It was a hello-just-checking-on-you-again call that led to this conversation with my Ex…on marriage.

He calls at the oddest time. Just when I am about to wash my daughter’s brassiere. “Why don’t you want to get married again?” he asked. But I never really said that. I said I have no interest in a Nigerian marriage. To be under a man is not something I aspire to. But our culture and ‘Nigerianism’ demand it. It makes women like me bad women.

I don’t want to cook everyday. I don’t even want to cook every other day. I don’t want an unfinished man who would need me as a helpmeets. I am already father and mother and best friend to two little girls. He would have to come almost complete. Or at least be a considerate human. Kind enough to know I have my own challenges, my own problems.

Once I was married into a home with no couch for two years. And it was not the couch that made me leave. I can stay without a couch. But I do not wish to stay with a man who needs my financial contribution to buy a couch! I am bored with all of that. Just buy it and leave me alone let me buy what I want to buy in our togetherness. Contributing pennies all in the name of Nigerian love and testimony appeals to me NOT.

I don’t want to worship his phallus or his manhood. The world does not rotate around his needs. I don’t want to feel like I should be doing one-or-two-things when he is home. I want to just sit back and watch Crime and Investigation Network. I don’t want to go to church on Sundays. I don’t want to keep up appearances. I don’t want to host friends and clean up after men and alcohol and misogyny. Just as I am sure he has no desire to clean up after me.

I want to sit on a dick and be told I am the boss. I do not EVER want to have any conversation on who is in charge. EVER! I was in a marriage where I was told “this is my house. This is my house. I am the man…” too many times.
And for a scruffy little RENTED apartment, it sounded more like a joke than dominance!

I am really an introvert. It is hard to believe, but I like being alone most of the time. I celebrate my aloneness. I am very calculated with the numbers around me. I can’t have too many people in my space. Nigerian marriages are carnivals. Not just the wedding. You have to keep an open home for any relative to saunter in with their fart. How does an outlier like me fit in then?

I don’t want to have more kids. A marriage contracted for reasons other than filling the earth with more children will appeal to me. But that’s a big joke in a society where 65 year old women spend their life savings and lose their minds to religion just to give birth to “miracle babies”.

Love is a yawn most of the time. People want comfort. How comfortable is it getting married to a single mum? The typical African already believes he will inherit her expenses. But I have been taking care of my children for 10 years…and I have never asked any man for help. A decade is just a wink away. My first daughter will be done with tertiary institution. I am king. And I don’t care what anyone thinks.

This marriage talk for me is like the icing on an already delicious cake. You can live without it. There’s just so much more to enjoy being alive. And experiencing the leaps, missteps and joys of building small businesses. Thanking God you can afford to play candy crush on your daughter’s laptop. And if it ever gets too deep…find a French man with a different culture and woman-friendly values…and say, “I do”.          

Kingin