I am just a simple girl who wants nothing but the best out of life, but people tell me I am crazy, or that I am asking for too much. However, I don’t think that they are right. Because they don’t understand where I come from, or how I grew up. If they did, they would have understood why I have set these standards for myself. First of all, I had a difficult childhood due to the financial struggles my parents had to suffer. The only thing I am thankful for is even though things were hard, my parents tried their best to see me through school. And now in my mid-twenties, I am a general nurse who joined the Ghana Army. So I am a military nurse.
This means I am no longer the poor little girl whose parents had to toil day and night to gather scraps here and there just so the family could eat less than three square meals in a day. I am no longer the scared little girl who wore clothes till the prints faded out because buying pretty clothes was a luxury her parents could not afford. Now, I am a grown woman who earns enough money to afford all my basic needs and can even save to buy myself a car or anything I want. I am not where I want to be yet, but I am so far away from my beginning and that’s something I cherish.
However, I am afraid that I will make one wrong move and I will lose the comfort I currently have. I know it sounds crazy but I am genuinely afraid of being poor again. This is why I do not want to date a poor man. It doesn’t matter to me if he is struggling but has potential. I have seen poverty with my own two eyes so I do not want to risk my children’s future on mere potential. The problem is, that narrows my options in the dating field. The last guy I dated was someone I met in my final year at nursing school. He was everything I wanted in a man but our relationship lasted for just a few months. That’s because he wanted us to engage in pre-marital sex, and it was something I wasn’t ready for. I told him several times that I didn’t want to do it but he kept putting pressure on me. So I walked away and never looked back, even though it broke my heart.
I know in today’s world this may sound old-fashioned, but I am a virgin who is saving myself for marriage. So no matter how much I want to be with someone, I won’t sleep with them if we are not married. Now, it isn’t that I go about parading my virginity in people’s faces and act as if that makes me more special than anyone else. I am also not holding on to it because of religion. Because although I am a Christian, I don’t consider myself a religious person. I just believe things get messy between couples when sex is introduced into relationships. And I don’t want to deal with any of it, so I would prefer to just wait and do it with my husband.
Because of this, my friends are telling me that my standards
are too high. They tell me, “Esi, where do you expect to meet a rich man who is God-fearing, will treat you right, and also agree to do no shuperu before marriage? That’s like looking for a unicorn in a non-magical world. You can either have a man who is trying to succeed and willing to wait till marriage or you can have a well-to-do guy who won’t wait till marriage. So be realistic and choose your battle.” Some of my friends also tell me, “Esi, instead of looking for a man who has already made it, why don’t you settle for a man who is working on himself? You are already doing well already, so you don’t need a rich man from the get-go. Whoever you meet, you can help him establish himself and the two of you will build a beautiful family together.”
I know all these people mean well. They don’t want me to spend the rest of my life single and alone. They just want me to find a good man who will love and adore me. And they are afraid that I will get in my own way with my supposedly high expectations.
But I honestly don’t think I am asking for too much. Is it too much to ask for a man to wait till marriage before we do it? Is it too much to ask that the said man is rich so that my unborn children don’t suffer the poverty I endured when I was growing up? I even said if I meet a man who is not crazy rich but he is a medical doctor, I will marry him. Again, my friends think I am crazy and weird for wanting this. Please I need to know, are they right that my standards are too high? Am I really asking for too much out of life?
