Like a microwave, marriages in recent times are giving buzzer sounds, ding, ding and ding! When the cooking is over, the buzzer will sound to alert the owner that the cooking is finished.
Ding! When you hear that sound from your microwave that means whatever you have in there is done. Usually this takes a minute or two and more depending on what you put in your microwave. This is exactly how some marriages these days are going – Ding! In a minute or two.
The concept of the microwave marriage is one where one rushes in unprepared. Some go as far as saying ‘Let me just marry, let it be said I married. I don’t care if it works or not’. So they go into a ‘sharp sharp’ marriage and within five minutes it’s over.
With the microwave, what you put in determines the time you choose for it. As it is with marriages as well – What both parties put in determines how long it lasts, how long it stands the test of time. So what are we putting these days? Because there’s a lot of dings going on.
Another name of it can be ‘shot gun’ marriage. In some ways our society encourages it. Parents rushing children especially girls to get married, even when they are not emotionally prepared. So they enter in and realize quite quickly that they are not ready and they opt out almost immediately. Also Social media seems to encourage it as well. If you look at the statistics of celebrity marriages in Nigeria now packing up under two years it will show that it is slowly becoming mainstream. It is not just celebrities though even regular people are having marriages pack up in under one-two years.
It’s one thing for marriages to fail at five, six and upwards years of marriage but to fail under two years, when a couple is still supposed to be in the honeymoon stage shows that something wasn’t done right. The lack of preparedness, and the nonchalant attitude towards the counseling offered by churches to intended couples all points to a badly built foundation.
Selfishness: Emotional preparedness is still key in this, an individual enters marriage and realizes she has to take care of another person or think of another person other than self. That it requires selflessness she or he is not yet ready to acquire.
How do you know a phenomenon called ” microwave marriage” has taken root in Nigeria? When you see church posters stating the problem and calling people in to come for prayers. A poster with the tag ‘Breaking the Yoke of Microwave Marriage’ was seen somewhere on the streets of Lagos. When churches start capitalizing on things like this, fear is struck into the minds of the people. This is not a spiritual problem, it is a people problem. It is quite obvious marriages are being enacted for the sake of just being married with no consideration to what happens after the wedding!
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The Next Edition interviewed a few people to get their thoughts and opinions on this new rave of the moment.
“Laziness is a big factor I feel. Some people think that marriage is the answer to their financial problems especially the ladies. They enter and find out that there are responsibilities and the money is no longer flowing like when you were dating. They realize they may have to step it up so they run out.” – Mrs. Unwa
“In my opinion, I feel people who marry celebrities especially ladies or even men are being quite hasty. You dated them before marriage; you knew and saw the lifestyle. Why is it when you married you now want to stop her or him? That’s why some of these celebrity marriages are packing up. You need to understand yourselves or else it will crash quickly.” – Mr. Emeka Francis.
“Sometimes some couples don’t go into the relationship because of love. They didn’t have set goals on their minds before they entered into the marriage. Lack of understanding is also a factor because if you understand yourselves you can go to any length to sustain your relationship.” – Mrs Laide
“Some people want marriage to be like the olden day marriages. The man wants to be the only one who has a say and it doesn’t work that way again. The man will now be too rigid and from there problems will start. Marriage has to be like a democracy not an autocracy.” – Mr. Adeyemi
“The problem is that we embrace a lot of western culture without embracing our African value system with regards to marriage. The African process we used to go through where before you marry the two families are well known to each other, is no longer prevalent. When you limit it to only two people that’s where our problem is starting from. They say love is blind so there would be things during courtship your mother would see and you wouldn’t. There is crisis so early into the marriage because of this. Sometimes you find the family is still shut out of the marriage itself as well.” – Mr. Jide Johnson
“This issue should be given a lot of consideration. In this ‘microwave marriage’ both people involved entered without seeing the need for commitment and the need to sacrifice. The parents of these new couple have the core responsibilities to let go of the couple once they are married and allow them to find themselves.. Another key point is most of these girls don’t know how to cook! All these indomie brought up generation kids are not ready for responsibilities. Such marriages are dead on arrival.” – Hajia Salami
People have to be told to think it through before rushing into marriage, sure we cannot cover all the scenarios to think through because sometimes the unexpected happens but think through the things we can control because love is never enough. It takes much more than love for a marriage to work, selflessness and a willingness to sacrifice as well as compromise.
As funny as the name microwave marriage sounds, it should be done away with. Don’t go in unless you are prepared to go in. There’s no need to have a ‘ding’ in a couple of years. If you go in, barring life threatening issues, you should be in for the long haul.