By Francis Ewherido

In this column, we have featured a bride who abandoned her new husband during their wedding reception. I have also read stories of brides or grooms who went ahead to make their marital vows while their gut feelings and that little inner voice was telling them that they made a wrong choice.

The truth is, very few people go to the altar or make marital vows with 100 per cent conviction. There are always niggling doubts and anxieties. But can you call off your wedding even at the altar if you have fundamental reasons to believe that you are with the wrong person or the marriage will not work?

Most times people preparing for marriage do not have the guts to do so. Some worry about what people will say, as if these people they are worrying about really care. Even if they care, are they the ones who are going to live your life for you?

Some worry about all the money that has been spent and the preparations made. How can you worry about ephemeral things at the expense of your happiness? Some, especially women, worry about getting another person if they part ways with the bird in hand, which “is worth more than a thousand in the bush.” Do not worry; pray, one of those thousands in the bush might just be the right one for you.

Some, especially women, also worry about letting go of an obviously wrong choice because “age is not on my side. Even if you feel age is not on your side, how can you go ahead and marry somebody who has nothing but disdain for your family members, somebody who has no iota of respect for you, somebody who abuses you physically and otherwise, not once, twice, but regularly? For me, one abuse is bad enough. I have said it here before.

I will not allow my daughter to go ahead and marry anybody who slapped her even once. And if she insists and decides to go ahead; she will do it without my fatherly blessing and support. But if the abuses continue after marriage and she comes back to her senses and comes back to me, I will welcome her like the father of the Prodigal Son did. I will also rejoice like he did because many fathers whose daughters went into abusive marriages did not get their daughters back alive.

I have also seen people, especially women, go into marriage when the danger signs were all over. But they went ahead all the same with a wishful thinking of changing their spouses after marriage. I have said it here before and I am saying it again.

In marriage, only one person changes and you are that person. You have no mandate to change your spouse. That mandate belongs to your spouse; he/she decides to change for the better and it happens most times when he/she gets the right vibes. Accept your spouse the way he/she is before marriage or leave him/her alone. Trying to change your spouse after marriage amounts to shifting the goalpost after the football match has started.

An acquaintance once tried to shift the goalpost after the match has started. He got married to a lady he has known from childhood, although they did not start “dating” until two years to their marriage. Shortly after marriage, he asked the wife to quit her job and become a fulltime housewife, making babies and taking care of the home front. The problems were, one, he did not discuss his plan with the wife during courtship when he had all the time in the world to do so and get her consent. Two, he was not earning enough to adequately take care of both of them and the expected new members of the family. Three, the wife is the eldest child and comes from a modest background. Her parents needed her financial support to help see her younger siblings through school.

She alleged that her husband was as meek as a lamb during courtship and became a ferocious wolf after marriage. If it is true, we have an additional case of deceit at hand. You know in insurance, we have what we call “change of species.”

That is when the subject matter of insurance (vehicle, cargo, building, etc.) changes significantly from what it used to be or its usual form. Examples are cement changing to concrete due to contact with water or a 2018 Range Rover Sport being involved in an accident and getting mangled. No insurance company will insure such a subject matter after change of species.

Of course, the marriage broke up after two stormy years, laced with arguments and quarrels. Surprisingly, there was no physical violence, just verbal and emotional abuses. They have since moved on and according to the lady; they have become best of friends, even better than before marriage.

But the lady could have opted for annulment (that is, the marriage is voided and deemed not to have taken place because it was based on deceit) instead of divorce. In some Christian denominations, those whose marriages were annulled can go ahead and remarry without inhibitions, while divorcees are not allowed to participate in certain rites or hold certain positions in the church.

But it is partly to avoid the hassles of going through annulments or divorce that I tell my marriage class participants that even at the altar or point of saying: “I do,” as long as you have not exchanged marital vows, if you have good reasons to believe that the marriage will not work, opt out. The temporary disruption and pains are better than the disruptions and pains that come with the hell called unhappy marriage.

But this, like Jesus telling his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood, is hard teaching. Not many people can accept it. I remember one of those times; I discussed it in my marriage class. I could see many of them were anxious and nervous and had to stop. In fact, one lady came to me after the class to state her own situation.

She wanted me to goad her into taking a certain action. But my job is to lay the cards on the table; you take your decisions. It is your life to make or mar, having been properly guided. The question is: do you have the guts to take the right decision?