I have been told more than once how after 28, my chances of getting married will be very low. Every woman has been told this narrative. We are even raised in the spirit of being prepared for our husbands. This conditioned belief is among the reasons our entire worth as women is centered on men. While my daily affirmations on how I am a full human being who deserves equal opportunities are strong, I still navigate the real world where patriarchy considers me as the second sex.
Heteroromantic love is a patriarchal conspiracy rooted in gender inequality. As soon as women understand words, we’re told about marriage and romance. We’re asked who we want to marry when we grow up. It’s sown in our minds, from birth, that our primary aim in life should be finding a male “soul-mate” who we can look after and live happily ever after with. Then comes the children’s fairy books. Young girls are reminded what they should aspire to: “ a prince who must choose them”.
Gender socialization starts from birth and as soon as we can connect words, we read books which tell us about our place in the world as servers of men. Through magazines we read, movies we watch, books we buy, we are growing up with the idea that there is a man out there to love us, protect us, nurture us. Our whole existence revolves around being chosen. Families are waiting for that day, aunties talk daily.
The history of marriage is the history of inequality. They invented “romantic love”, as a psychological cage with the aim of keeping us to perform emotional labor until death. From women owned as private properties to be exchanged for social capital. Marriage as an institution was built on the idea of a woman as a private property so the man can live a good life while the wife takes care of him.
Hear me out, romantic love is not in itself necessarily oppressive but it becomes so because of the social context, a world where men exist at the expense of women. Bell Hooks said it better:”If any woman feels she needs anything beyond herself to validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining”. Still, women live as incomplete human beings without the love of a man, then we dare to defend romantic love. Our conditioned belief in “romantic love” keeps us in abusive relationships. We say that “he loves me really” when he fails to live up to any kind of basic human standard, or “I can change him”. A naive belief in “romantic love” to justify rape, abuse, torture.
Patriarchal romantic love is of course chaos, painful, exhausting. It is sustained by unaccountability when it comes to toxic masculinity. It is unhealthy, damaging, controlling. It enslaves! And I refuse to be given an expiration date. I refuse to be told that I must hurry and get married. I refused with everything I am and do, still get looked down because I enjoy being a Ms than a Mrs. I refuse to be asked “ why don’t you want to get married “ as if we all are supposed to or that’s the only way of living. I refuse to get always hooked up because you assume I need a man. I refuse to center my existence on a man. I am not giving away my freedom. I am a whole human being
Marriage for me is a way of living life among many other ways of living. It is not an achievement nor a milestone. It is a partnership where both parties must benefit and exit when they are losing. I do not sustain the patriarchal way of marriage. In fact, I advise women to enter in it with a clear plan. Study what you are reaping out of it.
The only kind of love that excites me at this point in my life is an accountable love where both parties figure out the common ground of loving each other while freeing each other. I am not interested in being put in a cage or performing unreciprocated emotional labor. I do not exist to be babysitters of grown men.
We all must unlearn the romantic love, patriarchy taught us. We must embrace decolonial love. A love based on the equal pattern of emotional labor, an accountable love. A love where we honestly and genuinely ask ourselves if we are happy. Love, patriarchs, white supremacists, classists, homophobes, transphobes, cannot fully grasp.
A free love, BUT FIRST WE MUST UNLEARN.
And please stop with giving women an expiration date. We will walk into the marriage institution fully sure of the benefits we are going to reap. Because we now know our oppressors strive on our silence and ignorance.
By the way, Cendrillon story exists only in movies
Until next time,
Take care