Simbiat Bakare
“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.”– The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
Storylines like the one in The Notebook, published on October 1, 1996, is what some millennials grew up reading. The Notebook was New York Times bestseller, with over 105 million copies sold worldwide, and was later adapted into a popular 2004 film of the same name.
Many Nigerian 90s-babies also watched romantic American and Indian movies featuring scenes where the guy runs to the airport in slow motion under heavy rainfall. He takes a cab, urges the driver to beat traffic, gets off the taxi before getting to his destination, and runs to the airport or a wedding venue to crash the ceremony. When he gets there, he sheds a tear or two, looks at the lady he fancies and says a line like “Piyankra, I love you, marry me.” In a dramatic change of event, the lady plants a kiss on his lips, and they run off to the sunset to live happily ever after.
“Happily ever after” is another phrase many millennials constantly hear from almost every cartoon, such as Cinderella and Snow White, trending in their era. As they grew into adolescence, they were also introduced to Mexican telenovelas, such as Cuando Seas Mía (When You Are Mine), and romantic drama series like American soap opera “Passions.”
Romance novels like ‘The Fault in Our Stars’’ by John Green, adapted into a tear-jerking movie, encouraged the idea of loving someone to oblivion.
“I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labour has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.” – The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.
The book, The Fault in Our Stars, loved by many, sold to more than 5.7 million worldwide in print and e-book format in the first half of 2014.
Unlike the previous generations, millennials have been subconsciously groomed to believe in the romantic concept of true love, soul mate, and passions from the books they read to the movies they’ve watched, all their lives, to the extent that an entire industry thrives off it. In the past year, unit sales for romance books released and sold topped 47 million in the 12 months ending March 2021.
Cashing out on people’s fascination with romance, television spotlight romantic grand gestures to their audience via glamorous reality TV shows like WAGS (Wives and Girlfriends of Sports Stars). Phrases like “Love conquers all” are often repeated and demonstrated in shows and some films.
The romantic shows influencing people’s mindsets, many ladies began to look forward to receiving diamond-worth of rings from their intimate partners, and millennials became fixated on the search for their ‘one true love’.
Most people are consumed with the yearning to experience the true love they have constantly seen on their television set, engage in the frenzy of weddings, and marry their ‘soulmate’, that they had barely considered the history of marriage and what it mainly represents.
However, as some people’s dreams come true and they get married to their perceived “soulmate” or otherwise, they notice a disconnect between what they have seen in movies and their experience in marriage. Desperate for a way to experience the kind of marriage they have imagined, they sometimes anonymously seek advice from the populace through relationship blogs.
Platforms like Break or Makeup, managed by Blessing ‘CEO’ Okoro Nkiruka, consequently share the anonymous stories to their social media followers. The stories of many couples stuck in abusive and unhappy marriages are often terrifying.
Followers of some relationship blogs, some unmarried, are often shocked by the gory details, hoping that they will have a better experience when they get married. They often comment: “my marriage won’t be like that in Jesus’s name.” But wouldn’t it?
In 2022, the divorce rate is projected to be at least 44.2%. This is based on a marriage rate of 6.1 people per 1,000 total population as cited by the CDC.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, only 0.2% of men and 0.3% of women had legally dissolved their marriage in Nigeria. However, with celebrities separating and young couples divorcing, it is apparent that the separation rate is far higher.
Questions like “why do marriage not last long like the days of our mothers and fathers” constantly arise on social media platforms and public forums as many youth divorces. However, some people fail to consider that our parents understood marriage as a social contract.
Millennials have mostly been sold a facade about marriage as a romantic concept via films and books; they are not conscious of what the institution truly represents.
Evidence suggests that the concept of marriage only started about 4,350 years ago. Although many theists believe that marriage has been around forever, biblical accounts show that Adam and Eve were not married.
Marriage was created to ensure the children a woman bears are biologically that of a man she partnered with. Consequently, women were regarded as the property of men. If a woman could not bear children, a man had the right to return her.
For women, marriage served as economic and financial security since many could not vote or even hold a bank account until the 1980s. Those were some of the reasons for the invention of the institution of marriage and in those days, couples understood it as such.
Over time, marriage became infused with religion and was embraced by many ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. The first recorded evidence of marriage ceremonies uniting one woman and one man dates from about 2350 B.C.
It was not until the Middle Ages that the French developed the idea of romantic love and infused it into literature. Books written in the 12th century advised men to woo the object of their desire by praising her eyes, hair, and lip. Richard de Fournival, a physician to the king of France, wrote “Advice on Love,” telling women in the 13th century to cast flirtatious glances—”anything but a frank and open entreaty.”
Although the fundamentals of marriage as a social contract haven’t changed, since the 15th century, creatives heavily sold the idea of love, soul mates, and consequently marriage to their audience through television and books.
However, since a facade always strips away over time, as many people get married, they realise that marriage is not a fairy tale and many relationships won’t be like Titanic.
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