Marrying the right person under the wrong conditions can give you the wrong marriage still.
I am 25 years old, dating a 33-year-old man. He is very serious about marriage, and he seriously wants a child from me yet he has not visited my parents for an introduction. What do I do?
Con games are always rushed to deny you the space to think clearly. Whenever you find yourself using words like "very serious" and "urgently", be very careful. Whether in the real estate market or in the love market, you should never transact in a rush. Whenever someone comes at you with speed and pressure, step back. Calm down and think soberly.
I saw one matatu sticker saying, "If you were in a hurry, you should have travelled yesterday", and I think there's a point there. If he needed a child that fast, he could have gotten it last year, after marrying the previous year, after searching for a wife the year before that, and so on. You should not allow people's poor planning to become your emergency. You are on schedule with your life, and they should let you date at your pace.
The man is not "very serious" about marriage; he is just throwing that in to blind you because he has learned that you want marriage too. What he really wants is to reduce you to a place where you're dependent on him, and he can do with you as he pleases. It is a narcissistic trap. If he really wanted marriage, he would focus on the process of marrying you. Why would someone find you, having kept yourself together and preserved yourself for marriage, and then want to make you a single mother?
If you wanted a child, how many sperm donors have you come across? Another reason to always date celibately. If you compromise sexually, predating partners will always push you further, to weaken you for their own benefit. Perhaps they feel jealous that other people may want you, so they want to "tie you" to them through the child, or they just want to make you less desirable to other men.
Also, children are a marriage gift, not the reason for it. And they're not guaranteed. You can marry and fail to get a child, or take a long time to conceive. The main reason for marriage is companionship. Date people who want you for you. If they are putting a condition before commitment, it might be because of something about their history or their unique position in life. Perhaps they're an only child. Or they want to manage their parents' resistance by unveiling their bride when there's already a child.
All said and done, this is putting the cart before the horse. This person is asking for an irreversible commitment before they give a binding covenant. This is veiled selfishness and conmanship. They want to reduce your options and make you stick with them. Everyone knows that the majority of men generally avoid a woman once she has another man's child. And African traditions tend to consider you as the wife of the man you had a child with. Whether that man keeps his promise or not, you'll have lost massive ground and bargaining power.
Also, did you know that marrying the right person under the wrong conditions can still give you the wrong marriage? He may be the right man for you. But a marriage is a system with many moving parts, and it needs many agreements and consensus before you get in. These agreements can only be done when nobody has invested yet. Even in the natural market, the only time you can negotiate is before you sell. Some of these negotiations and agreements touch on potential marriage breakers, like in-laws. How will you manage them financially, and how much of their physical presence in your home will you allow?
Another clause is about money. How will duties and responsibilities be handled? The only safe position for a woman, especially when she's getting into childbearing, is for a man to take full responsibility for providing for the family, with the woman being completely freed to focus on the physically demanding journey of pregnancy and postpartum recovery. The woman will definitely contribute when she's earning, but she cannot be allocated a permanent quota, or the pressure to work will overstretch her when combined with the demands of motherhood.
Also, a baby is not just a bundle of joy but also a bundle of bills. Let the man with whom you get a child accompany you through the journey and receive the child in his hands once it's delivered. Let him deal with the hospital bills and the logistics of getting you home. Getting these things aligned before marriage is not selfish but self-care for you as a woman.
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Benjamin Zulu is a life coach and counselling psychologist.
