Some of you need to get to know real women not little girls. That list applies only to confused (and immature) little girls.

Oh, well of course!!!! 
If I had the opportunity, I would definitely take it, i mean we're talking possible once in a lifetime opportunity here. 
These would be my choices in no particular order: Blair underwood, Stuart Townsend, Chris Tucker--Although I think he'll prolly be cracking jokes half the time, LOL. 
and Johnny Depp--this guy looks like the type that you would definitely have fun with in bed.

I have dated short guys before, and I wouldn't mind doing it again. (The shortest was about two inches shorter than I am). Although my current beau is taller than I am it doesn't add or take away from our relationship. When it comes down to it, it is people's personality that matters. Jerks and stupid people come in tall and short sizes.
BTW: Napoleon, arguably one of the most powerful men in history, was about 4'11.

Someone said it is natural for women to go after men with money as if it is justification for that behavior. Yet when men say things like "It is natural for men to cheat" we scold and say things like "abeg, make we hear word!" Or "Nonsense and ingeredients"
And justifiably so.
We are all thinking human beings and this is what separates us from animals. We have the capabilty to think before we make decisions and to weigh out the consequences of our actions. We know wrong from right, and so there's no reason to mask it with "it's natural".  As much as many women and even self-proclaimed feminists will roar that they want equal treatments, at the end of the day, when they have the choice between marrying someone who makes the same amount as them or someone who makes more, many people will choose to go after the man that makes more. This is not fairness. This problem in itself has been used to justify why men cheat. This was one of the reasons polygamy continued for as long as it did--because women were married to rich men who took care of them financially, they gave up their dignity. If you truly want fairness, then demand that your husband let you pay at least half of the bills or demand to be able to flex your financial muscle in your household.

Many women go to schools, some go for Ivy League education and start a career once they get their degree. But when they are about to get married, they give up their job--or start working part-time--to marry a rich husband and become stay at home moms, because that is usually what you have to do if your husband's working hard to pay the bills. Unfortunately, this is prolly one of the reasons that there's still no female president in the U.S., one of the most liberal countries in the world. Enough women are not willing to dedicate to the job field like men are. Although many women are changing things, more women must learn to make sacrifices if they truly desire equality. 

On the other hand, there are women who don't mind marrying rich men and becoming housewives. If this is their choice, then there's nothing wrong with it. However, for those who are demanding equal treatment, it is important to consider this decision a little further.

I think if women want to be treated fairly, and equally, like so many wants, they need to stop being materialistc and start being more independent. Women like to complain that the world is biased and things are not fair, there's no equality, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, when given the choice between marrying someone who makes the same amount of money as they do or someone who's rich, many women will choose the rich man. If a man is working hard to bring in money and pay most of the bill, then the woman must make sacrifices to compensate his hard work, i.e. staying at home and taking care of the kids, letting him make majority of the decisions in the household, etc,
However, if you're working hard to take care of your share of the finances--more or less-- I believe you'll be in a better position to demand fairness and equality.
Personally speaking, i see nothing wrong in marrying a man who makes the same amount of money or even less than I do.

Interesting thread. I had crushes when I was younger, but they weren't real love. My first real love was with a guy I met through one of my friends. It was pretty innocent at first. We'd just make fun of each other, playfully tap each other, etc,  but later things got very serious. We tried really hard to keep it secret from his parents and at first, even lied to our friends. He was Mexican in love with a naija chick and we knew his parents would take an issue with that. Same thing with my parents who thought I shouldn't be looking at anybody but naija guys. All our friends knew it, but we'd deny that we had anything going on. But the minute we were alone, it was a different story.
His father was killed in an car accident and the family had to move to stay with relatives. We tried the long distance thing for a while, but it just didn't work.

t4cash:

@Nia

I am travelling at the moment, so my contributions to our little intellectual tango will be spottier.

You dodged my question Ok then.

I have just 1 minute to go, so I'd be quick. Me thinks the future of Nigerian women is that there will be a lot of single moms.

Alright, do what you gotta do, i'll be here. Regarding the bolded part of the above, you should back it up with some reasons and concrete proof, otherwise it just sounds like one of those things Nigerians like to say to try to discourage their people (specifically their women) from standing up for themselves. What's more, it might be mistaken for wishful thinking on your part.

The generalizations on this thread is just terrible.
While I don't agree with bathing just twice a week, there's some truth in what the teacher is saying. For women, overwashing privates increases the chance of getting an infection because it kills normal flora whose function is to help fight infection. We need not easily dismiss everything we hear. I suggest people at least talk to a doctor or nurse for better clarification.

@ t4cash

I am saving these two for whenever I feel like a hearty chuckle.

It's good that we can share knowledge and put a smile on each other's faces at the same time. 

So women decide what form marriage should take,  in which society? 

read my post again.

