Once upon a time, a man needed a job, a room, a mattress and a reasonable supply of confidence to find a wife. He did not need to own a duplex in Lekki or drive a car that could announce his arrival three streets away. He simply approached a woman and toast her into submission. Men are bad like that when they want a woman. So, if he declared his intentions, and if her father liked the cut of his trousers and her mother seriousness of his ambition, wedding bells began to warm up.
Today? A man can have a degree, a decent job, good manners, a functioning third leg and genuine intentions, yet remain unmarried at 38. He has searched churches, attended weddings, joined dating apps and even allowed his mother to recommend her friend’s daughter. Nothing. The wife simply refused to materialise.
Where have all the marriageable women gone?
Or is it that the men can no longer afford the women they want?
Let’s start with the economy. The average young Nigerian man is fighting several wars simultaneously. His salary is on oxygen. His landlord is sharpening his cutlass. Fuel prices are eating his breakfast, lunch and dinner. His bank account develops malaria around the 20th of every month. How does a man who cannot comfortably feed himself promise to feed a wife and three children? Girls are no longer wearing rose-tinted glasses. They can see through the guys’ borrowed steeze.
Love may be blind, but hunger has excellent eyesight.
To worsen an already bad situation , some young women have developed expensive expectations that bear no relationship to economic reality. A man earning N250,000 monthly is expected to provide the lifestyle of a man earning N2.5 million. She wants romantic holidays, surprise gifts, expensive dinners and birthday celebrations that require a bank loan. She wants soft life, but her prospective husband is still struggling with hard life.
And then there are the girls chasing the moon while standing on borrowed okrika slippers.
They want a tall, handsome, wealthy, romantic, God-fearing man who owns property, drives luxury cars, has six-pack abs and possesses the patience of Job. He must be generous but not foolish, successful but always available, masculine but completely obedient. Preferably, he should have no mother, no sisters and no financial obligations beyond Her Royal Highness.
My sister, are you looking for a husband or ordering a customised Range Rover?
But before the men begin clapping, let us examine another uncomfortable development.
Women are moving. Men, are you keeping up?
Young women are building businesses, acquiring degrees, buying property and becoming CEOs before their 25th birthdays. They are courageous, ambitious and increasingly financially independent. Some are doing significantly better than the men in their age brackets.
This is good news. Very good news.
But it has complicated the marriage market.
The woman who pays her own rent, buys her own car and funds her holidays may no longer consider a man’s wallet sufficient qualification for marriage. She wants emotional maturity, intellectual companionship, respect and partnership.
Unfortunately, some men still believe that being male automatically qualifies them to lead a woman whose business employs 30 people while they are still struggling to organise their own lives.
Brother, leadership is not a birthright conferred by your trousers.
Successful women too have their own homework to do. Financial independence should not become emotional arrogance. A husband is not an employee to be summoned, queried and dismissed. Marriage is not a board meeting where the highest shareholder must always have the final word.
Now, let us discuss the elephant wearing Brazilian hair in the sitting room.
The soft-life industry.
Social media has convinced too many young women that honest work is punishment and luxury is a fundamental human right. Why build a career when one generous married man can pay the rent? Why wait for a hardworking young suitor when somebody’s husband can deliver an iPhone, designer handbag and weekend in Dubai?
The side-chick economy has created an alternative market where some young women receive the financial benefits of relationships without the responsibilities of marriage.
And when a 55-year-old married businessman is financing a 24-year-old woman’s lifestyle, what chance does a 28-year-old teacher with honest intentions stand?
But men created much of this market too. Married men funding extravagant lifestyles cannot turn around and complain that young women have become materialistic. You cannot fertilise a weed and complain that it has invaded your garden.
There is also deception on both sides. Women who manufacture personalities to secure proposals. Men who pretend to be wealthy, single or emotionally available. People who court with borrowed money, borrowed morals and borrowed identities.
Everybody is packaging. Nobody is reading the ingredients.
Still, I refuse to believe that good wives have disappeared. Or that good husbands have gone extinct.
Perhaps our real problem is that we have confused marriage with acquisition. Men are shopping for beauty, submission and affordability. Women are shopping for wealth, status and security. Too few are looking for friendship, character, resilience and shared values.
A wife is not a luxury accessory. A husband is not an ATM with a wedding ring.
And marriage is certainly not a poverty-alleviation programme.
Dear single men, perhaps the women you seek are not missing. Perhaps you are looking in the wrong places, using yesterday’s qualifications in today’s world. Build yourself, improve your earning capacity, develop emotional intelligence and learn to respect a woman’s success.
Dear single women, ambition is beautiful, but so is realism. The hardworking young man building something meaningful may be a better lifetime investment than the married millionaire renting your affection.
The marriageable women have not vanished. Neither have the marriageable men.
But somewhere between economic hardship, inflated expectations, transactional romance and the obsession with soft life, we have made finding genuine love unnecessarily difficult.
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And that, my people, is why the wedding gowns are waiting, the bachelors are ageing, the mothers are praying and the dating market is beginning to resemble a supermarket where everybody wants imported goods but nobody has enough money at the checkout counter.
Perhaps it is time we stopped asking where all the good wives have gone.
And started asking what happened to all the people genuinely prepared to be good spouses.
Funke Egbemode ([email protected])
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