Loneliness, Singleness, Happiness And Marriage (Part 1).

Loneliness, singleness, happiness, marriage- these four words in one has been the downfall of many. Downfall in the sense that when they were single, they saw themselves as lonely and so sought after marriage every way they could; now married, they realize that marriage in itself is never the cure to loneliness.

I once mentioned in one of my posts on this blog that as a teenager, I’d always thought marriage would make you happy because of the stories I’d read about love and how the men keep doing things to make their women happy. Thank God I came across a book written by Funmi Akingbade and I read it before I had the chance of locking myself in a marriage I shouldn’t have been because I thought it would give me happiness.

What if I never came across that book, or any other book that would have given me a similar insight? I’m very sure I would have been married by now and seriously regretting it, because I would have gotten married for all the wrong reasons.

We mistake marriage solely for happiness because often times, we are blinded by the acts that leads to it. We are blinded by the people we see buy gifts for their women, take their women to the movies, massage their head and shoulders and the likes. All these and many more are not bad in themselves. They are a part of the ingredients marriage is made up of, but unfortunately not all marriage is all about. We often are not exposed to the other sides of marriage such as the responsibilities it brings and the maturity it requires, as a result, we go into it unprepared. All we see are the fairy tale aspects of marriage that makes us believe the ‘and they lived happily ever after’ farce.  Owing to the things we see, we long for marriage based on these facts which actually are true, but not all there is about marriage. We set a standard based on peripheral things, and not real/actual things. As a result, when a guy comes and makes us feel in the mushy-giddy way we have imagined, we jump into his arms without a second thought thinking that is all there would be to marriage until reality begins to set in.  

We begin to see that sometimes we are left alone as well, and marriage does not necessarily mean company every time. Then we go back to our single state- being lonely. Things takes a worse turn when we discover that the man travels a lot, or that he comes back home late and we are often the only one left at home till he comes. It becomes more apparent when we realize that there are no more flat mates to go to to hear the gist of the day, or probably school mates to go to school together once it is morning. As a matter of fact, we are now completely on our own; possibly more than ever.

So if loneliness happens to both single and married, what do we do to avoid/deal with it? And what do we do to attract happiness in contrast to our thought that marriage automatically equates happiness?

 ....To be continued....