DEAR YOUNG WOMAN, DONT FORGET TO CHOOSE YOU!

Be Kind But Don’t Be Nice. I first heard this phrase from the well-known Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She says young women are taught to be ‘nice’, to tolerate nonsense, to suppress ambition, to avoid assertiveness. But kindness, true kindness, is about respect. And respect can coexist with ambition and assertiveness. ‘Don’t be nice’ means be ruthless in pursuing who God has called you to be. This is the mindset I want you to have as you read what I am about to say.

Let's have a discussion about getting married after university and thinking you need to get married after university. These are my thoughts and opinions. If you're a young lady and almost done with university, or about to get out of school and what you're thinking of is, I want to get married, let me tell you something.

This one is called, I have gone into the world and I'm coming to tell you what I have seen. Let me tell you point blank that the world does not like women. Everything and every system seems to have been built to fight women , even those that are supposed to be for women. This is such a blatant and painful reality, ESPECIALLY, for the BLACK WOMAN. I just can't understand why, but this is what it is.

These are reasons I'm coming back to say that you should have a change of mind:

Marriage is not a guarantee of your life getting better. God is the one and only guarantee of your life getting better and he chooses many avenues to bless you including marriage but focus on Him because He alone is the true essence of life. Trusting in God, following His command and His call on your life to destiny, this is what will make your life better. I know that people don't want to hear this. In fact, I can't believe I am saying this because a few years ago, let me even take it back to when I finished university when I was about 20 to 23, I don't think I would have been saying this. But I am here telling you now, this is what it is.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to get married, there is nothing wrong with wanting to have kids, but then after that, what? I usually see women on Instagram putting in their bio, when they are married, "wife" and "mother". Then I go and check their husband's page, and I see that he is just a man and sometimes his career there.

When you start life, put your career first. It is through your career that God is going to minister to the world. Your calling is bigger than just having children and a family. I want to have children one day, I hope to get married too one day, but I know I am called to a bigger function and task than just a nuclear family and so are you.

Now that I have set this precedence, let me tell you what it is like. After university, you are now about to go and do self-finding. It is even likely that you will have a career change, like me. You may switch from one career domain to another, and that is like building something from scratch. You need to find yourself and learn truly your path again. You are about to navigate the world, a jungle, a thick forest. You are going to face predators. And when I say predators, I am not speaking any gender. It is not gender specific. You are about to meet danger, and you are about to navigate and escape it. You need to have your head on.

Times are different now. Back in the day, our mothers got up and said they wanted to marry after university, and they were getting married by 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. Things and situations were much better then, I am telling you now, we are in very difficult times. Now, completing university is fast becoming backward, like completing senior high school. And completing senior high school is fast becoming backward, like completing junior high school.

Times are hard. Finding money is tough. Jobs are scarce. Even the basic necessities of life are not easy to come by. So, give yourself some grace. If your church is encouraging you to get married right after university, with what resources? Rent alone is through the roof these days.

If you are in your parents' house, stay there. Some of our parents, I get it, will be giving us pressure. But if they have not sacked you, please give yourself some time and give yourself grace to grow. Times are different. Don't even think of marriage now until you are about 28 years old. At that point, you would have been able to understand how to navigate things, hold yourself down, manage the world around you and gathered a lot of social understanding.

"But what if am financially stable or I am coming from a good home?" Let me tell you, who you are when you are 23 or 22 years old, will be totally different by the time you are 30. You don't want to get to 30 years old and look back and feel like you regret some of the decisions you have made.

There are people I dated at 27, 26, 25, even back in university, and I am so glad none of those relationships ended in marriage. I am grateful they never got that far. Because who I am now at 29 is completely different from who I was even at 28. Interestingly, it feels like I keep learning lessons every single day, and I keep evolving every single day. I am becoming more grounded in myself. Do you understand?

So please, do not be in a hurry, do not be in a rush. Take your time. There is so much to achieve, and so much waiting to be done. Please.

And you know the interesting thing? Men have hacked this code. By the time they reach 30, they say, oh, we want to marry a younger woman. But let me tell you something: the fact that a man in his 30s wants to marry you in your early 20s does not make you special. You are not special. It only means you have not yet reached the point where you fully understand yourself enough to question unpleasant situations. That is all.

