I told my mom that marriage isn’t part of my life goals and that the only grandchildren I can afford to give her are cats and she burst into tears. As far as I know, she’s been fasting and praying for God’s intervention ever since. She’s dramatic, but I said what I said.
Marriage, at least in modern times, feels like child’s play. Every other day there’s another heart wrenching story of someone discovering that the person they trusted had been living a completely different life. Imagine investing three years in a relationship, only to find out there had been someone else for eight of those years without your knowledge. I genuinely don’t think I’d recover from that kind of betrayal.
Thing is, the algorithm has been feeding me an endless stream of videos exposing infidelity. Men maintain multiple relationships, lying effortlessly, pretending to care for one woman while giving that same energy to two, three, or even five others. It’s exhausting to watch.
At one point, it got to me so badly that I picked a fight with my boyfriend because I started convincing myself that all men cheat. Looking back, I realize I wasn’t reacting to him; I was reacting to everything I’d been consuming online. Now the scary thing about algorithms is that it don’t just show you what exists, you get more of what keeps your attention. The moment you entertain a certain pattern, once, they flood more of those to your feed and slowly, your perception of reality starts to shift. You begin to believe the worst is the norm because that’s all you’ve been seeing.
Do faithful, loving marriages still exist? I believe they do considering the few I read about here on Hive. But fear has a way of speaking louder than hope, especially when betrayal stories seem to be everywhere. If Desmond Scott could cheat on Kristy Sarah, who the hell am I? I’m bawling my eyes.
I don’t know but I’m really afraid of not marriage itself, but the possibility of trusting someone completely and discovering that the person I trusted never really existed at all.