Assuming we are focussing on monogamy in Nigeria. Monogamy is the norm here today because it is the Christian doctrine. We were colonized and adopted it. if the Africans or moslems had done the colonizing it would be different. Of course I know you will reply that even Moslems are adopting monogamy but my dear, all the moslem men I know only observe monogamy on paper. And like all traditions it is not set in stone. In the very West we got it from, 30% of marriages end in divorce and it is under serious duress. Charles Handy the futurist once predicted that the standard lifetime marriage contract should be modified to a 7 year renewable contract (roughly the time most couples last before their marital harmony is exhasted). Monogamy is a comedy of contradictions (because Men are from Mars and women are from Venus  ) but so also is life and we still choose it over suicide.

I'm not sure what this has to do with what I wrote. The focus of our discussion was why polygamy was practiced and for what purpose. Yes, many African countries went through several changes after colonization. However, any kind of marriage institution--be it monogamy or polygamy--needs the approval of both sexes to thrive.

You wrote that "monogamy is a comedy of contradictions", feel free to explain this a little further.

In the very West we got it from, 30% of marriages end in divorce and it is under serious duress.

I hear this from many Nigerians--and other Africans--that Africans are somehow superior to the West because they don't have a high percentage of divorce rate. (Actually, I believe it's more like 50%, not 30%).
Arguments like this, IMO, are one of the worst and most fallible one we could ever use to claim superiority.

Nigerians don't have a high percentage of divorce rates because:

>>>Our society has made marriage a DO or DIE affair. Even if you're miserable in your marriage, you're encouraged to smile and be happy. When this was the case in the West, you didn't have 50% percent divorce rate neither.

>>>No concrete study has ever been done to discover how many people are HAPPY in their marriages

>>>We lack proper infrastructures as a society and an encouraging environment for people to make decisions without fearing social stigmas--unlike in the West where people are free to do as they wish-- and without being punished for doing things that goes against social norms. Don't mistake fear and tolerance for happiness.

>>>We are a heavily superstitious people and we believe heavily in mysticism, i.e. God, the Bible, the Quran, babalawo, evil spirits,  et cetera,

>>We are difficient in providing our people, and especially women, with opportunities for advancement in life, so women are more likely to tolerate a bad marriage when they have no reliable income of their own.

And the list goes one,

Take all these away, and if you don't get your high divorce rate, then you might be onto something. 

Nia, sorry let me ask, have you married and do you reside where?

: ) I'm not sure how this is relevant to the discussion

Any way the topic is "Is there any man who hasn't cheated on his wife" we are off-topic.

Hmnn,   not necessarily. A good amount our discussion here trails back to answer this question or at least shed light on why anyone would ask such a question (i.e. stereotypes and generalizations, vs. reality). And in any case, public discussions might be informative for some people. or at the very least, entertaining.

t4cash:

@Nia,

I conceded to you not because I could not still find holes in that wonderful reply but because it was so deliciously put, I didnt want to spoil things by arguing with it. Furthermore, I have learnt that a gentleman must let the woman have the last word.

So I am only here to illuminate what you mention above (at least I hope my comments to follow will be seen by you in this light) not to reopen our previous point of argument.

@ t4cash, Disproving my statements does not make you less of a gentleman, not in my view. You have my full permission to poke as many holes as you can find in whatever i write. I don't know you personally and you don't know me, so it's all good. We should learn from each other and not let formalities get in the way of attaining knowledge.

Humans today are more sexual- true. But do you know why? It is because of the discovery and widespread usage of contraception (and abortion). It has seriously reduced (if not removed) the consequences (children) of sexual activity.In the past you had to be rich to practice polygamy because if you are poor and you bang anyhow, who will take care of the kids? Now men can afford to have sex without kids following. It affects both sides in the relationship. The question now is if this is so, why is it that more men are taking more advantage of this? Is it because they love sex more? Is it because biologically their involvement in child bearing ends at ejaculation? I do not want to argue further with you. So I will allow you to provide the answer (and will accept it)

There is no research to back up what you have claimed. If you have any evidence of this, please provide it, otherwise, we will just embark on long discussions about Hypothesis and formulations without any concrete evidence.
Contraceptives and the right to abortion are important for women.  They have been heavily discriminated against in the past, and this is still the case in many parts of the world. Women have also been told what to do with their body, in one form or the other. As we become more humanitarian, we have learned that individuals should have the right to decide what they do with their own body. I don't want us to digress into PROLIFE vs PROCHOICE argument, cause I feel those types of dicussions usually don't change anything and just wastes time, so I'll leave it there.


Oversexualization in society affects both men and women because most men are having sex with WOMEN, not each other. So if more men are having more sex, then it follows that more women are having more sex too. You seem to be placing this in the context of just men, but the discussion would flow better if it is balanced out and placed in the context of BOTH men and Women and how changes in social norms and stigmas are changing how both groups of people interact with each other.

