It is a recurring question and I am asking again today because a tragic story that trended last week grieved my heart. The story was that of a female staff of Niger Delta Development Commission allegedly stabbed to death by her boyfriend for refusing to give him N1m, and also make him the next of kin to her bank account. I said “allegedly” because he is innocent
before the law until proven guilty. But for the purpose of this column, we are taking the story on the face value. Ordinarily, I would not have dwelt on this story today because cases of lovers killing/harming their partners are now fairly regular, although it will never be normal.
But another piece of news in the story caught my attention: they have a 13-year-old daughter. This means they have been lovers, even if off and on, for at least 14 years. Fourteen years and they were still not married. Were they still courting? The purpose of courtship is to find out the suitability of your partner as a husband/wife. You certainly do not need 14 years to do that. Or let us even assume they never intended getting married, they just wanted to be lovers. What was she doing hanging around somebody with such murderous tendencies all these years? The signs would have been there, even if latent.
What was she doing with a man who does not seem to have a desire to be financially independent? He has probably been borrowing money from her. Also, asking her to make him next of kin means that the death would have occurred sooner or later; the plot was always there. He wanted to be the main beneficiary of her estate; how did he know she was going to die before him?
By the way, in this part of the world, most people make spouses their next of kin, not boyfriend/girlfriend. So if he wanted to be next of kin, he should have formalized the union, which already produced a child, before now. Only they know why they never became husband and wife, why they stayed together this long, but the relationship looked like one that was very short on trust.
I feel so sad because this death is avoidable. It is because of such situations I say that anybody in love is a fool and needs help from people who genuinely care for him/her. It is for the same reason I advocate that courtship should be a family affair, even though only two people are directly involved. People in relationships should be allowed to make their mistakes and learn to the extent that these mistakes do not turn out to be fatal. Once there are signs that the relationship is becoming deadly, family must step in before it is too late. We have had 10s of these deaths in the last few years, some of them within matrimony. There is no love in these relationships and they should not have been in the first place, or continued to be. You do not deliberately harm, hurt and kill the one you love.
This brings us back to the importance of courtship. Courtship is not synonymous with sex, as many youngsters believe; it is this focus on the flesh rather than character and core values that is making many people make mistakes about the choice of spouses. Courtship is meant to help you make up your mind about your partner. The problems in many troubled marriages today predate the marriages. They are products of incompatible core values and defective courtships: No shared core values, no soul searching, no seeking of God’s face, just wham-gbam, marriage.
It is of no use, for instance, going into marriage with somebody who does not mean the world to you or to whom you do not mean the world. Celebrating your spouse does not mean she/he is without faults; it simply means cutting through the layers of faults to have good reasons to celebrate her/him. Of course, celebration is built on substance; you do not celebrate nothingness. But beyond substance, perception is very strong and important. We have all heard of the cup is being half full or half empty. They literally mean the same thing, but are miles apart connotatively.
But even people with the most positive attitude to marriage still need spouses who fall within their latitude of acceptance to celebrate. Which takes us to the importance of courtship again; that is when you separate the grains from the shaft. You look at the good, bad and ugly of a potential spouse. Can you celebrate his/her good? Can you tolerate and manage his/her bad and ugly for the rest of your life? Until you answer these questions, you cannot answer the bigger question of whether or not you are ready to spend the rest of your life with your partner. And until you answer the bigger question, you have no business going into marriage.
The crux of the matter is how long should you court before you answer this question? Unfortunately, unlike pure sciences, but like many social phenomena, there is no one answer. But personally, I feel that if you go about your courtship with the right focus, you can answer that question in a maximum of two years. If a few doubts still linger, maybe you give yourself another year to clear them.
But I honestly do not believe you need to court for 5, 10, 15, or 20 years before you make up your mind to marry your partner. What is that for? Are you studying to get a doctorate in courtship or do you want to become a professor of courtship? If after four years of courtship, fundamental (small doubts always linger with some people) doubts still remain about going ahead with marriage, you are probably not meant for each other. Of course there are exceptional cases, but generally, this is the situation.
Now, let us make a little clarification. There are people who court for maybe a year and agree to get married, but delay the marriage for some years due to other reasons. These are not the people I am talking about here. The crucial point is how many years should you court before you MAKE UP YOUR MIND TO GET MARRIED? But to those who delay getting married after making up your mind, why the delay? Are you waiting for the devil to cause confusion? Why go into courtship in the first place if you are not yet ready for marriage?
Finally, for those who want to solve all the mysteries of matrimony before going into it, you are wasting your time. Bodybuilders build their muscles by engaging in physical exercise in addition to the knowledge they have. Knowledge alone does not build muscles. Take the giant leap into marriage once you answer the crucial question; can I spend the rest of my life with this guy/girl?
By Francis Ewherido
Culled from Vanguard
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