[Passion] I Can’t Marry a Popular Girl

I Can’t Marry a Popular Girl! 

By John Ogunjimi 

You see, marriage is a serious matter. No matter how hard some try to trivialize the subject, or understate the concept, marriage will always be a serious matter. 

Making a choice of marriage partner then becomes something that must be fundamentally gotten right if the marriage will make any sense. 

How does a person decide who to marry? Is it right to have preferences? Height? Complexion? Discipline? Age? Temperament? Does having any of these preferences automatically translate to having an idol in the heart? I think not. 

There’s a test of compatibility. It is conducted by those intending to marry. And, it can be done independently or together. The result of this test has a vital role to play in the marriage. 

I remember a conversation I had with some friends some months back. We were talking about relationships and one of them told us why she broke up with a guy. 

“He called to often.” That was her reason. The simple, honest truth. I believe her. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t fancy that kind of stuff. 

But, for every lady who breaks up with a guy for ‘calling too often’, there will probably be a hundred but one who will break up with someone because he wasn’t calling as often as he should. 

Personality differences. Everyone is entitled to their feelings. 

Let’s assume you meet someone you believe God wants you to marry him, but you discover that he wants some things that aren’t natural to you. He tells you he doesn’t like popular girls, yet he knows you’re sanguine plus, plus. He’s not saying it because he feels threatened by your success or fame. He is saying that because he is shy. 

If your relationship will work out, he says, you have to become sober, stop making many new friends every time, reduce some of the friends you have by ignoring them, stop talking too much, stop this, stop that, stop all… Then, he paints a picture of what he wants his ideal future wife to look life, and expects you to, like wax, melt into the mould and, well, become his clone. 

You feel so much in love right now that you can go any length to please your prince. You ask yourself, if I let this charming prince go, will I ever get someone else to marry? 

Or, in your own case, it’s your lady. She tells you she likes a man with broad chest, six packs, pillar-framed muscles, and hairy legs. Or, her parents want their in-law to be like this, walk like that, fellowship here, work there. You are so blinded by love and you don’t want to lose this girl the way you lost the last one. 

You want me to advise you? Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should tell you a story instead. It’s a story I read in a book I came across as a young child. Many months ago, I began to feel nostalgic about the book, Aesop’s Fables, that I had to look for it. I found it and soon found this instructive fable in it: The Lion in Love. 

“A Lion once fell in love with a beautiful maiden and proposed marriage to her parents. The old people did not know what to say. They did not like to give their daughter to the Lion, yet they did not wish to enrage the King of Beasts. 

At last the father said: ‘We feel highly honoured by your Majesty’s proposal, but you see our daughter is a tender young thing, and we fear that in the vehemence of your affection you might possibly do her some injury. Might I venture to suggest that your Majesty should have your claws removed, and your teeth extracted, then we would gladly consider your proposal again.’ 

The Lion was so much in love that he had his claws trimmed and his big teeth taken out. But when he came again to the parents of the young girl they simply laughed in his face, and bade him do his worst.” 

Before you ‘un-lion’ yourself and lose everything that makes you you because you claim to be in love with someone, think of what will happen if it doesn’t work out as planned. 

And think this through: “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” – Thomas Merton