My posts about men finding it hard to be faithful were really referring to nigerian husbands (i.e. those living in Nigeria or still in a Nigerian state of mind). In the Western world, artificial CONSEQUENCES have been introduced for sexual activity that have put men in check. If you have a child in or out of wedlockyou have to provide for it. Even if this was whilst you were a teenager. You can go to jail for not doing so. Also if your wife divorces you, you will lose half of your income for life. These consequences are not there in the Nigerian milieu. A woman who packs her bags and leaves because she discovered her husband was philandeering (mind you, in the West the man has to leave), will be sent back by her parents kia kia.

I understand that there's cases of people who prefer polygamy among Nigerian men, but majority of the people favor monogamy. And like I stated earlier, their desire for polygamy has more to do with sex than the real polygamy the older generations practiced. When I say things have become sexualized, I wasn't excluding Nigerians. Compared to the way the much older generations were, Nigeria is sexualized, although not as much as the Western world. Our society no longer elevates people for having many wives like it did in the past, so there's no real incentive to practice polygamy except for sexual pleasures or just to have many children. And in these cases--just like in the past--the men must take full care of their spouses.


You wrote:

In the Western world, artificial CONSEQUENCES have been introduced for sexual activity that have put men in check. If you have a child in or out of wedlockyou have to provide for it. Even if this was whilst you were a teenager. You can go to jail for not doing so. Also if your wife divorces you, you will lose half of your income for life. These consequences are not there in the Nigerian milieu. A woman who packs her bags and leaves because she discovered her husband was philandeering (mind you, in the West the man has to leave), will be sent back by her parents kia kia.

I'm posting this quote again to highlight the differences in attitudes about the same subject--polygamy--in different geographical locations. This changes in attitude critically affects how things play out. One of the reasons Polygamy in Nigeria continued to prosper was because women allowed it. One of the reason they allowed it was because they were not offered the same opportunities (i.e. to go to school and have a career and make their own money) like their male counterparts. Women are now deciding to no longer condone it, and a good number of men are also choosing to abandone polygamy which i think will affect societies and attititudes in Nigeria in the long run.

@t4cash

Thanks, 
I look forward to more discussions in the future.


@ chinani
Yes, there might be people who prefer to disregard facts and cling to their own version of the truth. But as thinking human beings, we owe it to ourselves to seek out facts and not fall victim to stereotypes and generalizations. Relationships are complicated enough without mixing generalizations and stereotypes. Anyone who choose not to be "open", as you put it, is free to do so. But we don't need to stop discussions for such people.

@ sage


Yes, men and women approach relationships differently. But I don't understand your question.  What we're discussing, is within the context of marriage.  What you do when you're just dating someone is not as relevant as what goes on when you get married.

No, I don't think men only marry women for sex, If this is what you're trying to say. You're free to have sex with whoever you want without marrying them.
I agree that our thinking patterns are different when it comes to many things, including how we approach relationships. 

However, I don't understand how this translates into "problems".

What "problems" do women have?

And what percentage of these women have these problems?

What makes you think that one gender is the only one that have problems? 

No man is an island and men and women ARE NOT solitary animals. We all need each other.

To address your question on sex, our society in the past was not sexualized like it is today. Polygamy was not about sex, like I stated earlier. It was for status, position, and "big man-ism". More people are likely to use sex to justify polygamy today, but that wasn't the case when polygamy emerged in Nigeria. Only those who could afford to practice polygamy did so.

@ t4cash
Thanks for the props, I enjoy reading your post as well.



Now if we want to learn from each other, I believe it's important to separate stereotypes from reality.

t4cash:

@Nia

Once again, I try to leave but you pull me back.

You have a sound intellect. I love that. Yet your argument is filled with holes.

If polygamy is solely economic and not gender-related, why is it that the so many rich women all over the world today have not become polyandrous? Yes, some women cheat or sleep around but how many are living with several men whom they married. Lets be honest, women are naturally monogamous.

I stated earlier that Polygamy was about the MAN raising his status. When a man is rich enough to marry--and keep--many women, his status is elevated in society. However, conventional wisdom tells us that this is not the case for women. As it was in the past, a woman who is rich and well-educated cannot elevate her status by marrying multiple men. Why? because she will be labeled a "slut", "ho" and other creative names people can come up with. Her option is to run around and have secret affairs without actually marrying these men so as to avoid all the stigma from society, which has proven to be the case among a number of independent and financially secure women.

Polyandry--the situation where one woman marries several men-- is a reality in Tibet,
although it doesn't receive the same attention as polygamy. It is also present in  parts of India. In Tibet, women practice polyandry because of society and it's demand:  The number of men in Tibet greatly outnumber the women, so you have a case of three to four men married to one woman.

A sizable number of men do not cherish monogamy. It is something they endure to make their loved  one happy. PLEASE NOTE I DID NOT SAY ALL MEN.

