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On a random Wednesday evening, a few days after graduating, I was in the middle of talking to my mother about my younger brother when she cut in with a question that filled me with dread: “So, when are you bringing your husband home?” 

I am 22 and still trying to figure out what I want my life to look like in a country that often feels like it’s on its last legs. Marriage is the furthest thing from my mind. But I would soon realise that my mother was only the beginning.

My aunts, my grandmothers, and even my mother’s friends seemed to have a say too. If they weren’t asking about a husband, they were constantly praying I’d find one. I couldn’t even celebrate a personal achievement anymore without them bringing up my relationship status.

With them, all roads lead down the aisle. And this is where the confusion set in because I knew every one of these women. I knew the hell they had each survived in their respective marriages. In fact, their horror stories shaped how I view marriage today. 

So, why, of all the things they could want for me, is a husband still at the top of their lists? 

And I’m not alone in this. Just last week, I was at brunch with my girls, all of us between 22 and 30, and a good chunk of the conversation was spent complaining about how our families are actively, and some even aggressively, pushing us towards marriage. 

Amara’s* (24) mother slips prayers for a husband into every home devotion. Zara’s* (25) reunion with her grandmother after a year apart turned into a shouting match about her unmarried status. Bridget’s* (29) mother starts every conversation with the dreaded husband question, and after hearing it one too many times, Bridget stopped picking up. They have not spoken in nine months.

When we asked Mrs Atinuke* (48) why she is so concerned about her 24-year-old daughter getting married, her response was striking. Despite spending years in a marriage with an emotionally and financially abusive husband, she said: “Simply because I didn’t have a good marriage does not mean there aren’t other people who did.” 

She mentioned her own parents, who have been together for decades, and asked: “And besides, why wouldn’t she get married?” 

It’s a question that relationship therapist says reflects something much deeper than personal preference. “We are still operating within a very communal and socially observant culture,” she explains. “Life is constantly measured through visible milestones, and ”

It carries , so for many parents, especially mothers, it takes on a sense of inevitability.” You can hear it in the language: ‘When will it be your turn? I don’t want my enemies to laugh at me.’ A daughter’s marital status becomes public property, something watched, picked apart, and interpreted by everyone who knows the family. 

There is also, Mason observes, a deeply internalised idea of what a woman is supposed to look like. “, something that completes their identity and signals entry into womanhood.” 

She ties this to the “good woman” ideal, being patient, enduring, accommodating, staying. “That script holds weight even when lived experiences have been difficult,” she says, “because it defines what it means to be respectable, disciplined and successful as a woman.” 

It is this reason why women who survived deeply unhappy marriages are often the loudest voices pushing their daughters towards one. At first glance, this looks like a blind worship of the institution of marriage itself, but Mason sees something more complicated:  meaning-making. 

“When someone has invested years of their life in an institution that requires endurance, it becomes important to preserve its value. People often reframe difficult experiences to maintain a sense of purpose and coherence.” To them, the suffering has to mean something. And so, the institution is passed on, quietly, with the hope that the next generation will get a better version of it. 

Religion reinforces that urgency too. In many churches and communities, unmarried women are constantly reminded, through sermons, counselling, and casual conversation, that marriage is something to pursue quickly and seriously.

But underneath all of these is something deeply emotional. Many parents carry a genuine sense of responsibility for how their children’s lives turn out. A daughter who is not married can, apparently, feel to a mother like an unfinished project. There are other feelings of failure, worry, and urgency, even. Marriage is attached to ideas of happiness and a settled life. It extends beyond the daughter to the family as a whole; the desire for grandchildren, for continuity, for proof that life has moved forward as it should. For some mothers, a daughter’s marriage becomes part of how they measure their own. 

“Even when daughters have grown up watching marriages that did not necessarily benefit the women in them,” Mason says, “they are still navigating a system where marriage carries social meaning, emotional weight, moral framing, and a sense of timing. That is where the pressure holds, in everything it represents beyond the relationship itself.” 

So, my mother is not trying to trap me. Marriage is simply the only language she was ever taught. And that, more than anything else, is the saddest part of all of this. 

And though it may be hard to tell her that marriage is not an option I want right now, or may not want at all, it is important that I say it anyway. Marriage should not be something I do just to get everybody off my back. It should be a decision I make because it is what I want for myself.

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