every unmarried person must answer, not for their relatives or their social media following, but for themselves:
What does settling down actually mean to you?
Not what you have been told it should mean. Not what your mother wants it to mean. Not what the engagement ring advertisements insist it means.
If settling down means marriage, what kind of marriage? What does a Tuesday look like? What happens when disappointment arrives, as it always does? Who are you, stripped of the wedding dress and the carefully worded announcement?
If settling down means partnership without legal recognition, what are the terms of that arrangement? Are you both equally committed to its permanence? Have you discussed the practical implications for healthcare, inheritance, and social recognition?
If settling down means stability, what is the source of that stability? Is it financial? Emotional? Spiritual? Can you name it specifically enough to know when you have achieved it?
Can you Wait?
There is immense social pressure in Nigeria to marry by a certain age, to follow the expected trajectory, to provide answers to questions you may not yet have resolved. This pressure leads otherwise sensible people to commit to partners they barely know, overlook behaviours that should be disqualifying, and silence their own doubts until those doubts become permanent residents.
We must normalise a different approach.
We must normalise the twenty-eight-year-old who says, “I am not ready, and I will not pretend otherwise.” We must normalise the thirty-five-year-old who ends an engagement because something fundamental is misaligned, even if the invitations have already been sent. We must normalise the forty-two-year-old who has never married and refuses to view this as failure.
Marriage is not a trophy you collect when you have completed life’s checklist. It is not the prize at the end of a race you did not choose to run. It is a specific commitment to a specific person, and it requires specific readiness that cannot be manufactured through ceremony or willpower.
The couples who succeed in marriage are not those who never doubted. They are not those who planned the most elaborate weddings or received the most extravagant rings. They are not those who married young or those who married late.
The couples who succeed are those who entered with their eyes open. Who knew themselves well enough to know what they could offer and what they still needed to develop. Who chose each other not because they were fleeing loneliness, but because they had built lives worth sharing.
The wedding industrial complex will continue to sell us dreams of perfection. The social media algorithms will continue to serve us content suggesting that everyone else has figured it out. The relatives will continue to ask when we are settling down.
But you know, in the quietest part of yourself, whether you are ready. Not whether you want to be married, most people, at some level, want partnership and companionship. But whether you are prepared for the reality of it.
Marriage is not the end of your story. It is the first page of a very long book, written in collaboration, edited in real time, and read by no one but the two of you.
Be certain you are ready to write.