Like I stated earlier, most people DO support monogamy, and the people you are reffering to are in the minority.   
I never accused you of saying that all men cheat. But when you tell babymine that she is being "optimistic" because she thinks that "MOST" men are faithful so she doesn't play the fool, it leads to the issue of checking reality with stereotypes.

Which brings me to the part where you said:

It is women who invest emotions into sexual relationships. Men are usually merely physically involved and emotionally detached. When men do love, they can easily "love" several women. Of course women will dispute this vigorously.

I can't speak for you and you can't speak for me. I don't know how or if you're capable of love But this is another stereotype that I feel can only be dispelled by personal experiences. Like I stated earlier, Most human beings need a sense of security, be it emotional or otherwise. 

Within the last year, there have been several cases of African men who live in the U.S. killing their wives after she tries to leave them. Most of the time, these men have invested a lot in these women, (i.e. helped pay for their education and helped them with their career), and are ready to settle down with them, until kata kata bust and the woman desides to pack up and leave. You need to feel secure when you invest in another human being, this is not a case of whether you are a man or woman, but about human beings in general.

Read my post please. I did not say or imply "Do not trust your spouse/father/brother" or "go around thinking everyone are cheaters". I said DO NOT VOUCH FOR THEM PUBLICLY. There is a big difference. You see, I always use precise words, you never need to infer things for me. If I want to say "all men" I would never say "many men." If I want to say "Do not trust" I would not say "Do not vouch." This is what is stressing me out. Most often posters infers things that are no where in my post.

Fair enough, but I don’t think I inferred anything that wasn’t in your post. This is what you wrote on page two:

So I advise the original poster, assume that your husband is a cheat (though do not tell him so). that way you will not be disappointed if you find out he does.

Then on page 3 you wrote:

Blessed are the pessimistic, for they shall never be disappointed. Better to believe that Nigerian men cheat (or as rather, tend towards polygamy) than to live in fantasyland and get hurt needlessly.

I don’t see where the miscommunication is.

As for the example about one's wife. Human beings are ultimately not 100% reliable (that is what it means to say one is "only human". Other posters elsewhere in this forum (mostly women ) have written that between 5% and 30% of children are raised by men who think they are their biological father but are actually not. So at least a significant number of wives cheat to the point of allowing a man to raise another man's child. Do I trust my wife despite this statistic? Yes. Yet she is still a human being. So, let me explain : even if any our kids are not mine, I do not care (because at least they are hers and I love her). If she messed up she must have been a good reason. This is what "trust" should mean in a relationship.

I think it is good for you that you have that kind of bond with your wife, enough to not get upset with raising other men’s children. However, most people are not like that. When I say we are “only human”, I don’t mean that we are not reliable, not at all. I mean that most people who discover their partners are unfaithful are likely to feel rejected and the need to retaliate. 

People use the word "Love" wrongly. The word "Love" implies a "no-matter-what." God loves you. Your mother may love you. Most people who claim to be in love are actually not. That is why many modern marriages are failing. Any way lets not go off-topic.

In some sense I agree with you. Love is not a fairy tale, but it still demands trust, respect, and fairness. Anything less will put it on shaky grounds.

Yes. I agree that people are entitled to monogamy. BUT NOT FOR THE REASON YOU GIVE. It is because most marriages today are coontracts under common law (if it was in Church it is also under Canon law). They have therefore agreed to be MONOGAMOUS. That was why I said, "Guys you gave your word to her, you should keep it "

Again, I have to disagree. Even if we are NOT under common law, MANY PEOPLE WILL STILL DEMAND MONOGAMY. As long as human beings are still emotional beings, and can experience jealousy, etc,  they will still demand monogamy. It is there to keep society civil and because it is the only way to keep baba Mustafa from blowing baba tunde’s head off after he finds out that Mustafa is actually Baba Tunde’s son.

As for the claims that i am making generalizations I believe I cleared that up in my last post. I still maintain that even if only 5% of men cheat it is enough to take a stance to not go and be vouching publicly for anybody.

I think you’re referring to what davidylan wrote about his father. Maybe we cannot always know people who are close to us as well as we think, but then again, we don’t know what kind of relationship davidylan has with his father and we don’t know what kind of man his father is. Logically speaking, since he is the best person who knows his father on this site, then we can only assume that he has more authority on the truth about his father’s fidelity than anyone else on this site.


I hope I have not misunderstood you again.

