African Pressurizers

Every unmarried West African woman of a certain age has experienced pressure from people. Pressure to date, marry, or get engaged to someone quickly. My third webisode addresses this pressure.

Ways People Can Annoy You:

1. They call you. Ask you questions like: How’s the brother? When will the wedding bells ring? They make you second guess yourself and feel little and incomplete and invisible. These people may have good intentions, but their delivery is inconvenient.

2. The numerous calls and pressure can make you lose focus on school or work or your goals. People will tell you, “No matter how much success you have, you must still end up under a man.”

3. This pressure leads to desperation. You become desperate to find someone and eventually, you could end up with the wrong person. You might end up settling for less than you deserve. You might end up with a messed up man who will lock you in the basement and feed you from a tube. Or even an abuser -- he will beat you like a drum!

For many Africans, a female is always seen as a child until she marries and starts "borning" kids. Only marriage can warrant “adulthood” status.

How To Deal With The Marriage Pressure

1. Block the caller’s number. Block them from every social media.

2. Become a statistician: “Oh, Aunty, 20% of my friends who got married in their early 20s are already getting a divorce! 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime. Women experience more than 4 million physical assaults and rapes because of their partners. Women ages 20 to 24 are at greatest risk of becoming victims of domestic violence. Every year, 1 in 3 women who is a victim of homicide is murdered by her current or former partner.”

3. Focus on yourself. Do things that make you happy. Live. Laugh. Love. Volunteer for a good cause. Don’t be idle lest you get sad. Throw yourself out there. Get busy. Find ways to develop yourself. Take cooking classes. Learn a new language if you’ve always wanted to. Enroll for graduate school classes. There are some interesting things you will learn about yourself if you will stop obsessing over finding a man.

Stay blessed!