Letter to singles above 30 years

Carol Nyangoma Mukisa

What you need to know:

  • Broken relationships have led to more broken goals and finally broken lives. Yes, maybe you were dumped or jilted, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are unworthy, or not good enough. Not everything is meant to be. Maybe you were too good for them and it is just a matter of time you landed your charming soulmate!

Covid-19 is currently the most worrying issue globally. Most countries, including Uganda, are still not sure of their fate regarding the pandemic. Not when the country continues to register increasing Covid-19 cases and deaths.

However, there is a new and widespread trending epidemic in our communities called ‘Not-yet-Married.’ Any one in a company of those 30 and above years, especially women, can testify that this epidemic is encroaching on the focus group’s well-being (30 and above years).

The lockdown has worsened the situation as many singles found themselves locked up all alone. Perhaps some of them are already resorting to drug abuse due to depression. Social media worsened it because it calls for sense of comparison as couples and families post themselves enjoying life during the lockdown.

I do not think singleness is something to be dreaded or lamented about. No one was born dating or married, it is a processes. It is even okayed in the Bible (1st Corinthians 7:8): ‘Now to the unmarried/single and the widows, I say; it is good for them to stay unmarried as I am.

To all the singles, you are just as good, as important and as sufficient as anyone married. Someone’s worth is not woven into their relationship status even if society has made it seem that way. The community is partly to blame for the rising pressure about marriage. We can also blame it on our African culture.

Much as the culture makes marriage sound more prestigious more than life itself, truth is, it is beautiful to be married. We are all crated for community. Ecclesiastes 4:9 says: ‘Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work’.

However, this doesn’t mean peoples’ value is measured according to their marital status! In other words, it is these pressures that are making many young people to make uninformed and irrational relationship decisions. We have seen many girls who lure their boyfriends to conceive and have children with hope of securing a marriage, no wonder the overwhelming number of single parents!

Some people even enter marriage just to calm the society down. Our goal as a community should not be how many couples have been married off, but how many couples have celebrated more anniversaries.

There is more to life than having a marriage ring. Sit down, pick a paper and write down your achievements, celebrate them and be grateful. It could be the lives you have touched or that PhD you just completed! Have special groups you belong to a football team, church community, and also avoid that terrible constant reminder about your singleness by changing your mind- set about how you think about yourself.
Mind what you feed your conscience and subconscious mind.

Broken relationships have led to more broken goals and finally broken lives. Yes, maybe you were dumped or jilted, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are unworthy, or not good enough. Not everything is meant to be. Maybe you were too good for them and it is just a matter of time you landed your charming soulmate!

We ought to stop looking at singleness as a life sentence! So we don’t need to take it so personal and be victims of the situation! Then there is this trend of sticking to people. Yes, everyone crosses our paths for a reason, so it doesn’t mean that whoever we draw closer to, we must get married to them. People will come and go, so we should not hold people captive of the fact that they crossed our paths.

Society, especially the church and families, should clearly trace where the problem is. Are they grooming marriage materials before we blame our products for delaying/failing to get married? It’s too bad that even the names given to the same situation call for more marginalisation. We need to be a tolerant society that does not scrutinise someone over their marital status.

Ms Carol Nyangoma Mukisa is a social analyst and the CEO of Warm Hearts Foundation