Advice for men who are desperate for a wife

Marriage is one of those roadblocks most people will encounter in their lifetime. I call it a roadblock of all things because that's what it seems like when you come across it at that particular age society deems fitting for settling down.

When you get to that age, marriage the roadblock sits there in your path, staring you in the face and you have just two options. It is either you meet it head on or you meander your way around it.

The former option is more preferable; society likes those who welcome marriage, not those who escape it while still enjoying the blessings of marriage on the side. Unfortunately, the honour society awards married people can be the cause of untold desperation amongst those yet unmarried.

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For a long time, the narrative about desperation for marriage has been skewed. They say it is women who get desperate, and propelled by their biological ticking clocks, go running from one crusade to the other, praying for a husband. Some other day, when space and time permit me, I’ll attempt exposing those mischievous carvers of this skewed narrative.

The reality of the matter is this: no one is immune to the societal pressure to settle down. If you really, really desire to settle down, the desperation might catch up with you someday, and it doesn't matter if you're male or female.

For a long time mothers and fathers, queens and kings, pastors and teachers have taken it upon themselves to advice women on how to secure a good marriage. It is fine, actually, this plentitude of advice for women. But as a strong believer in balancing the scales, I'll take it upon myself to point out a few things to men who want to settle down with a fine wife and have kids, if the Heavens permit.

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How else will my son learn to be a good husband when all our energies are spent on creating virtuous women, virtuous wives, and virtuous mothers? So here are two things I’d like my son to know. Heaven forbid that he turn into such a desperate man when he hits his 30s and the ‘good’ girls aren’t flocking into his arms.

The first sign that a man is getting desperate is when he starts asking his female friends to ‘hook me up with some of your friends’. See, we aren’t in 1873; men do not need to go around asking others to ‘find them a girl’. Women – girlfriends, lovers and wives – aren’t snails you pick up in a damp, cosy bush.

They have a say; they have their tastes, and some men may just not make the cut as candidates, just as some women will not make the cut for other men. When a man asks his female friends to ‘find him a woman’, very few women will pluck out a friend who really means something to them and offer her to such a man.

All such men want is a woman; any woman at all. It is really like sending a friend to buy a pet from the pet store. “Here, just get me a beautiful, sweet, healthy puppy who wants an owner.” May my son not be such a man!

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A second sign of a desperate man is one who overlooks a woman’s lackadaisical affection, or lack of affection, for him with the statement that “everything will be fine once we marry”. Ha! No, everything will not be fine.

In fact, things may go downhill faster than you can say jack. When a woman tells a man that she can’t marry him because she doesn’t love him enough, the man who isn’t desperate will see the wisdom in that and moonwalk out of the place.

But the desperate man will have none of that; he may say something like “I can contain your drama. No one is fully sure about marriage. Love will grow when we marry.” Love will grow…

There is one thing Maya Angelou said when she featured in one of Tyler Perry’s movies. She said “love is anything but unsure”. Men who are not desperate know this; they know that when a woman says she isn’t sure about them, she means it. May my son, Baby Kofi, be a man who isn’t desperate. Amen

By Dede Williams