Eligible men are looking for 'marriable' women

 

Now what’s this talk about there are no eligible men? Are we saying men in this country are either too young, too old or the right age, but not the right material for the many ready and wanting-to-be-caught girls? 

 

This outcry has pervaded the local papers lately, dressed as well-written (albeit unresearched) articles by women, asking the laughable question: Where’s a man to marry when a ready girl wants one? The articles — or those who concocted them — claim that there are many young and maybe not so young women in the proverbial ‘out there’, where all manner of people live, who have got everything else — money, class, good education and friends. The only thing missing is the elusive eligible man to take an interest in them.

 

I would like to answer this lot of damsels in dire distress due to this vain search for someone to see and privatise them. One, indeed there are many eligible (young) men out looking for women to marry. The catch, and this does not require a prophet to tell you, is that they are looking for ‘marriable’ (my word) women. They are not looking for just any woman, because those are practically everywhere you will look; they are looking for women worth investing their lives in.

 

Two, it’s not true that men have ceased to want to marry. Men want to marry. Men get to a certain point and they go to that afore-mentioned ‘out there’ in search of women to marry. So what we should be asking ourselves is: If it is true that the eligible men are out there looking, and some ready-to-be-got women are also in the same place — out there — wanting to be found, why aren’t they meeting?

 

The alternative answers could be two: One, either there are two out there, such that the eligible men are in one ‘out there’ searching, while the women are floating (no pun meant) in an altogether different ‘out there’. That way, the men will remain single and searching for long, while the women remain single and complaining for equally long spells.

 

Or, and this one is derived from the first one, what could make the same ‘out there’ seem like two different places is that while one group is sure of what they want, the other is (still) deluded about who the first group is looking for. As a result, they don’t meet up on the same plane.

 

Let me explain. Be the judge, ladies: How many articles have you read — indeed even written yourselves, asserting that today’s woman (also known as the modern woman, or today’s corporate woman, or whichever other name is used to refer to the same breed of strange women) is not your old gal of yore, who depended on a man for this and that; who, if she did not have a man in her life, wasn’t what today’s woman has become even without a man? 

 

How many stories have been written, and read by the eligible men, saying the young women can get a child here and there, and be happy, without the intervention of the men who authored the children? How often do you see articles written by seemingly fulfilled young women, bashing men, and generally making out that they are satisfied as is, where is? Let me tell you; this scarcity is a hoax. You gals created it, so you should take it away. It is a sad fad.

 

Sister, you give me no choice but to abuse an already hackneyed expression: you cannot eat your eligibility cake and still have it. Make up your mind. If you think modern trends supplied by groupies when you go to watch games at Kyaddondo, or at drink-ups at Amnesia (where you go to forget your woes) and on your Facebook group forums will replace age-proven ways of suffocating human passions and traditions, then promote those trends.

 

But if you want to walk the road your wise grandma, mama and all the other women who have lived full lives, despite the hitches here and there — have walked, daughter of my mother, dump your deluded girlfies and settle down. The eligible men will be waiting for you.