I ran into a very close friend of mine , a guy who happened to be engaged for some months now. For the sake of privacy , let's call him John. John and I have been great buddies way back from school , and when we happened to run into each other, we tried playing catch up and discussed deeply into issues affecting our individual lives.
While John was gobsmacked as to how I happened to be single still (he thinks I am a great catch loool), and I tabled true and logical reasons for the delay , he opened up about his engagement and the challenges he was currently facing .
Now personally, when I learnt John was engaged initially, I was so happy for him and since I am a social media partial addict, I dug photos of his new fiancee.
To my surprise, I was like whoa! Without being judgemental, I wasn't impressed with what I saw physically. I mean she wasn't all that in the beauty department, not tall etc. Second of all, she wasn't even of the Igbo tribe (I'm not being tribalistic ooh) .
While I cracked my brain, trying to figure what my amazing friend John saw in her, I recalled the popular saying '' Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder''. Maybe she is an amazing person on the inside I said to myself and hoped she would bring him all the happiness he desired.
Now I know you are thinking I have some emotional connection to John or maybe I am a bit Jealous, but that is far from the truth. There are certain friends and relatives you have who happen to possess super amazing qualities and character traits , and you can't help but wish they get the best out of life , because the deserve it.
Now John my 'buddy' is one of such people. Very patient, smart, caring, generous to his women (even in times of scarcity), faithful, dedicated and loyal, puts his women's needs before his own etc. I could spend an entire day gushing about his amazing qualities.
To cut the long story short, while discussing his engagement, he opened up to me about some issues he had with his fiancee, her constant pressure on him financially , pressure to settle this year etc which I saw as normal with women and didn't take seriously.
Then he let the biggest cat out of the bag, he had the same AS genotype as his fiancee and was still willing to go ahead and marry her.
I was like what? Are you ok? Where you jazzed? I couldn't believe my ears.
Why do you want to bring a child into the world to suffer in the name of love? Have you considered the impact of having an SS child could have on your finances? Regular hospital trips, crisis etc I quizzed with shock written all over me.
'I have weighed my options he replied'. 'We have a 25 percent chance to have sickler's as kids. What are we talking about , the first purpose of marriage is companionship before children anyway.
I consulted doctors and there is Amniocentesis (in lay man's terms sticking a needle into the baby's sac and taking a sample for DNA analysis). We also have a choice to abort if SS and leave it if AS. Besides , I have faith in God, I'm following my conviction '' he continued sounding defensive.
Faith in God , like really? Would you climb mount Everest and jump , imagining you'd be alive when there is a universal law of gravity? I asked him. You are tempting God !
I pointed out the very high risk for spontaneous abortion after the procedure, which could result to loss of even a normal baby. (I am not in the medical field, but I do loads of research for knowledge sakes) . I further stated it wasn't worth it, and he went on pointing out maybe I had been lucky not to have been in a similar situation , I would have sounded differently.
I immediately set him straight. I've never really worried about my genotype with potential mates because both my parents are AA, and I am too, and even if I were to be AS, I'd personally rather sacrifice that relationship rather than abort the child or bring any child into the world to suffer.
I preached, pointed out that the Catholic church would insist on a genotype test before their marriage, but he remained adamant.
After what seemed like 2 hours of unsuccessful convincing, I advised he got ready for whatever consequences that would follow and we moved on to other lighter topics.
Would you for love sakes get married to someone with a risky or incompatible genotype? Has anyone reading this post tried taking the risk, and was it a success?
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