Peace.

t4cash:

@Nia
You are preaching to the choir. Basically you are telling me that women will retaliate (especially the independent ones).
What makes you believe that I think they should not/ can not/ will not? Or that I even care that/if they do?
If you knew me better you would have realised that I would probably agree with you that women who catch their spouses cheating are entitled to cheat. But mostly I would still say to a female friend who sought my advice about this, "we don't do things because we can, two wrongs won't make a right. Think everything through." believe it or not, I know many men who even want their wives to cheat because they are tired of the marriage, and are looking for a way out.
Many women choose to leave instead.
The state of Nigerian men's mentality is still mainly polygamous. Nigerian women who have become convinced that monogamy is their "right" (remember that this to some Africanists this is arguable) have to deal with this. Each woman who finds herself facing our current situation can make her choice of how to deal with it. Cheat also if you like. Choose not to marry if you like. Whatever! Someone I know uses a private detective and if she finds her husband chreating, she will go to the girls house and beat her up. Some choose to agree with their man he can date others but with caveats.  It's your life.
But trying to live in an immaginary situation that this situation is otherwise (or that your husband/brother/father is somewhat different) I am warning is futile and potentially embarassing. If you are replying me please reply to this.
What women should choose to do is not what I posted on.

@t4cash
I respect your view, but I do not agree with it. Polygamy in Nigeria was not about sex. It was about economics and it was a financial arrangement. The amount of wife you had showed how wealthy you were. The fact that you can take care of more than one woman elevated your status in our culture.  In fact, the reason women rarely spoke out against it was because they were financially secure and were taken care of. In exchange for being taken care of, they did not speak out against polygamy.   
You can still see the result of this in many women who chase after rich men. Some people also practiced polygamy to have many children who can either assist on the farm, and others practiced it to have many children in case some of them die off, etc,, 

In most cases, however,  the people who pracitced polygamy were those who could AFFORD to do so, i.e the rich and powerful. 


Now Fastforward to the 21st century
You now have a culture that has become heavily oversexed and now the issue of polygamy needs to be revisited. What is happening is that some are now trying to justify lack of sexual restraint by claiming that polygamy was part of our culture because the men couldn't say no. I disagree.
Using sex or lack of sexual restraint to justify past poligamy is to do injustice to the real facts behind the emergence of poligamy in our culture.

Most people prefer monogamy because we humans are emotional beings and we need to feel secure in our unions. One reason being that when we marry someone, we want to know that all our investment in that person--time, emotion, care, offsprings--will not be jeopardized.

You say that people shouldn't assume their loved ones are faithful. But the fact is that most people ARE faithful. (Bad) generalizations are never a good bases on which to build anything concrete.

If you believe that your wife is running around with other men or that the child you think is yours might not be yours, do you think that is better than being made a fool of? And if you happen to be wrong? Exactly how will this make the relationship better?

Which is why I can't understand why anyone who wants to be in a healthy relationship will go around thinking every man or woman is a cheater just so they don't look like a fool.

To address your question: people are entitled to monogamy. Like I stated earlier, women were not expected to work or do anything difficult. They were to be taken care of by their husbands whenever they needed anything. This is one of the reason polygamy continued. Today, there's more opportunity for women to better themselves. To work hard to attain what they want without relying on men. Likewise there's no longer a way to justify polygamy.

t4cash:

Dear Nia,

Nothing in my quote indicates this statement i.e. "most women" being naive. You are welcome to re-read. Obviously after many posters came on and said I can swear so-and-so never cheated, I just wanted to throw a dash of some cold reality for "those" people. Including the pastor's son.

Never vouch for anyone, or you may be making a fool out of yourself.

Many men are careless, but some are really good. So good that even their close friends will swear they don't have time for women. I for example, long mastered how to never look at other women even those in body-hugging clothes including if I am walking alone. And when I cheated, it was always during office hours. My coming home time never changed. It was always with people who also had relationships (i.e. we both had something to lose if discovered) hence no phone calls etc. So many polygamists are never suspected talk less discovered.

As for
Again I do not know where you got that I think so. Let me just say that two wrongs do not make a right. You will get nothing from cheating back.

Only religion can save a Nigerian man.

But again I must state that the fact that most participants in this forum are unmarried people prevents a serious discussion about this topic. Just my 2cents.

It's all good. 
You're explaining your reality and i'm explaining mine. I wasn't trying to attack. Everything I wrote was a response to your assertions. You say that women should assume or accept that their men are cheating and I was saying that people are only human and when a well educated and financially stable woman thinks her partner is cheating, she will most likely cheat too because she knows she'll be fine--financially and otherwise--if her infidelity is made public.  Like you, I am also speaking from experience, and if you do a little research, you will find that this is usually the case, although I am not saying that this is the only reason women cheat.
More and more women are cheating because--unlike in the past--they are now able to take care of themselves without their husbands. Again, this is the reality, not my opinion. I hope that's clear enough.


Peace

It seems the hot topics on this forum is about cheating, and it's always interesting to hear other people's perspective, even if I don't agree with them. Which is why I'm bringing this issue: My girl friends and I have been tight/real close since college. We've been through it all together, and in our circle of friends, everyone is always telling me their dirty deeds knowing that I'm the least likely person to reveal it. The problem is that I don't always want to to know their deeds, cause I know innocent people will get hurt. For example:

One of them is about to get married and she already plans to have an affair with another (younger) man whom she works with. I know because the young man has hit on her several times and she always welcomes his advances. I'm not sure if she's not doing it already. Her fiance and I work together on a publication for football/soccer for a local school and I've known him to be a stand-up individual for some time now. He has been like a mentor to me now for some time because of our mutual interest in soccer.

