Reasons not to say those vows

By KK

1. New relatives

Getting married adds a new stock of relatives to your portfolio. Unfortunately, unlike investors at the stock exchange who get to pick which shares to take, grooms are stuck with their newly acquired wife’s rude father, cranky uncle and her alcoholic always-broke brother.

Until they notice her sister is way hotter than her and curse the heavens.

2. Financial woes

I’ve just done some rough math. The direct and indirect costs of propelling one child all the way to a local university adds up to more than Sh5 million.

The trouble with wives is they want at least a boy and a girl; and African men always want at least one boy. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan and the first two or three kids that pop out turn out to be all girls or all boys. By the time everyone is satisfied, you, the head of the family and major breadwinner, are stuck with more kids than you want or can afford.

3. Paternity issues

So there you are, killing yourself at the office so that those adorable little babies of yours never miss out on anything in life. Here’s a bit of bad news: the media was recently awash with the devastating news that 50 per cent of Kenyan men who took a paternity test discovered the brat who has caused them so much trouble and cost so much isn’t theirs after all. I can’t even begin to imagine the shock of discovering you could have escaped all that trouble.

Getting out of this mess is a difficult undertaking. All your options seem closed.

First, the little brat calls you daddy. Second, if you kill your cheating wife for making you raise another man’s offspring, you go to jail.

Besides, she cleverly made sure some of the kids are yours. Even if you leave her, you still owe her child support.

Cheer up. American men have it worse. The law there actually says any children born in a marriage are presumed to be the husband’s, even if a DNA test proves otherwise. So if she cheats and gets pregnant, too bad. Someone else had all the fun but the brat belongs to you.

4. You might be in a ‘Starter marriage’

A starter marriage is one that lasts less than five years and ends before the couple has children.

Starter marriages are based on the idea among women that marriage is the ‘new dating’.

Many women today expect to have at least two husbands in their lifetime. Imagine that. You marry a girl, she makes you suffer, makes you spend all your money on her and she doesn’t even intend to stick with you for the long haul. You’re there to tide her over until she finds someone better or she gets bored.

Are you still going to say those vows?