Some day I’ll marry, but it won’t be any time soon

OU ARE getting old now. You must start looking for a wife. Your mom has to be a grandmother, she is not getting any younger and neither are you.”

The speech goes even further: “All you young people of today care about is your careers and your ambitions. There is more to life than building your careers, buying fast and expensive cars, travelling and having fun.”

If you are in your 20s, you come from a black family and you haven’t heard the speech or something similar, please let’s swop families. Clearly, there is something your family is getting right.

I believe that marriage is not an achievement but a blessing from God.

It is not something one has to chase after, male or female. I personally do not get persuaded by elders easily. But when this conversation was brought up again over the past weekend, I escalated their frustrations a bit.

I brought to their attention the disheartening reality that most, if not all of the people I know who got married in the past 10 years, are either divorced, planning to separate or living miserably ever after.

I started telling them about how those people’s lives have turned upside down, how they are having extramarital affairs and how unhappy they look.

I do agree with the elders to some extent. As millennials, we have found so much comfort in our careers, our ambitions and goals. We can manage the disappointments that come with those. But getting married to someone in this world today is too much of a risk. The world today is very mercurial. Interests change, people change. We think love or being in love is cynical. This kind of cynicism is perpetuated by the high level of infidelity we read about in newspapers.

Perhaps if we lived in years past where elders would find suitable partners for their children, we would have a different approach. But that is too old school for a generation that is exposed to so much freedom.

That does not work in a world where a few WhatsApp messages get me a date. A few reactions and likes on Facebook send signals of interest. We are so inundated with easy ways to get “love”. It is really no surprise that we have less interest in tying the knot or even the will to make our marriages work.

Chivalry is a thing of yesterday. The art of persuasion is a thing of the past. It really is easy come easy go.

There are a lot of elements that make it impossible for me to start thinking of getting married in the near future. Black TAX is our biggest enemy. It would not be wise for me to get married and ignore my responsibilities to my siblings. One is in matric this year so life is about to change for me. I need to financially contribute whatever little I can towards his varsity fees. The fees, like data, are not falling any time soon.

Committing to marriage and covering Black TAX won’t work for me at the moment. And marriage takes one away from his family or his family duties.

As blacks, especially those who come from poor families like me, we have a responsibility to ensure that our little siblings and cousins get a better education to help uproot the poverty we grew up in. That cannot work alongside the additional responsibility of building, and providing for, a young family.

So, the next time elders ask you the question about marriage, please tell them that there is really more to life than getting married too quickly.

I believe that my 20s are a stage of self-discovery, a phase to grow financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually and otherwise. This I would like to do without a significant other, and if the one worth marrying without being pushed comes my way, I would make her Mrs Chabalala – at the right time.

Until then, elders, please take it easy on us. @KabeloJay or kabelo03chabalala@ gmail.com