Another is a sex addict, and I didn't believe the rumor that girls from Calabar had a big sexual appetite until I met her. I have encouraged her to try to get help, but she laughs and says it's not a big deal. She also plans to get married and I doubt her husband can keep her from straying.

A third is a feminist and has little regard for men or their feelings (although i'm not saying there's anything wrong with feminism) I think partly because of what her father did to her mother, (Her mother did not believe in polygamy and her father, being muslim felt he should take more than one wife like the book says. Her mother just got pregant with her at the time and her mom left her dad for another man when he would not agree to monogamy).
 

Personally, I am afraid of the consequences of their actions because those who will suffer from it will likely be their kids. And sometimes I feel like I should slap my friends, but to be honest I love them and I'm not the type to rat out a friend, no matter how guilty I feel. (Even now I feel bad writing this on the web).

I'd like to hear different perspectives on this question: WOULD YOU TELL ON YOUR FRIEND IF SHE/HE WAS CHEATING?

I think the issue of marriage is too important to base it solely on where you're from. I am naija and I enjoy my experiences with men from other races and culture. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. When I decide to get married, it will have to be my decision and my parents will have to respect it because i'm the one who has to live with the person I marry. The important thing is finding a good person.

@t4cash

Do you really think most women are that naive?
And in 2006? Do you think a woman who believe her man is cheating on her will quietly let it go on and not do the same to him?
Unless you're married to an uneducated individual or someone with little means to provide for themselves, most well-educated individuals know they have the option to leave their men if they choose to (which would most likely be the result if her infidelity is known) and not have to worry about financial woes, etc,

@ babymine

You seem convinced that all men are cheaters. 
I suggest you take Seun's advice and leave them alone then, cause I doubt you can have a healthy relationship or a strong bond with anyone if you can't trust them.

XXXdouble postXXX

@ Chinani
I don't know your professor , and i'm not trying to get technical,  but according to the American Association of Blood Banks, 30% of alleged fathers (in America) tested (in 2003) are not the biological fathers of the children they were taking care of, thinking was their child, (or paying child support for), although this is irregardless of marital status. Now the percentage of those who DON'T KNOW is debatable, for obvious reasons.  I stated the issue of men raising children who don't belong to them to highlight the effect of "normalizing" cheating or the assumption that it's a one-sided situation, like the thread seems to insinuate. Now, this number does not reflect the amount of women who cheat, and I never stated that it did, because common sense tells us that women don't get pregnant every time they have sex. Regarding the myths that everyone or everyman cheats, I'll refer you to this article by Psychology Today, maybe it can help clarify stereotypes from the actual fact. While it may be different in Nigeria in the past, based on my experiences in the US, women are just as bad as men when it comes to cheating, though, like you stated they will remain more quiet about it, making polls irrelevant, more or less.
I think people who want to cheat will cheat no matter what, but I also think the signs are always there, if you pay attention and choose your partner wisely.   

Here's the article, I think it's an interesting and somewhat more realistic perspective:




Myths of Infidelity

By: PT Staff
Summary: Everybody is unfaithful. It's normal, expectable behavior. But the truth is most people are faithful most of the time.


The people who are running from bed to bed creating disasters for themselves and everyone else don't seem to know what they are doing. They just don't get it. But why should they? There is a mythology about infidelity that shows up in the popular press and even in the mental health literature that is guaranteed to mislead people and make dangerous situations even worse. Some of these myths are:

1.        Everybody is unfaithful; it is normal, expectable behavior. Mozart, in his comic opera Cosi Fan Tutti, insisted that women all do it, but a far more common belief is that men all do it: "Higgamous, hoggamous, woman's monogamous; hoggamous, higgamous, man is polygamous." In Nora Ephron's movie Heartburn, Meryl Streep's husband has left her for another woman. She turns to her father for solace, but he dismisses her complaint as the way of all male flesh: "If you want monogamy, marry a swan."

We don't know how many people are unfaithful; if people will lie to their own husband or wife, they surely aren't going to be honest with poll takers. We can guess that one-half of married men and one-third of married women have dropped their drawers away from home at least once. That's a lot of infidelity.
Still, most people are faithful most of the time. Without the expectation of fidelity, intimacy becomes awkward and marriage adversarial. People who expect their partner to betray them are likely to beat them to the draw, and to make both of them miserable in the meantime.

Most species of birds and animals in which the male serves some useful function other than sperm donation are inherently monogamous. Humans, like other nest builders, are monogamous by nature, but imperfectly so. We can be trained out of it, though even in polygamous and promiscuous cultures people show their true colors when they fall blindly and crazily in love. And we have an escape clause: nature mercifully permits us to survive our mates and mate again. But if we slip up and take a new mate while the old mate is still alive, it is likely to destroy the pair bonding with our previous mate and create great instinctual disorientation—which is part of the tragedy of infidelity.

