Josephine, 32, finally got round to taking Ephraim home to her parents. She was so excited and looked forward to her parents giving Ephraim a warm reception. The journey was long as they had to travel from Lagos to Owo, Ondo state where her parents lived.
Her parents, both retired senior civil servants were notorious for refusing suitors as they had done the same for Josephine’s two elder sisters until they had to get pregnant outside wedlock.
Josephine did not have any fears for Ephraim because he was a successful banker of many years, very handsome and well respected. Even if her parents had issues with Tunde and Tola (her older sisters’ suitors), she did not envisage any problems with Ephraim. Even though he was not of the same tribe ‘Yoruba’, she believed her parents would understand especially since she had delayed in bringing home a suitor…
During the journey back home, Josephine couldn’t stop thinking about the shocking and humiliating way those insensitive and none understanding duo that called themselves her parents had treated her lover.
She battled long with the idea of asking the commuter driver to stop, so she could alight and travel back to tell them formally about her decision to disown them as her parents.
She obviously was pained; she went between crying and sighing and feeling shame.
Did she make a mistake taking him home? Maybe she should have gone home alone before dragging this innocent young man into the humiliation that he had just faced at the hands of her parents.
“Nawa o”. She thought, how could she have known that her parents could be so tribalistic, two educated elites, even though retired. “Hmmm, may be what they say about people becoming increasingly stubborn and irritable as they age is true o”. Her thoughts just went on and on.
As she languished in painful thinking, she could hear her father’s voice “It’s not because of tribal sentiments we are rejecting him, we are rejecting him because of some other things we cannot divulge just yet, because if we do, you’ll not understand…”
“What nonsense!!!, what could those things be that i cannot comprehend at over three decades of life”…she muttered out loud ,oblivious of what she had just done…
That muttering gave her away, Ephraim had been trying in the last three hours of their journey to console her and convince her not to think about it and she had promised without success, to stop thinking about it.
“You are still crying”, He said as he turned to hold her hands, beholding her teary and bloodshot eyes…
Josephine couldn’t sleep all night. She thought long and hard about Emmanuelle’s counsel. She weighed her counsel side by side with the things she had known from the Word of God. All of a sudden it looked like she was beginning to prefer her friend’s counsel. “Me, a counselor and children teacher, deliberately fall into s*xual sin and get pregnant so i will not lose Ephraim? Mmm”, seems an easy way out because these eighteen months of being continuously rejected was beginning to weigh down on Ephraim’s commitment to the relationship.
He had said so over and over again that he needed to get married and get on with other things in life. “i know he loves me” Josephine thought, “but if he really does, he should be able to wait!” She cried again as she thought about the pressure that her parents’ refusal and her fiancés’ impatience was putting her under. Still thinking, she dozed off…
At work the next day, being a Friday, she asked her bosses’ permission to close early so she could make the 4-hour trip down to her hometown. Josephine had made up her mind she would go and threaten her parents with the idea of getting pregnant out of wedlock, even though it was just going to be a threat as she had not bought into that idea. She got in late, at about 7:30 PM in the evening, made straight for her room, dropped off her things and went to knock on her Father’s door. She had come for war and nothing would stop her or delay it.
As she opened her mouth to say what she had in mind, she cried, hoping that her tears would reveal to her parents the pain and the dilemma she was in. She used to think that her parents, especially her mum, loved her and would do anything for her but these past months had left her wondering if that were true.
As she tried to control her tears she blurted out “Dad and Mum I I I I , i shouldn’t really be telling you this but I am, out of the respect I have for you both. have made up my mind I would get pregnant for Ephraim since you will not willingly accept him. It’s a difficult decision to make knowing that the both of you are elders in the local Assemblies of God church and considering the two previous events of my older sisters getting pregnant and the pain it brought you both”….
Before Josephine could land on what she wanted to say next, HER Father Mr Aigbogun blurted out most angrily “you can go ahead and get married to that boy, but over my dead body will i give my approval to this nonsense arrangement. I had promised my best friend Ajakaye on his death bed that in order to continue our friendship at least one of my daughters would get married his only son, Adetu. Both your elder sisters made sure that didn’t happen and now you too. You want to make sure that i do not make good my word to my late friend. I will not allow that, i will not take it, i will not permit it.’ With that He stormed out of the room and left both Mother and Daughter crying helplessly.
Josephine’s mother tried almost all night to see if she could convince Her to succumb to this caricature arrangement but she would not. “How could she decide to get married to someone she doesn’t have any regard nor feeling for just to make her Father happy?” She kept asking herself.
During the long journey back to Lagos only one thought dominated her mind. “what would she do now? As her threat to get married was only a threat. What would she do now?” She thought over and over again.
WHY PARENTS SAY “NO”
When parents say “NO” a couple of things may be happening, they may be saying:
Their child/ward is not ready.
Their suitor is not ready.
Their suitor is not good enough.
A “NO” can therefore be a temporal or permanent refusal. Another reason may be due to some evil agenda on the part of the parent. Some reasons why parents may say “NO” include:
1) SPIRITUAL INCOMPATIBILITY: If the parents think that either their ward or the suitor isn’t spiritually matured enough.
2) EMOTIONAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL INCOMPATIBILITY: If the parents think that either of the children isn’t matured enough psychologically or emotionally, they can say “NO”
3) IRRESPONSIBILITY/RESPONSIBILITY: If a child brings home a suitor that is obviously irresponsible, any parent would hesitate to give their blessing. Responsibility can be expressed in form of financial responsibility. Is the person financially stable? Are they empowered enough to keep a family? Have a job? Caring enough to be responsible for a family? Do they even have an inkling of what caring for a family involves? Asking a parent to say “YES” to an obviously irresponsible suitor would be unfair.
4) ANTECEDENT IN THE ONGOING RELATIONSHIP: If there had been cases of neglect, battering, cheating, lying, and deceit in the relationship and it is known to the parents, a parent would hesitate to give a “YES”.
5) DEMEANOR: If a suitor is not respectful or is considered not respectful by the parents, some parents can say a “NO” especially if those parents are traditionally minded. Some suitors have been rejected because of the way they dressed to meet with their parents-in-law to be. Such persons never got to be heard once they were seen in a negative light. Also carriage plays a huge role. How a suitor conducts and carries themselves when they are at their parents-in-law’s abode matters.
6) PHYSICAL FITNESS: If a suitor has an illness or disease one way or the other or is handicapped, blind, confined to a wheel chair, has extensive burns; especially facial, an imbecile etc. No parent will readily say “YES” to the person. Also very expedient to this is the issue of genotype. Some parents are usually very particular about genotype breeding, when it comes to the “AS” and “SS” or any particular simulation involving these genotypes that are perceived to be weak.
7) EDUCATIONAL INCOMPATIBILITY: If a lady graduate happens to take an artisan home, they might have problems being accepted.
8) PERCEIVED LACK OF SERIOUSNESS/BITE: I would be weary to say “YES” to a suitor who has finished school for seven, eight, nine years and still does not have anything going. A thirty five year old man once lost out when his prospective father-in-law asked him if he knew how to drive and he answered negative. The old man couldn’t see why a 35 year old executive wouldn’t know how to drive…he considered that as a lack of bite.
9) TRIBAL SENTIMENT: Even though it is drastically on the decrease these days, presenting somebody from another tribe can create a roadblock to being accepted. Similar to that are cultural differences. Sometimes it isn’t tribal but cultural differences. If the parents are not at home with some of the cultural practices of the suitor being presented, they may yell out a “NO”.
10) RELIGIOUS BIAS: A catholic may swear to their hurt not to allow their ward/child to marry somebody from another religion. Sometimes it isn’t culture; it is denominational such that a particular Pentecostal sect may even refuse somebody from another sect.
WHAT WOULD JOSEPHINE DO???
1) Prevention is better than cure. Averting it is better than solving it. Young people should develop themselves adequately, package appropriately, Make sure that the content and container is always right. Look responsibly, act accordingly. From youth, prove to your parents that you can be dependent. Let them be able to trust your decisions. Apply yourself to your trade or education. Strive to always be result-oriented so that your parents will learn to trust your judgment.
2) Start preparing your parents with the idea of your choice of partner long before you bring them home. Many of the rejections start first as a shock, and then continues as a thing of pride.
3) You too, be responsible in choosing a potential life partner. You know what your parents expectations are.at least try to measure up to standard in your choice of a life partner.
4) Help repackage your mate before presenting them. Financially, physically, culturally and mannerism-wise.
5) Cut you Biblical cord from your parents before marriage time. Prove to them that you can make decisions,(right ones) and live by them. Take care of the emotional ties. Let it be clear to them that you have packed your load ready to move. In short, that you are already gone.
6) If you can, help to inform your parents about what their role in your life should be presently. Their role should not be trying to choose a life partner for you, but just trying to guide you. You may buy them books and materials that may help them along these lines.
7) Prayers and Confessions help. Long before you present or even meet anybody, start doing spiritual warfare and making faith-confessions about how easily your suitor will be accepted. Sometimes it is not really the parents but spiritual opposition working through them. Some persons will need to be sensitive as to know whether or not their parents are occultic. Some occultic parents make covenants that require that their children/ward remain unmarried. This is where Josephine’s case falls. No other thing was wrong with Ephraim except that Josephine’s father had made some kind of covenant/promise to his dying friend that He had never told his children. This was all Josephine needed to know.
8) If the rejection continues unabated, get mentors, e.g. your pastors, counselors in church, uncles, your father’s friends, to talk to your parents and reason with them. It’s important to make sure that you too, the Ward/child is not being unreasonable. Many people have regretted going against their parent’s wishes because it is true what they say, ‘What the elders see sitting, the child cannot even when climbing on a tree’.
9) This last point is what Josephine will need to do having exhausted all possible means of trying to dissuade her dad. There is room for going on without parental consent, even though it is very narrow. It has to be approached very carefully, prayerfully. There is need to talk to counselors or to your pastor so that they will be able to guide you on this. I have guided some couples in times past to get married without parental consent and it didn’t backfire because we had exhausted every avenue to secure parental consent.
Josephine and Ephraim went ahead to get married having exhausted other means to get parental consent without success. It was during the naming ceremony of their second child that her dad agreed to make up with them and forgive them.
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