Why Marriage Should Not Be Considered a General Accomplishment

Marriage is beautiful, wonderful, it’s a journey with your best friend, your best human, it’s creating new lives with someone you love and as exciting as it sounds I strongly believe that marriage should not be considered as a general accomplishment but a personal one.

If marriage is part of your life plans and it works out for you in the end, good for you but if it doesn’t work out for the other person, do we then consider them as failures in life?

General life accomplishment should be success and happiness every other thing should be considered your personal accomplishment.

For those who would want to argue, do you consider a woman who has bagged her degree, even gone as far as getting her Ph.D., running her own company, but not married, or doesn’t on getting married a failure? Of course not, because she has been able to acquire all necessary things that ought to be considered an accomplishment.

Marriage is not a compulsory accomplishment it ought to be a personal choice.

I used a female example because believe it or not till date women are stigmatized in society for not being married.

In a popular series- Bridgerton, tries to portray how society considered women in the 1800s. They portrayed the culture of how women were being prepared right from childhood for marriage.

Everything they learned from childhood was to help build better wives and mothers in the nearest future. It was also planted in the minds of females that being unmarried means being unwanted, unattractive, and a failure.

It showed that then women were not taught to become successful or happy for themselves but for their spouse.

Now there is nothing wrong with teaching your kids to be a good wife and mother but do not let that be their priority growing up. Like I always say you are your priority.

You’d think that such a culture would have been completely eradicated in the 21st century but to burst your bubbles in hasn’t at least not completely.

In an interview with popular Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she stated that marriages are still planted in the minds of little girls if not why would girls at a pretty young age keep dreaming of her wedding day, what her dress would look like, etc but it isn’t the same for the male child.

This shows that in some way parents still train their girls into believing that marriage is the greatest accomplishment of all time, especially as a woman.

This is wrong!

If a man can attain his degree, money, satisfaction yet not married and he is considered an accomplished man why can’t a woman?

Reasons why this mentality should be deemed wrong

i. The fact that if at all this child grows and doesn’t end up getting married that child would feel like they haven’t achieved anything, they’ll feel they can never be loved or wanted, they would feel like a failure. And this in turn increases the number of depressed and suicidal humans in the world.

ii. This mentality creates submissive women who have no control of their life. Because of this mentality, girls rush into relationships at a pretty young age and try to do more than they ought to all in the name of keeping the relationship together. In this process, most girls lose themselves and become puppets for love.

iii. It also stigmatizes women who are not married, it creates an aura of stigmatization for such women. And so even if they’ve accomplished all things they never feel proud of themselves.

So instead of such a sad mentality, teach your children that you can find happiness and fulfillment in anything good they do and not just marriage.

Teach them that they are enough.

Their degree is enough.

Their job is enough.

Their happiness and satisfaction is the greatest accomplishment of all time.

To those who are married and treat those who aren’t like failures, the truth is, you can be married and yet be a failure. No school, no degree, no job, no independence, nothing to show you passed through the stages of life. You can also be married and unhappy, so do not make those who either by choice or condition are single feel like failures.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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