Imole* (33) grew up in a strict Christian home where relationships with the opposite sex were treated as something dangerous. Dating wasn’t allowed, and marriage wasn’t something she spent time imagining. It was simply the next step her parents expected once she finished school.

After NYSC, she was matched with a man from church and encouraged to settle down. Three years into the marriage, she’s still figuring out what it means to find her own voice inside a life that often feels chosen for her.

This is a look into Imole’s marriage diary.

I Never Even Imagined Myself as Someone’s Wife

I grew up in a very strict home, so marriage wasn’t something I spent time imagining when I was younger. It felt like something reserved for adults, not something I should be thinking about.

Even when I got to university, I still didn’t think about it. My parents had put so much fear of the opposite sex in me that dating wasn’t something I even considered. I remember when my dad found a love letter in my sister’s school bag. He beat her so badly that she couldn’t go to school for a week. That was the environment we grew up in. So, boys were not something I allowed myself to think about.

In university, my life was mostly about church and school. When your parents call you, and the only questions they ask are about your academics and your spiritual life, you don’t really feel like there’s space for anything else.

I only started thinking about marriage after NYSC, and even then, it wasn’t really my idea. My parents felt it was the next step for me. They introduced me to someone from the church and encouraged the match.

He wasn’t a bad person, but if I had truly had the chance to choose for myself, I think I would have chosen differently.

Three Years In, I’m Not Sure I Like Being Married

I’m approaching my third year in marriage, and if I’m being honest, there have been more feelings of regret than anything else.

I wouldn’t say I have the perfect picture of what I want in a husband, but I know my husband leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes I ask myself if we are really a couple or just two people living in the same house. We barely talk about anything outside the necessary things. There’s no real friendship between us.

He spends most of his free time at church. When he tries to be playful with me, it often feels forced. Or maybe the problem is me. Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t create room for it.

The truth is, I don’t put in much effort either. Sometimes I think we’re just two people who came from very similar restrictive backgrounds and somehow ended up together without really knowing ourselves first.

He claims I’m the only woman he has ever been with, but I sometimes find that hard to believe. He has a certain way with the women in church, and he doesn’t strike me as someone who doesn’t know how to navigate female attention.

My First Experience With Sex Made Me Question Everything

The first time we got intimate was the first time I truly wondered if I had made a mistake getting married. It was my first time having sex, and my husband wasn’t exactly gentle. After that first time, he wanted to keep going regularly. He would come to me every other day and say that’s how I would get used to it.

But it never really got better for me. At some point, I started avoiding him. I made all sorts of excuses. My period. Stomach pain. Headaches. Anything that could help me avoid sex. 

Eventually, it became such an issue that my husband raised it with our spiritual father in church. 

I was called in and lectured about how intimacy is important in marriage and how a wife shouldn’t deny her husband. Listening to that conversation made me question whether I was truly ready to lose autonomy over my own body for something I wasn’t even enjoying.

When I tried speaking to my mum about it, she wasn’t much help either. She told me that even in her late 50s she doesn’t turn her husband down, so what excuse did I have?

At that point, I felt defeated. I eventually had to train my mind to start seeing some kind of pleasure in it. It has gotten better over time, but even now, it often feels like a chore. It doesn’t always feel like something intimate between two people.

I’ve Had to Learn to Speak Up for Myself

One thing marriage forced me to learn very quickly is how to stand up for myself. As a Christian woman, you’re taught a lot about submission. You’re told to pray about problems and trust God to handle things. But I started asking myself certain questions.

How do you pray about someone raising their voice at you? How do you pray about someone hurting you in a moment of anger? It hasn’t happened many times, but it has happened enough for me to realise that prayer alone wouldn’t fix everything.

Now, when I notice my husband doing something I don’t like, I address it immediately. I’m not taking everything to God in prayer when the person causing the issue is standing right in front of me. If speaking up makes people call me rebellious, so be it.

If you’re in a marriage like mine and you don’t speak up or fight for yourself, then you’ll end up blaming everyone else for what you allowed.

The Day Money Turned Into a Physical Fight

We once had a serious fight about money. I don’t want to go into the full details, but it escalated in a way that shocked me. At some point, he grabbed my arms so tightly that his fingers dug into my skin. I struggled to pull away, and we ended up in a physical back-and-forth. After that, we spent the rest of the week barely speaking.

We still went to church together because that was expected, but once we got home, we kept our distance from each other.

My husband tried to involve our pastor again, but this time I refused to attend the meeting. Later, when the pastor saw me and asked about it, I told him we would rather handle our issues ourselves. That wasn’t something my husband and I had agreed on, but I knew the pastor would most likely side with him and tell me to be the patient, obedient wife.

This time, I decided to stand my ground. Eventually, my husband came to apologise. But that experience taught me something important: I have to tread carefully with him when it comes to finances. Money is something that easily makes him defensive and difficult to deal with.

Marriage Is Where I’m Finally Learning Who I Am

Sometimes I ask myself who I even was before marriage. I was just a quiet, obedient girl who did what she was told. I went to church, followed rules and allowed decisions about my life to be made for me.

In a strange way, marriage is where I’ve started discovering myself. Every day I’m learning what I like and what I don’t like. I’m learning what I’m willing to accept and what I’m not. I’m learning how I want to be treated. 

So in that sense, marriage has given me a little more sense of identity. But it also makes me curious about something: what would marriage look like if this version of me had chosen her own partner?

If I Could Go Back, I Would Be More Rebellious

If I could give my younger self advice, I would tell her to be more rebellious. I would tell her to fight for what she believes in and stop letting others make decisions about her life.

The truth is, I’m in this situation because I allowed that to happen. Now that I’ve started putting my foot down, I can see how much it has helped me. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have looked like if I had been this version of myself before getting married.

Maybe I wouldn’t even be married at all. One thing I know for sure is that I would take my time. I would enjoy my freedom more before stepping into something as permanent as marriage.

Because even when you marry someone you love, marriage can still feel like a prison if you’re not careful. You have to fight constantly to make sure you don’t end up trapped in a box someone else built for you.

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the subjects.

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