book-cover
Faith or Family
Nengi Rowland-Douglas
Nengi Rowland-Douglas
6 months ago

It took 10 years for us to get a sound reset in our lives.

It wasn't love at first sight for me when I met Rashid but rather a slow burning candle that erupted into an inferno that had me screaming 'YES!!!!' to his marriage proposal. Rashid would often tell me it was love at first sight for him the moment he met me in the Shuttle Bus at University of Benin main gate going to Hall 2 Hostel and the rest they say is history...

It was a taciturn of events leading up our wedding as neither of our families could understand what we saw in each other & how the match came to be. Don't get me wrong, their sole issue was the fact that we are both devout Christian and Muslim and our families are quite conservative in the aspect of religion, so you can imagine the hurdles we had to cross.

Us being coconut heads that were determined to do this thing called life together, we stood our ground against our family opposition and made it to D-day and obviously what was meant to be the beginning of the rest of our lives. Our parents showed protest to our union to the end by not attending more than 2 hours of any of our wedding ceremonies (we couldn't even think of getting financial support but from our favourite Uncle Abdul).

My Dad would always sneer at Rashid whenever he saw him and my mom would be curt but for her choosing to be polite at least. His parents didn't treat me any warmly as they would both make great effort to tease and ignore whenever I came around, especially his mom (yet she converted to Islam only after marrying Rashids dad o).

We both chose to respect our faiths and that included not pressuring the other person to convert among other things.Hmmmmmm I was definitely sailing the yacht of pure marriage bliss as my Husbandy ( as I loved to call him 🥰) was a total dream. Its no wonder I was slapped back into a hard reality with the mind boggling changes I saw in him later on.

Well well, my Husbandy was so so supportive of me, he was kind, caring, passionate, understanding & very wise. The only major tiff we had was with him not wanting me to be too involved in building a career so as to start a family and we came to a compromise where I got a job with the Edo State Ministry of Finance as opposed to pursuing a demanding career in Investment Banking. I, on the other hand, was a doting wife who made the effort to love my Husbandy in the way he wanted. As you can guess, I am a lover lover 😍, so all bets are off when I'm in love.

I noticed this my premium enjoyment limousine had developed some faults and would eventually pack up when I found out my Husbandy had fathered a 3 year old girl just 6 years into our marriage and 2 years after we tragically lost our little Prince a few months to his 5th Birthday. It didn't end there o, he also chose to marry the mother of the child without my knowledge as he said, following a brief meeting with his parents, they had come to a conclusion that I wouldn't be able to understand the doctrines of a faith I didn't practice.

I was still reeling from the confusion of round one, when round two hit. Oga started to slap me around once in a while as I refused to completely leave my job and be a stay at home wife full time. Hmph, as my parents were sparsely speaking to me through my younger sister, I couldn't even run to them for help self.

The k.o came when Oga began to pressurise me to convert to Islam. It was a bitter pill to swallow when I realized that he had always expected to convert after we got married, citing his own mom as a brilliant example of one who was a devout Christian but is now and even more devout Muslim and she did it in the name of love. He pestered me all the time about how I didn't love him enough to convert eventually he gave me the ultimatum of choosing between my Faith and my Family with him.

Huh, it was a truly tough choice but I don't regret the decision I made after all.

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