|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By Mercy Kachenge
Nairobi, Kenya: When you come across this opinion piece, please don’t judge my general perspective on married life. Millennials, please take it as general knowledge that one can hold contradicting ideas or logic about it. To me, marriage sucks, and I’m sorry for saying so. In the long run, women have lost their identity in society.
Of course, you all know from the Kenya’s 8-4-4 system we were taught in primary and high school that women were not allowed to make decisions about their own lives, especially about marriage. Everything depended on what the elders decided. Yes, arranged marriages were common, and they worked. Who would allow their daughter to marry any man who wasn’t from a reputable family?
Girls raised in that patriarchal society came to feel that marriage was something they could decide for themselves. Contemporary society has changed a lot. Women have woken up to being humiliated and tortured by men who don’t understand what it means to have a wife who values respect, and when a woman demands it, she is considered weird.
I believe respect is earned. As a Gen Zer, I think that if we continue like this, we will not get married because of the character men portray nowadays. Maybe we will end up with an arranged marriage in the village, and of course it will definitely work.
The current generation, especially Gen Z, is afraid of marriage. Right from childhood, the education system we went through has shaped us so that being single, unmarried, or without kids is no longer a problem. Being unsuccessful is what we fear most. Previous generations had a set script: go to school, enrol at a big university, get a job, get married, and that’s all.
I believe life is meant to be felt, not just lived. Today that norm has changed. Gen Z is outsmarting outdated cultural practices that no longer serve us. We have become bold and call out what is wrong and what is right, and the grudge with millennials has really grown, since they don’t like what Gen Z likes to do.
But get this right: I’m not against marriage. I’m against women losing their identity and being expected to tolerate disrespect and give up their freedom in the name of marriage. I believe a man deserves respect from a woman, and that a wife should be submissive to her husband.
By submission, I mean mutual respect, not obedience. A wife can honour her husband and still speak her mind. Speaking out about what she is uncomfortable with doesn’t make her the weaker gender. What sucks most is when a man sees a woman who is aware of herself and speaks out.
Speaking from personal experience, travelling and freedom make me happier than being with a man in the name of a relationship, or even a situationship. Travelling keeps me going because I want to feel free more than I want to be loved. In my 20s, I believe I shouldn’t wait for someone to do things for me when I still have the capacity to do them myself.
I remember a friend telling me,this idea of being married and living with your husband sounds awful to me. What do you do on a day you wake up next to a person and don’t feel like speaking to them? How do you even explain that you woke up fine but just don’t feel like talking?” I laughed.
But I believe people should have their own space. I would prefer a day-scholar marriage instead of living together under one roof. I know marriage was blessed by God in the Garden of Eden. Still, my fear is that marriage restricts you in certain ways.
Imagine your ancestral home, as a woman, and having to seek permission to visit your parents. That feels disgusting to me. This is the place where I was born and raised, and I have to seek consent to visit it? How?
I also remember a male friend asking why I was against marriage. I gave him a sideways glance and told him I’m not against it. It’s just that society has been unfair to women for so long, and now that women have opened their eyes and minds and are willing to be independent, modern men call that “standards.”
Of course, society will judge me if I marry in my early 20s, saying I’m still young, and it will judge me again if I marry in my late 30s. It will judge me for having a child at an early age and judge me again for having one later. So at this point, just do what makes you happy. The same society judges a woman for being a single mother but doesn’t judge a man for being a single dad. It has normalised certain behaviours by stereotyping gender.
Back to Gen Z and marriage. A millennial once told me that the coming generations will have a high rate of divorce. It’s true, and my honest opinion is that it’s because people today are walking away from abusive marriages and relationships to start afresh. In the past, our parents would console their married daughters by saying, “Don’t leave the marriage, he’s your husband.” My point is, he is abusing you and the marriage is toxic.
I personally believe there is always a better place, a better opportunity, a better form of love to start again. We are not against marriage as Gen Z. We just don’t want to suffer or be abused in the name of it. We want freedom, not a sense of entitlement.
A friend from campus once asked why I behave like a feminist. I dismissed the question and told him I’m not a feminist, but I have seen women deprived of their freedom and rights. Of course, if I get married, I know where boundaries come in, but that doesn’t mean you should feel entitled to control me like a TV remote. I told him I like travelling because it lets me see the world from a perspective other than that of someone’s wife. What about her freedom? Must you question it? Today women have careers and jobs, and many are practising independence. And of course, you all know a man’s money can come with a lot of disrespect, just to make you feel it isn’t yours.
Young people, especially women, are questioning everything that has been happening in marriage. Society will always have an opinion, but it is only an opinion. I will do what makes me happy.