2. Affairs are good for you; an affair may even revive a dull marriage. Back at the height of the sexual revolution, the Playboy philosophy and its Cosmopolitan counterpart urged infidelity as a way to keep men manly, women womanly, and marriage vital. Lately, in such books as Annette Lawson's Adultery and Dalma Heyn's The Erotic Silence of the American Wife, women have been encouraged to act out their sexual fantasies as a blow for equal rights.


It is true that if an affair is blatant enough and if all hell breaks loose, the crisis of infidelity can shake up the most petrified marriage, Of course, any crisis can serve the same detonation function, and burning the house down might be a safer, cheaper, and more readily forgivable attention-getter
However utopian the theories, the reality is that infidelity, whether it is furtive or blatant, will blow hell out of a marriage. In 30 odd years of practice, I have encountered only a handful of established first marriages that ended in divorce without someone being unfaithful, often with the infidelity kept secret throughout the divorce process and even for years afterwards. Infidelity is the sine qua non of divorce.

3.  People have affairs because they aren't in love with their marriage partner. People tell me this, and they even remember it this way. But on closer examination it routinely turns out that the marriage was fine before the affair happened, and the decision that they were not in love with their marriage partner was an effort to explain and justify the affair.

Being in love does not protect people from lust. Screwing around on your loved one is not a very loving thing to do, and it may be downright hostile. Every marriage is a thick stew of emotions ranging from lust to disgust, desperate love to homicidal rage. It would be idiotic to reduce such a wonderfully rich emotional diet to a question ("love me or love me not?" so simplistic that it is best asked of the petals of daisies. Nonetheless, people do ask themselves such questions, and they answer them.

Falling out of love is no reason to betray your mate. If people are experiencing a deficiency in their ability to love their partner, it is not clear how something so hateful as betraying him or her would restore it.

4. People have affairs because they are oversexed. Affairs are about secrets. The infidelity is not necessarily in the sex, but in the dishonesty.

Swingers have sex openly, without dishonesty and therefore without betrayal (though with a lot of scary bugs). More cautious infidels might have chaste but furtive lunches and secret telephone calls with ex-spouses or former affair partners—nothing to sate the sexual tension, but just enough to prevent a marital reconciliation or intimacy in the marriage.

Affairs generally involve sex, at least enough sex to create a secret that seals the conspiratorial alliance of the affair, and makes the relationship tense, dangerous, and thus exciting. Most affairs consist of a little bad sex and hours on the telephone. I once saw a case in which the couple had attempted sex once 30 years before and had limited the intimacy in their respective marriages while they maintained their sad, secret love with quiet lunches, pondering the crucial question of whether or not he had gotten it all the way in on that immortal autumn evening in 1958.

In general, monogamous couples have a lot more sex than the people who are screwing around.

5. Affairs are ultimately the fault of the cuckold. Patriarchal custom assumes that when a man screws around it must be because of his wife's aesthetic, sexual, or emotional deficiencies. She failed him in some way. And feminist theory has assured us that if a wife screws around it must be because men are such assholes. Many people believe that screwing around is a normal response to an imperfect marriage and is, by definition, the marriage partner's fault. Friends and relatives, bartenders, therapists, and hairdressers, often reveal their own gender prejudices and distrust of marriage, monogamy, intimacy, and honesty, when they encourage the infidel to put the blame on the cuckold rather than on him or herself.


One trick for avoiding personal blame and responsibility is to blame the marriage itself (too early, too late, too soon after some event) or some unchangeable characteristic of the partner (too old, too tall, too ethnic, too smart, too experienced, too inexperienced). This is both a cop-out and a dead end.

One marriage partner can make the other miserable, but can't make the other unfaithful. (The cuckold is usually not even there when the affair is taking place.) Civilization and marriage require that people behave appropriately however they feel, and that they take full responsibility for their actions. "My wife drove me to it with her nagging"; "I can't help what I do because of what my father did to me"; "She came on to me and her skirt was very short"; "I must be a sex addict"; et cetera. Baloney! If people really can't control their sexual behavior, they should not be permitted to run around loose.

There is no point in holding the cuckold responsible for the infidel's sexual behavior unless the cuckold has total control over the sexual equipment that has run off the road. Only the driver is responsible.

6.  It is best to pretend not to know. There are people who avoid unpleasantness and would rather watch the house burn down than bother anyone by yelling "Fire!" Silence fuels the affair, which can thrive only in secrecy. Adulterous marriages begin their repair only when the secret is out in the open, and the infidel does not need to hide any longer. Of course, it also helps to end the affair.


A corollary is the belief that infidels must deny their affairs interminably and do all that is possible to drive cuckolds to such disorientation that they will doubt their own sanity rather than doubt their partner's fidelity. In actuality, the continued lying and denial is usually the most unforgivable aspect of the infidelity.