ENTERING CORPORATE

Listen, corporate favours men more than women. Even now, with all the reforms that have come about in the world, it is still a fact. We still have men in corporate spaces who know very well that a promotion is due a woman, but they hand over that position to a man lesser in capacity, simply because that person is a man. They refuse to give it to her, because one day she might get married and give birth. And they don’t want a situation where they would lose a worker to three months of maternity leave. And even when she returns, she will have to close at 2 p.m. every day until the child is about a year old.

This is what we face today. These are modern day issues, and I am telling you. Women are missing promotions in the office because they got pregnant. But here is the interesting thing, let me tell you. I know a man who had a terrible accident and literally had to learn how to walk again for a year. But guess what? He came back and even got two promotions.

Even though he had an accident, I dare say he didn’t experience any career drag.

Please please and PLEASE !!! Manage reproduction! I need women to understand that you must become selfish in pursuing your dreams and I don’t mean to say I don’t want to have kids. I want to have kids. But this is the understanding I have come to.

Women need to have their careers and life going, and need to pursue it fearlessly, fiercely, even more than men. Do you know why? A man will put in 100% to get, let’s say, a barrel of water. A woman has to put in 200% to get that same barrel of water on a regular day. And when childbearing comes in, when you enter that form, you now need to put in 300% to get that same barrel of water.

This is very unfair, I know. But guess what? If you don’t straighten up your mind and think carefully about what I am saying, you will learn the bitter truth the hard way. And you will experience it, painfully.

 Almost all my mother's marriage she was a single mother. You would think the challenges she had to endure in the 1990's till her retirement in 2018, would have ended, but they are still very apparent. If my mom did not have a career going for herself, a vision-filled career direction, my life and the life of my sisters would have been in shambles.

Don't be thinking of marrying and giving birth right after university. Take your time. When you clock 28, then you start activating those thoughts. And if from 28 onwards you want to get married, fine because at that time, you may have given yourself a solid foundation in your career in terms of your direction.

Because like I said, this world is not for women. It is not. Think about your decisions. If you are sexually active consider abstinence and practice celibacy, it will take you a long way. If you are not sexually active, great. Keep it going. It will benefit you along the way.

Now this is not necessarily to say that if you wait until 28 or 30, you are assured of a good marriage and a good family but let me tell you what you are assured of. If you give yourself time to build your career and your direction to a certain point and you gain financial stability, in case of any trouble, you would have allowed God to use an avenue to rescue you and your family. Because if my mom did not have this career direction, I am telling you, my life and the life of my sisters would have been a catastrophe.

I am meeting a lot of people who just started and just finished their national service crying in the office because they want to marry. Gen Z baddies, you are shocking me. Do you know what it means to be a baddie? If you continue with this level of desperation, you will become a victim of a very terrible person, a very terrible man somewhere, who feels like he has clocked his 30s and is not getting any younger and because his age mates are getting married, he thinks he also needs to get married, not because he is mentally prepared for the calling of what God requires of a man and a husband in the home but simply because he feels he has reached some financial access.

I dated someone when I was 21, with a 10-year age gap, and I can say frankly today, I would never pick him. I would not even be hurt to see him with another woman. Not at all. Because whatever made him look so glorious to me back then, I have since received such an awakening in my life that I would never choose that person again.

In fact, people I dated two years ago, three years ago, even more recently, the person I am today would never choose them. People I once had feelings for, flings, moments with, now I look back and know clearly I would never choose them. Never.

The more you give yourself time to find yourself, the more you realize how important that journey is. Self-discovery is no small thing, it shapes and informs every decision you make.

Final Charge: Do Not Rush, Build First

My sisters, hear me clearly: marriage is not the crown of your life, God is. Do not rush into it because of pressure from family, society, or the church. Do not rush because you see your friends posting wedding photos. Do not rush because a man older than you suddenly wants to marry you.

Give yourself time. Build yourself. Find yourself. Pursue your calling. Pour yourself into your career and your purpose. Let God shape you into the woman He designed you to be. By doing this, you will not just enter marriage as someone’s wife or someone’s mother, you will enter as a whole woman, grounded in vision, direction, and strength.

And if marriage comes, let it meet you prepared, not desperate. Let it meet you complete, not searching for identity. Let it meet you empowered, not dependent.

Because the truth is this: the world is not kind to women. But God has placed something

powerful inside you that can withstand every system, every bias, every barrier. Protect it.

Nurture it. Use it.

So my charge to you is simple: do not rush into marriage after university. Rush into God. Rush into self-discovery. Rush into building your foundation. When the time comes, you will thank yourself, and generations after you will thank you too.