Bride and groom embracing outside a church on their wedding day. Photo credit: Jovelina Ferreira Silva/Pexels
Society has established a certain age by which women are expected to get married. As a woman, I have observed and experienced various situations that prompt me to write about this topic.
When a woman reaches her late twenties, the questions and confrontations begin: “You’re getting older. What are you waiting for? Do you have a partner?” By the time she turns 30 and beyond, these inquiries become more frequent, and people start to view her differently. As a woman approaches the end of her 30s, society often looks at her as if something must be wrong because she remains single.
But does age truly determine when someone should get married?
Age, as various experiences have revealed, is not what prepares one for marriage. You have to be psychologically, mentally and emotionally prepared because marriage is about two people coming together, each with different experiences and social ideologies. A person must first know they are ready and open to handling and living with someone else who has a different mental orientation, because that will inform how they communicate, listen, understand and respect each other. These are things that age alone cannot teach one.
People enter marriage carrying many scars and bruises from past relationships or childhood experiences—wounds they’ve not yet healed. These are issues they haven’t fully resolved or found clarity on within themselves, and things they haven’t forgiven themselves for. Yet, they bring these emotional scars into their marriage.
When they meet someone new, that partner has no connection to their past troubles, yet they often end up bearing the pain and burden of those unresolved conflicts. The person we marry inadvertently becomes the one who pays for the wrongs inflicted by those who hurt us before. This dynamic extends beyond just our partners, affecting the overall health of the relationship, like the children we bring into the world.
Everyone gives birth with the hope of raising them with love. We want to give them the kind of childhood we wished we had. We want to protect them from the things we went through. But because we have not healed ourselves, we end up raising them from a place of fear and hurt. We don’t want them to go through what we went through, so we become too protective. We become too controlling. We become emotionally unavailable. We become afraid of letting them experience certain things. And without even knowing it, we may end up giving them different scars from the ones we carried.
So, when we talk about marriage, we need to stop talking only about age. We have to assess experiences too.
We are very quick to ask a woman why she is still single, but we rarely ask what she has had to go through to get to where she is today. There is a saying that goes: a man doesn’t marry a woman simply because he is in love with her; a man gets married to a woman when he is ready to settle down with her.
A woman too doesn’t marry solely for love; she marries when she feels ready. While love is important, compatibility is often underestimated and mistakenly viewed as overrated. Being a good match with someone involves understanding, love, effective listening, communication, and mutual respect. Unfortunately, many of us enter relationships and marriages without these essential elements.
We often believe that if we love someone, everything else will fall into place. However, love doesn’t automatically teach us how to communicate effectively. It doesn’t provide the skills needed to resolve conflicts, respect boundaries, or heal the wounds we bring into the relationship.
I’m not a marriage expert, but as a woman, I believe that a peaceful, successful, and happy marriage requires at least one partner to be comfortable with themselves. It’s important to have self-awareness. You need to understand your emotions, as well as your mental and emotional state. This includes recognising what hurts you, what triggers you, and what burdens you carry. Additionally, you should be willing to work on these aspects of yourself.
It is someone who is mentally, psychologically, and emotionally secure and ready who can confidently say, “Yes, I am ready to build a life with this person.” Of course, being ready does not mean being perfect. Nobody is. But you should at least be aware of yourself, what you can tolerate or not, how to communicate, listen and respect another person. A girl in her 20s can possess these qualities, while an older, more mature woman may not necessarily have them.
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