Gamophobia

the fear of marriage

Jan 01, 2026

You walk into the boutique and suddenly your heart is racing faster. Your thoughts have been all over the place. Since you got out of bed, you’ve been a nervous wreck. Emeka, your best friend of 11 years and best man, sees your right hand shaking as the smell of new clothing hits your noses and holds it.

“It’s just wedding jitters bro.”

“I’m fine. Now get your hands off me, we look like a gay couple.”

You yank your hands from his and your comment gets a laugh out of him.

“Please, you ain’t got the sauce to bag a fine boy like me.”

“Idiot,” you hiss.

Ngozi would be so pissed if she found out you were just going to get a suit today. She’s been more excited than you’ve ever seen her in your entire life over the last two months. She gets a dopamine surge from fussing over things like whether it should be an outdoor or indoor wedding, what colours the chairs should be, the flowers, the food. She planned the entire wedding. Your only job was to find a tuxedo and show up.

Well, here you are the day before your wedding and you’re reminded that your fiancée has impeccable taste.

Event-planning Ngozi is a different breed of sexy. You could see the stress marks on her forehead, but even more, you could see all her teeth beaming through a smile from across the room when she worked. When she talked about venues, decorations, invitations, it all sounded like art. Art from the lips of the most beautiful artist you had ever seen. She could be talking about the order of programme and it would be the sexiest thing you’d ever heard, evidenced by the blood making its way down your body. Maybe you’re just a pervert but there is something her—omo, God dey create—bombom does to you when she is walking with purpose, telling people where she wants bouquets and red carpets. Maybe you wouldn’t have fallen in love with Ngozi if you didn’t meet her when she was in charge of an event.

It was eight years ago. Back in university.

The night you first saw the ethereal being that somehow agreed to marry you. You had walked out of a house party that was supposed to start over an hour ago but was running late for some reason. That’s when you saw her—pacing, screaming, almost crying into her phone.

“Please, are you available? The DJ we booked is not here. I’ve been calling him for hours and he isn’t picking his call. I can pay you extra if you’ll come. Please”.

She ended the call with a stab of her thumb, chest heaving. You remember thinking she might pull her hair out with how aggressively she was tugging it. In that moment, Charlie Puth’s One Call Away started playing in your head as you decided to speak to a woman who currently looked like she could murder someone.

“DJ trouble?”

She glared at you. “Yeah. The fool I hired is a no-show. I’ve called like five other DJs and no one is available. Fuckk! I can’t believe my luck.”

“I’m a DJ. I can cover for you.” You in fact were not a DJ. Just a dude with a laptop and a cracked version of Virtual DJ he’d been messing around with for three months; but that Superman got nothing on me line was giving you an insane level of delusional confidence.

“I really appreciate the offer. But I can’t particularly just hand over the job to a random guy I just met outside. That’s not very wise.”

“Well, I promise I’m actually really good at what I do. Plus, you don’t particularly seem to have another choice right now. It’s either me or the sound of crickets chirping. And I promise you, crickets don’t have a very good bass drop.”

She stayed quiet for a while. Eyes closed. Probably weighing her desperation against her standards.

“Ughhhhhh. Where is your equipment?”

“In my bag. Can be ready in a second.”

She started walking back to the house. Shaking her head, she couldn’t believe she was really doing this. “Okay. Oya let’s go. But please, don’t mess up. You’d ruin my reputation.”

“You have nothing to worry about ma’am.”

You in fact were really good at what you do.

You spent the night holding your breath between songs, waiting for everything to fall apart. A couple of times, it nearly did. Your hands shook, your chest burned, but the music survived. And the crowd didn’t care how close you came to failing. They just danced.

Occasionally, you locked eyes with your employer. She was busy most of the night, but unlike before she was now working with a smile. You already knew she was beautiful when you saw her outside, frustrated. But seeing her, much calmer and collected—

Damn. She was beautiful.

Eventually, the party came to an end. The house was mostly deserted now, with a few drunk students hanging around while cleaning was going on. Then she walked up to you.

“Thank you so much. My God, you won’t believe how much you saved my ass today. I really can’t say thank you enough. Please how much do you charge, I should pay you so you can be on your way.”

You felt bold. The adrenaline from the set was still pumping, and her mentioning her ass which you’d been stealing glances at all night must have pushed you into stupidity.

“You can pay by letting me take you out on a date.”

You’d never seen a smile turn into a frown so fast.

“Oh, so you do charity work now? Please, respect yourself. I don’t use my dating life to clear debt. If you want to work for free it’s fine. But it’s very insulting, unprofessional and rather tacky that you think my time and life is something I’ll trade for money. I’m a professional, and I expect the people I work with to be the same. Now, do you have an account number, or should I just assume you were playing for the love of the craft?”

Ouch. A no would have been just fine, you didn’t need an entire lecture.

“Oh. My bad. I honestly didn’t mean to offend you, I’m sorry. I’ll take 20k.”

You called your account number while scratching the back of your neck, heat rushing to your face.

“Sent. Thanks again for the help.” She turned to leave but you stopped her.

“Hey. I’m sorry about how I went about it earlier. I just think you are really pretty and I’d like to get to know you. Maybe you can just give me your WhatsApp number, I’ll text you.”

She studied you for a long moment. Then wrote her number on a piece of paper, folded it and handed it over to you.

“You are aware you don’t even know my name,” she smiled, walking away.

You unfolded the paper and below eleven digits is her name written in all its glory.

NGOZI.

