By Chioma Gabriel

Marriages are celebrated every day and the dream of every woman in life is to find love and happiness. But what a lot of people don’t seem to understand is why some who are already married are desperate to get out while those who have never been there are desperate to get in. In spite of the experiences of those who loved and lost, many are aspiring to experience love.

According to the holy book, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.’

Many advocates of marriage believe it is better to love and lost than not to love at all and it makes sense.

The biggest expectation of couples getting into a marital relationship is to have children with the one they love as a way of perpetuating their love.

But childlessness has been the bane of many marital relationships.

I read a story published recently in Vanguard on the confessions of a lawyer who was too arrogant to go for medical checkup after his wife couldn’t give him a child. He blamed the woman for their childlessness for many years and refused any advice that he could be the one at fault. He tortured her emotionally and physically for being ‘his fellow male’ and eventually divorced her.

He brought in wife number two and history was about to repeat itself before he hearkened to the voice of reason and submitted himself to medical test and treatment which saved the situation.

Thankfully, he was wealthy enough to afford designer babies because that was what his new wife gave him. The babies were produced outside her womb and then inseminated artificially inside her and they became proud parents of triplets.

This story published in Vanguard early last week is just one in a thousand.

The truth of the matter is that many couples are facing the same problems. They are all around us. Some are members of our families. Some are our good friends and acquaintances and some of their problems are treatable cases but because the ‘almighty male’ refuses to go for a fertility test and take treatment, the problem remains unsolved.

Some women who are desperate for babies on knowing they are not the ones with the problem would easily solve their problems outside and become proud mothers by getting other men to father their children while their proud husbands beat their chests that the ‘barren’ woman has decided to solve the problem. A lot of men are not the biological fathers of their children. Only the woman knows.

Whenever it takes time for a woman to get pregnant and she does eventually, the man should always think twice. It could be possible the woman decided to look elsewhere.

A friend of mine said when her husband’s semen was tested in the lab, there was no ‘live’ sperm. She said she insisted on her husband having the test because she was given a clean bill of health. Beside their childlessness, she was scared of having sex with her husband because of the serious pains she always had in her lower abdomen anytime they had sex. The truth was, the man had a serious infection but after treatment, they were lucky to have a child whom they named Samuel because the woman asked of him from God. All the problems,the tears,the humiliation she faced in her marriage especially from her in-laws were solved with the birth of Samuel.

I have also seen couples who were so much love fall out of love due to childlessness.

My neighbor insisted the woman he was dating must be pregnant before he marries her and when she didn’t, he opted out of the relationship, saying he wouldn’t want to bring in another ‘man’ as a wife.

But what happened? She married a relation of the same man that rejected her and bore him four children, including a set of twins. Her ex  married another woman and had to wait for years before having a child.

So what happened with his former love? What the doctors called hormonal in-balance which could be handled. She had a rare blood type, O negative while he is A positive.

Why do fools fall in love? Why shouldn’t one enjoy whatever a relationship has to offer for as long as it lasts and move on? Why would one woman have the ring and another have the man? Why do people marry for the wrong reasons? Why do people go into marriage of convenience? What is the lure for marriage in the very beginning? Love or lust? Were things properly put in their right perspective before getting into the big venture? What was the place of maturity and readiness at the time marriage is being contracted?

“Till death do you part.” That was a death sentence signed. Do people often understand the implication of ‘for better, for worse’ or do they think marriage is a tea party where they would just waltz in and waltz out at will? Does a woman have to learn from the school of hard knocks that in marriage, one has to look for sacred values,moral integrity and someone who has demonstrated a lifestyle of commitment,not one who charms his way into the heart of a woman and then breaks it!

Isn’t true love an unconditional love to an imperfect person? The woman comes from a man’s ribs to be loved; not from his feet, to be walked on; nor from his head to be superior but from the side to be equal; under his arm to be protected and next to the heart to be loved! Nothing good comes easy! There is no relationship made in heaven.

But there is a lesson to learn from the confessions of this lawyer.

Toujours vérifier vous-même. (Always check yourself again).