Love Marriages and the Changing world
Perhaps I am going bananas! After all, subtle and extreme insanity is the trend. What can a sane man do? Sometimes, I find myself adjusting somehow to accommodate certain ideas about marriage that did not used to exist. Change is good but negative change is dangerous; yet we live in a topsy-turvy world where issues about love evolve like AI. I am a story writer and I love Love-Stories, but the love stories that exist in reel and real life always have a touch of vanity. Such love stories where a very rich CEO falls in love with his beautiful hour-glass-shaped secretary and then they make cute fresh babies and blah, blah, blah!
As a kid, I used to imagine happily-ever-stories. Even when a love story ended tragically, I would imagine a happy and romantic ending and savour the exhilarating feeling of being in love. Then seeing married couples in love gave me butterflies and filled my head with beautiful memories. I grew up from this habit though, not totally, as I need to reserve some part for my writing and marriage but I still dread the response I would give my children when they finally come of age and ask, “Do love marriages still exist?”
Aside crushes unaccounted for, I first fell in love (or so I thought) when I was in 300 level at the University and believe me, no one could have convinced me otherwise that love was not a beautiful thing. Our relationship did not end in marriage but if we had married, it would have been a love marriage because I would have been committed to him. I chose not to marry him because there were limits I could not cross even in love and being in love alone is not always enough. Consequently, if I am choosing my best definition of a love marriage, it would be “a conscious decision of a man and woman to think of each other romantically, be committed to each other, respect each other and accept each other's shortcomings”.
Did love marriages exist in the past? Of course, they did. Do they still exist now? Maybe not. Or perhaps they do. Let's weigh the odds together and then we shall make our conclusions. Reports based on research show that love marriages are harder to come by these days than they used to be. The possible reasons for this paradigm shift are glaring in our faces even when we fail to admit them.Technology and innovations brought along with them, sledge hammers that keep hitting hard on marriages. New marriages are more at stake but the older ones are not spared either and this is because certain societal factors are contributing to the authenticity of marriages. Marriages make families and the family is the unit of the society at large. So if there are no love marriages, then the problem must have started from a dent in the family setting. What then are the factors affecting this unit of life?
Cameras! Oh, how we love the cameras. Camera Craze is the new Black. My father did not propose to my mother in one of the choicest restaurants using one of the amazing lenses of iPhone 13 pro max but their marriage is still thriving. The cameras have become more important in many families than the feelings shared. Check the rate at which fascinating and bodacious proposals on the internet dovetail divorce rates. Of course, there isn't anything wrong with having paparazzi if you have the cash to spend but when the focus is on the beautiful picture you'd get rather than the beautiful life shared, there's a problem. Attention should also be given to living that life you show on the camera.
Internet use among other factors is an issue that needs to be addressed. The younger generation should be monitored mostly as wrong ideas about love and marriages are easily picked from the internet and this can have a lasting effect on their opinions and choices of relationships. In a bid to “Pepper the Singles”, amass likes or perhaps, a lack of mental strength, very intimate matters of a marriage are laid bare on the internet forgetting that the internet never forgives. Some content creators virtually live on the internet with their families and as trending as their content might be, one little mistake can throw the family apart. Some inciting comments made by followers who happen to discover their dirty little secrets are enough to make couples drift apart even more. Celebrities and social influencers should be wary of this. Emeka Ike, a popular Nigerian actor, and his wife's altercation on the internet recently had personal family secrets flying out in the air. Dirty linens were publicly washed and hung to dry for every prying eyes to see. Everyone is entitled to how he or she chooses to live but how do you pick back words that are carelessly uttered on the internet or erase actions that have been automatically documented?
Sadly, gender equality and women rights adoption has resulted in higher rates of divorce and sham marriages. While the feminism in me screams out loud when bringing up this topic, we cannot ignore the fact that the adoption of this new lifestyle has been bastardised by some women resulting in lack of perseverance or the will power to make the marriage work. Truly, progressive ideas about feminism have saved a lot of women from toxic marriages but we must not ignore the fact that it has also made many women imagine marriage as a Fairytale, where a Perfect Prince Charming comes to sweep a woman off her feet and give her a life of “happily ever after”. Little is said about the thorn attached to the rose in the gospel of feminism hence sham marriages prevail.
How about the quest for freedom and sexual orientations? Have you ever wondered how chaotic it would be if everyone is given the freedom they desire? Let's talk about LGBTQ+ and their sexual orientations. Everyone wants to be free, express themselves without restraint and have strange sexual orientations detached from religion, culture and society which are the basic roots of marriages. The marriage institution itself is threatened by unconventional sexual practices stemming from the ideology of freedom. Now marriage has been redefined to accommodate the LGBTQ+ and all the hullabaloo that comes with having to integrate them into the system and little consideration is given to its harmful effects on true love marriages. Did anyone ever notice that people in this category find it hard to stay long with one partner even when they finally practice what they have longed for? You can call it gender dysphoria or any other sweet name, but whether it is admitted or not, the quest for freedom to indulge strange sexual practices that has not always been the norm has put a lot of strain on marriages, leading to less love marriages and more unions for convenience. Love which has always been an emotional trait could never have been as confused as in this age as the words “Bisexual, spectrasexual and Queer”. I hope the queer doesn't begin to embrace Pedophilia, the height of this madness.
Do you still think Love marriages are in Vogue? I think that moral decadence and questionable definitions of morality have dimmed the one time burning light of love marriages. There used to be a universally accepted definition of morality but the term is now defined as it suits each person's interest. Values and principles are thrown under the carpet to accommodate affluence and fame as determinants of who defines what is wrong or right. Many of the Gen Z and Millennials are indoctrinated into the culture of the possession of wealth and fame as ultimate goals for staying happy and fulfilled. People aspiring to get married therefore look out for these attributes in their choices of a spouse. Would you still call such unions Love Marriages?
Lust marriages have outnumbered Love marriages. Luscious looking women and men are paraded on the internet as the ideal look for a man or woman which then becomes a global culture. Quite a large number of men have become vain and only look out for a perfect figure or “endowments” in a woman when making choices of a life partner. They want to eat their cake and still have it at hand. Magic!!! That's all they will see. Love marriages look beyond the outward and focus on “substance” but the lustful images of an ideal woman or man portrayed on the internet is not helping to make this an easy choice.
I'm still a fan of romantic love and I think I will always believe in it. Check out my stories and poems if you have doubts. It's just that I am of the school of thought that one can only make a marriage work if one is willing to put in the effort. I have seen quite a number of Love marriages and I believe they do exist but more with the older generation. The younger generation leaves one’s hope flickering like a wick yet we can still boast of a certain few who get the “awwns” for pushing through tough times in marriages. I'll recommend the interview of Jay Shetty with Mitchell Obama as proof that Love marriages do exist but they require a lot of hard work.
