Hi everyone, happy weekend!!!
I love this topic on marriage especially when it comes to the marriageable range, it has been one of the big question I always ask whenever marriage is concerned. Marriage is one of the most important steps in someone’s life, I have always heard people say that marriage is not for boys and girls, but for mature men and women, this shows how much maturity is expected before anyone ties the knot but does this mean we should be very old before we get married because some people also say that "age is not maturity" so now what should we do?, is age the problem or the maturity?.
In some families, as long as both partners are adults and they truly love each other, nobody cares if the man is 20 years older but in some families or will I say culture, the elders disagree on wide age gaps with the mindset that such unions usually bring imbalance. Now let's check on the two sides of the coin, is age more important than maturity in marriage?
The age is merely the number of years that one has lived. The Nigerian law provides 18 years as the legal age of marriage, this is aimed at keeping children off early marriages. However, age does not inform us whether one is really prepared to cope with the demands of married life. Maturity does not reflect the number of years spent on earth but it reflects how someone can think logically, restrain feelings and make wise judgements. An adult person realizes that being married is not merely putting on a wedding dress, cohabiting or taking pictures on the internet. It concerns sacrifice, forgiveness and creating a future with another human being, in reality maturity is not always provided with age and there are some young people who are incredibly mature and there are also older people who behave like children.
There is often pressure on women to marry early, by the time a woman is in her late twenties or early thirties family members and neighbours begin to whisper. They ask questions like “when is your husband coming?” or “do you want to stay in your father’s house forever?”. However, men also face pressure especially when they start earning money, their people expect them to settle down but the truth is that rushing into marriage just because of age can lead to a disaster if maturity is missing.
Marriage is like a journey on a long road, age may determine when you are allowed to start the journey but maturity determines whether you will arrive safely. Maturity teaches patience when your partner annoys you, it teaches responsibility when bills must be paid and children must be raised. It encourages humility to say “I’m sorry” even when you are not wrong and strength to forgive even when you do not feel like it, without these qualities even couples who marry at the right age may not enjoy peace.
This is not to say that age does not matter at all, age is important because it often brings certain experiences. A person who marries too young may not have finished school or developed skills to support a family. They may still be struggling to understand themselves, talk less of understanding another person, that is why the law sets a minimum age to protect young people from taking on responsibilities they are not ready for but once a person is of legal age, the real issue becomes maturity.
The happiest couples are not those who married in a perfect age but those who showed maturity, some marry early and succeed because they are mature while some others marry late but still fail because they never grew emotionally so in weighing age against maturity, I believe maturity carries more weight. Age may open the door to marriage but maturity is the key that keeps it open.
Thank you so much for staying this far, hope you had a good read with me, see you again next time 🤗