I have met the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. Both of us are trained teachers, but we teach in different academic levels. We met at the party of a mutual friend six years ago and we became friends from there. I have always known since the very first day I met her that I have finally found the woman I want to commit fully to. She was just different from all the women I have been with. She didn’t play hard to get. She isn’t the billing type. She believes in working for her own money and supports her boyfriend. There have been many times when she has stepped in to offer financial help when I needed it.
For the past two years, I have been trying to marry this girl, but there is always one issue or another. We are not from the same tribe and her family doesn’t seem to like the idea that their daughter is coming to marry from my tribe. That was the first problem we faced. She wasn’t passive in all of this. She kept persuading her parents to see the good in me and understand that I am far more than the tribe I come from. She made me visit her parents with gifts to impress them. Some of these gifts were bought by her. Gradually, I felt like they were opening up to accept me. They met with my parents and the whole processes begun. Now the problem is, the list they have given to me is outrageous. My girlfriend was even shocked. She told me her elder sister married last year and the list given to her husband wasn’t even up to a quarter of what I have been given. Her sister married from their tribe.
It will take me a long time to be able to buy all of these things even if my girlfriend helps me in buying it. She has told me she would help, but one of her cousins told me that her parents are doing all of this just to frustrate me so that I don’t marry their daughter. My girlfriend doesn’t know about what her cousin told me. Now I am developing cold feet. Let’s assume I am able to provide all that is stated in the long list or pay its equivalent amount. What is the guarantee that her people will not bring more things up to frustrate me? I know it’s not my girlfriend’s fault. She is evidently as unhappy about all that is happening as I am. My parents who were previously in favour of me marrying her have started mumbling here and there that there are a lot of women out there. Women whose families will not give me such a long and expensive list.
I feel like I am caught up in all of this. There is the woman I love and the fear of not wanting to hurt myself or hurt her by calling off my plans for marrying her. There is her family who are using subtle ways to destroy this union before its inception and then there is my parents who are wondering if all of this is even worth it. I need to see things from other points of view.