One man was in the habit of jogging each evening, but his wife noticed that his running clothes had stopped stinking. Suspicious, she followed him to his secretary's apartment. She burst in and confronted her husband who was standing naked in the secretary's closet. She demanded: "What are you doing here?" He responded: "You do not see me here. You have gone crazy and are imagining this." She almost believed him, and remains to this day angrier about that than about the affair itself. Once an affair is known or even suspected, there is no safety in denial, but there is hope in admission.

I recently treated a woman whose physician husband divorced her 20 years ago after a few years of marriage, telling her that she had an odor that was making him sick, and he had developed an allergy to her. She felt so bad about herself she never remarried.

I suspected there was more to the story, and sent her back to ask him whether he had been unfaithful to her. He confessed that he had been, but had tried to shield her from hurt by convincing her that he had been faithful and true but that she was repulsive. She feels much worse about him now, but much better about herself. She now feels free to date.

7.          After an affair, divorce is inevitable. Essentially all first-time divorces occur in the wake of an affair. With therapy though, most adulterous marriages can be saved, and may even be stronger and more intimate than they were before the crisis. I have rarely seen a cuckold go all the way through with a divorce after a first affair that is now over. Of course, each subsequent affair lowers the odds drastically.
It doesn't happen the way it does in the movies. The indignant cuckold does scream and yell and carry on and threaten all manner of awful things—which should not be surprising since his or her life has just been torn asunder. But he or she quickly calms down and begins the effort to salvage the marriage, to pull the errant infidel from the arms of the dreaded affaire.

When a divorce occurs, it is because the infidel can not escape the affair in time or cannot face going back into a marriage in which he or she is now known and understood and can no longer pose as the chaste virgin or white knight spotless and beyond criticism. A New Yorker cartoon once showed a forlorn man at a bar complaining: "My wife understands me."

Appropriate guilt is always helpful, though it must come from inside rather than from a raging, nasty spouse; anger is a lousy seduction technique for anyone except terminal weirdos. Guilt is good for you. Shame, however, makes people run away and hide.

The prognosis after an affair is not grim, and those who have strayed have not lost all their value. The sadder but wiser infidel may be both more careful and more grateful in the future.


source:  http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19930501-000028.html

Chinani, actually, I wouldn't be surprised if "one on four" is conservative. I'd say it's prolly much worse than that. I live in America and almost all the married women I know have cheated at one time or the other, though their partners don't know it. It's not as one sided as people might think. Women who cheat are less likely to reveal it, and I think these women are abusinmg the institution of marriage, the same goes for the men.

I don't see the sense in going around assuming every man is a cheater, I think you're doing your future husband a great disservice. I know society would like us to believe it, but it's unhealthy for a monogamous relationship. I remember one of my neighbors back in Lagos who was married to a good man and had a wonderful marriage, or so I thought. Come to find out she had been having an affair with one of her co-workers. One of her reasons for running around was because her husband was probably doing the same thing.  Her husband is an honorable man and it was hard for me to believe he would ever do that to her, but being convinced that most men run around anyway, she couldn't see her husband as being faithful.  I don't support cheating by either married women or men, nor do I think anyone should be praised for remaining faithful. When you make a promise--for better for worse, etc, --you shouldn't be congratulated for keeping that promise. Supposedly one in four men in America is raising a child that doesn't belong to him. I see things being much worse when people start seeing cheating as normal.

I'm with seun on this. I think there's more to a woman who is making good changes in the world and correcting injustice, etc,  than someone with mere culinary and domestic skills. I am a woman and I know how to cook, but I don't feel that it's my job. In my opinion, cooking is not about feeding your husband. Sharing your cooking with someone you love brings you together and shows that you care for them, which is why I feel it should be the job of both husband and wife. Sometimes my husband cooks and sometimes I cook. When we both can't, we can have take out. This way we both have more time to dedicate to our other ways of caring for other people, either saving people's lives (as a doctor), or being a good politician, (a la Okonjo-Iweala), etc,

The situaltion is unlikely to change even when you both get married if you don't talk to him about it. I think you should both talk about it, cause only the both of you can understand your situation better. Let him know it's bothering you and try to reach a compromise.

I, too, disagree with the third term bid. He will be setting a precedence of the (quasi) democracy we are trying out. And whoever comes after him and decides never to leave will be justified to do so by Obj's previous actions. I am yet unconvinced, however, that he will run for a third term cause the country seems too shaky right now to take that chance. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if he places a puppet in the presidencial seat to replace him.

The issue of abortion is a critical one and is rarely so cut and dry. I don't demonize people for commiting abortion because i doubt those who commit abortion enjoy it or do it for frivolous reasons. I encourage prevention, but I don't oppose abortion.

I'd vote for Okonji-Iweala if she was running, but unfortunately, I don't think she'll run.