There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with being a single woman in Nigeria. It doesn’t always arrive as a direct question. Sometimes it is the knowing look from an auntie at a wedding. Sometimes it is the friend who suddenly appoints herself your relationship consultant. And sometimes it is the seemingly innocent, “So, are you seeing anyone?” asked with the seriousness of a medical diagnosis.
The assumption is usually the same: if you are single, you must be looking. Looking for a man, looking for love, looking for someone to marry, looking for the person who will finally make your life complete.
I’ve had enough of that conversation.
Being single is not a problem I need to solve. It is simply the reality of my life at this moment and, honestly, there are days when I quite like it. This isn’t an argument against marriage. I would like to meet someone I genuinely want to build a life with. I believe in love and companionship. But wanting those things and being desperate to acquire them are very different.
Somewhere along the line, we turned marriage into one of the great markers of female achievement. Get a good job, do well for yourself, marry, have children. Preferably in that order and preferably before anyone starts becoming concerned.
Once you are single for what people consider a little too long, everybody has a theory. Are you too picky? Are you dating? Have you prayed about it? Are you putting yourself out there? Perhaps you work too much. Maybe you intimidate men. Maybe you should go out more. Or less. Smile more. Give that perfectly unsuitable man another chance because, apparently, “nobody is perfect.”
What we don’t ask often enough is whether the woman herself is happy.
Being single in Nigeria can sometimes feel like being publicly unemployed from the business of romance. Everybody seems to have an opinion about your status, and somehow your relationship history becomes available for family meetings, church conversations and dinner-table analysis.
I have learnt, however, that the difficult part isn’t always being single. It is resisting the temptation to measure your life against everybody else’s timeline.
There are weddings every weekend. Engagement photographs appear on Instagram with alarming regularity. Friends are buying homes with their partners, having children and celebrating anniversaries. Meanwhile, you might be at home trying to decide whether dinner is worth cooking for one.
It can occasionally feel as though everybody else has received instructions for adulthood that somehow missed your inbox.
But marriage isn’t a race, and neither is life.
I have watched people rush into relationships because they were terrified of being left behind. I have also watched people remain in unhappy ones because starting again seemed more frightening than staying. Being partnered is not the same thing as being fulfilled, just as being single is not proof that something has gone wrong.
There is also a freedom in this season of my life that I have learnt not to dismiss simply because society considers it temporary. My time is largely my own. I can make plans spontaneously, travel, spend a Saturday doing absolutely nothing, throw myself into work, have dinner with friends or change my mind without having to consult another person.
Of course, a good relationship brings its own joys, and compromise is part of sharing a life with someone. I look forward to that with the right person. What I no longer believe is that companionship is worth having at any cost. I would rather have my own company than be with someone and still feel alone.
And yes, sometimes being single is difficult.
There are evenings when you want your person to call. There are weddings where arriving alone feels more noticeable than it should. There are moments when something wonderful happens, and you wish there were one particular person you could tell before everyone else.
I won’t romanticise that away.
But loneliness and singleness are not interchangeable. You can be lonely inside a marriage and deeply loved outside one. Friendship matters. Family matters. Faith, community, meaningful work and the ordinary routines that make a life feel like yours all matter too. Romantic love can be a beautiful part of life, but it cannot be asked to carry the entire weight of it.
Perhaps the better lesson for women is not simply how to find a partner, but how to build a life worth bringing someone into.
Have your people. Make your own money. Find things that excite you. Travel if you can. Learn to enjoy your own company. Know what you want and, perhaps more importantly, what you are no longer prepared to tolerate.
Then love, when it comes, doesn’t have to rescue you from your life. It gets to join you in it.
I don’t want to marry because the questions have become uncomfortable. I don’t want to choose someone because another birthday has arrived or because everyone else appears to have moved ahead. And I certainly don’t want to wake up years into a marriage and realise I traded my peace for the appearance of having arrived.
I want the real thing.
Until then, my life is not in a waiting room. There is no missing piece I am frantically searching for, no deadline I am racing towards and no apology required because there is no ring on my finger.
If love comes, it will find me already living.
