Many people make mistakes when choosing life partners. There are some couples who have no business living together and having children just because they felt it was the correct thing to do.
Some men are still tied to their mothers’ apron strings that they don’t know what it means to leave and cleave. They still insist that their mothers run their homes and relegate their wives to the background.
There are women who just got married not because they are matured enough to withstand the pressures of being in a relationship but because they felt menopause was approaching and they need to have children.
Whatever the inappropriate reasons you chose when you decided to get married, making mistakes when choosing a spouse has wrecked many lives and destroyed promising futures.
Sometimes, when you are single, you may become frustrated. You may start feeling like that the couples around you have figured out the secret of happy marriages. You might look at people who are happily married with envy and wonder how people in unhappy marriages ended up there.
Choosing a life partner is a complicated task. It can determine your perpetual state of happiness or unhappiness for many years. If you end up with a bad spouse, you will live in misery.
It is sad that as important as it is to choose a good spouse, people are still making mistakes consciously and subconsciously while making one of the biggest decisions of their life.
One of the mistakes people make while choosing life partners is not knowing what they want from a relationship. It can be hard to know what exactly you seek from a relationship when you haven’t been in many serious relationships and lack the experience to understand what you truly want from the relationship.
As a single person, it is really tough to know what your relationship needs are. So it’s easy for you to choose a life partner when you think you want one thing but in actuality, you want something else and this can cause problems for both of you in the future.
Another mistake is believing too much in romance and romance stories. Society teaches people to put too much faith in romance. Ladies want to be swept off their feet like the characters they read about in different novels. And if things don’t happen the way they expect them to after watching romance movies and reading romance novels, they believe they are with the wrong guy.
Let me burst your bubble, real life love stories will contradict what you believe about love and romance. You don’t have to throw away a good guy because he doesn’t talk and behave like the characters you read about in your romance novels.
Guys, you don’t have to condemn yourselves to a lifetime of misery by going for women society tells you are the best kinds of women. You don’t have to dump that lady who can make your life and future peaceful for one who knows how to please society but is inconsiderate, fake and pretentious.
This society compels you to choose a partner from the small pool of people around you. You are expected to choose your spouse from your church or mosque, from your tribe or from your circle of friends.
But following society’s rigid dating rule-book will do nothing but rob you the chances of meeting someone outside your social circle who may be a great match for you.
Society prioritizes settling down instead of being with the right person. You are pressured to get married before you are too old not when you find the right person. It is more acceptable to be married and unhappy about the time you are 30 than remaining single and happy.
This society would rather force you to marry the wrong person before a certain age than marry the right one later. For some people, the need to be accepted by society often outweighs the need to find the right life partner.
Another mistake people make while choosing a life partner is racing against the biological clock. For women, it’s particularly cruel if they want to have biological children with their husbands. It sets a time frame for them to select a life partner, usually before they turn 40.
What these ladies refuse to understand is that it is already stressful enough finding a life partner without having to worry about risky pregnancies and menopause, the added pressure pushes them to rush. However, you might be happier adopting children with the right partner than having biological ones with the wrong one.
Another mistake people make while choosing life partners is not completely sorting out their past. It is not right to get married and still be thinking about hooking up with your ex. If you loved your ex so much, why didn’t you marry him or her?
You shouldn’t get married and still be imagining your life with your ex or asking how to forget your ex on different social media platforms. This is what you get when you keep jumping from one relationship to other without completely sorting out the past. Marriage is a big decision and should be made only when you are completely sure about your feelings.
Another mistake some people make when choosing life partners is assuming that marriage will change a person. If you think that marriage is some magic wand that will change your partner, abandon that idea. Don’t mess up your life.
As a matter of fact, marriage significantly amplifies the negative traits in a person. If you hate smoking, and he or she’s a smoker, there’s a good possibility that they would resume that behavior, even if they had quit it for the sake of wedding.
If the man you are planning to marry slaps and disrespects you without blinking, marriage won’t change him. He will beat you until you see your ancestors when you eventually marry him. The ring won’t change him, don’t be fooled.
If your partner has some issues you absolutely hate, think twice before marrying that person. Don’t entangle yourself in an uncomfortable union. Change has to come from within a person. They have to decide to change and work towards it for the change to be possible.
At the same time, assuming that the person you will get married to will remain the same person in 10 years time a big mistake. Circumstances change, people change. Life affects people in different ways.
If you are going to get married, get married knowing that the person will grow, will change, and that’s not going to stop you from loving him or her or trying to force them to remain the same person you met. Having this at the back of your mind will help you when choosing a life partner.
Choosing a spouse for the wrong reasons will cause you to make mistakes. Are you marrying the person because he or she looks good, or he or she’s wealthy etc? Are you choosing that lady because she sweeps your whole compound and washes the clothes of your family members without considering other positive traits you need from her to have a good marriage?
That marriage is doomed to fail even before it began.
Ignoring the importance of chemistry is another mistake people make when choosing life partners. Sometimes, when things are going really bad, it’s the only thing that keeps the relationship alive.
It’s not just sex, it’s being able to laugh together spontaneously, and the feeling you get when you look into their eyes and somehow all the problems melt away and you are with the person you fell in love with. You just know when you have that chemistry with a person.
Usually, when you find the right person, the decision is easy. You know it is right deep within you. And most importantly, there’s no drama. You feel like you finally have found your home when you meet the right person.
Re: why your abusive ex should remain in your past
Kate, whoever refuses to heed your admonition about a toxic or abusive ex will as a rule, inevitably live a life full of regrets! However, exes who separated due to minor misunderstandings can restore successful relationships either through self-efforts or interventions of close relations, friends etc. Kudos for the useful enlightenment! -Chioma Papa
When you advised people to run away from abusive exes, then what do will you tell people about true love in relationships? This is because genuine love forgives, forgets and covers all multitudes of mistakes and wrongs. True love carries quality of patience, longsuffering and endurance. You can turn the negative lifestyles of your ex to positives via prayers! –Godwin Bassey
Dear Kate, I have to thank you for doing a good job. One of the very good things about most of the topics you write on is that they are forever relevant. Please keep it up. Your column amongst a few others makes me buy The Sun newspaper every Saturday. Thanks for inspiring me and many others. –Gloria, Lagos
Which part of the country do you come from? You are uncultured. I don’t blame those that laboured so hard with their hard earned resources to train you in the university only for you to come out and be abusing men and inciting women against their men. I blame the organization that employed you and allowed you to be using your column unprofessionally. -Israel Onah, Calabar
Kate, I am so happy you were created. Your column serves as an eye opener for Nigerian women. They suffer all in the name of wanting to protect their marriages. It is only in this our country that we can’t pour out our minds and we die in silence. Thank you so much for all you do through your column weekly. I am 21 but I have seen what my mother and other women are passing through in their marriages and I don’t want that for myself. -Queen Ijoyi, Makurdi
Kate, don’t you get tired of painting men black every week? Are you so heartless that you don’t see the good Nigerian men do? Don’t you have men in your life? Did you fall from the sky? I don’t know why you have refused to use your column to teach women to be more submissive and stop being proud when they start paying bills at home. -Obiora Okenwa, Onitsha