You’ve spoken every day since.

“Guy! You don reach dreamland?”

Emeka’s voice snaps you back to the present, the sterile, expensive scent of the boutique rushing back into your nostrils.

“Abeg, abeg.”

“I said you should go try this one.”

He hands you a midnight blue tuxedo and you take it to the changing room and pull the curtain shut. The space is small—too small. As you start to strip off your clothes, you are shoved into another memory.

You are lying in bed when you hear shouting and screaming. You race towards the source of the noise and it is coming from your parents’ room. The door isn’t closed shut so you just push it open. They are standing across from each other, jaws clenched, veins popping, screaming names and insults.

You’re a useless man. You’re a mad woman. Efulefu. I ga-amuchu nwa.

The entrance of their eleven-year-old son doesn’t even interrupt them for a second. Why would it? This was normalcy in your house. The tears begin to build up in your eyes, as always. You hate that their fighting makes you cry. You should be used to it; it’s been happening as long as you can remember. As far as you’re concerned, everybody’s parents fight like this. But still, it hurts.

Your tears don’t make them stop. It just gets weaponized in this battle. See now, you’ve made the boy start crying again when you’ll be behaving like a possessed woman.

All this is familiar, but today the unfamiliar happens. You blink and all of a sudden there’s blood. Your father is bleeding from the back of his left ear. His white singlet stained with blood. And their voices get even louder.

“Chidozie, your mother wants to kill me.”

“Yes, I will kill you. Before you kill me, I will kill you. Useless man. Come and fight na. I will bite off your ear.”

You run back to your room. Lock the door and begin to cry into your pillow. You cry for hours. You hear the sound of your father’s car driving out. He probably isn’t sleeping in the house tonight. No one checks up on you. And although it never gets brought up again, the images from this day never leave you.

You blink back into the present but the images don’t disappear. They are right there with you in the changing room. The image of your father’s bloodied singlet overlays your reflection in the mirror. The midnight blue tuxedo suddenly feels like a costume for a tragic movie. The fabric feels heavier than it should. Too tight. Like it’s shrinking you.

You fumble with the shirt buttons. Your breathing changes before you notice it. Short. Shallow. You pause, palms flat against the mirror, trying to steady yourself.

It doesn’t work.

The room feels even smaller now. The walls closer. You claw at the collar of your shirt like it’s strangling you. Your heart starts racing.

Fast. Too fast.

You try to inhale deeply, but your lungs don’t cooperate. Fuck, you’re having a panic attack. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.

Your knees weaken and you crouch on the floor, head in your hands. Trying to control your breathing. The image of your parents flashes again – screaming and verbally assaulting each other.

What if this is what happens to you and Ngozi?

Your love rots slowly, day by day, until you wake up next to someone you can barely stand but you’re stuck with.

What if you’re cursed to have a miserable marriage? It’s not like you’ve ever had a model for what a good marriage seems like.

What if you traumatize your children just like you were traumatized? You force them to grow up in a home with constant war and chaos because marriage is permanent. And at night they cry to God, praying that their parents would just divorce, just like you prayed when you were a child.

What if this isn’t something you can outrun? You are scared you’d end up becoming the thing you fear most.

What if this isn’t just fear?

What if this is inheritance?

You fumble for your phone, your fingers slick with sweat. You need to hear her.

The phone rings once. Twice. On the third ring, she picks up.

“Babe? I hope you’re calling to tell me you’ve picked the suit because the tailor called me saying he hasn’t seen—”

“Ngozi.”

Your voice is a thin, broken thread. The silence on the other end is instantaneous. Ngozi has a “work voice”—sharp, rhythmic, and loud—but when she realizes something is wrong, her tone drops an octave into something soft and grounding.

“Babe? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I... I’m at the boutique,” you wheeze. “I’m looking at the suit. And I’m scared. I’m really scared.”

“Scared of the suit? Is it that ugly?”

“No. Scared of us. Scared of this marriage thing. Scared that... what if we turn into them? What if we eventually hate each other and make each other miserable. What then?”

The silence stretches for a long beat. You expect her to be annoyed. Instead, you hear a sigh

“I’m also scared, Chidozie,” she says quietly.

“But I’m even more scared of letting fear take a good thing away from me.

We aren’t your parents. I can’t promise that we’d always be happy. I can’t promise that we’d never fight. But I can promise to keep choosing us every day. You saw something ugly growing up. That doesn’t mean it is doomed to repeat itself.

Marriage isn’t a trap. It’s a choice. And if we ever start becoming something we don’t recognize, we talk. We stop. We fix it — or we walk away before we bleed on each other.

This is our story. And we get to write it.”

The church is full. Too full.

White walls. White flowers. Everywhere looks beautiful, and you smile because it’s a reminder of how good your bride is at what she does. There’s soft music playing, something slow and sentimental, and everyone is smiling like this is the easiest thing in the world. Like marriage isn’t terrifying.

You stand at the altar in your midnight blue tuxedo, hands clasped in front of you, fingers locked so tightly your knuckles ache. Emeka stands beside you, whispering something about how sharp you look and that you better cry because he thinks he is going to and it’d be weird if he cried and you didn’t.

Your heart is still doing that thing.

You scan the faces in the pews. Somewhere in the crowd are couples who stayed together out of stubbornness, out of fear, out of religion. Somewhere are people who loved each other once and now only tolerate each other. You wonder how many of them stood where you’re standing now, convinced they’d be different.

The doors at the back of the church open.

Everyone stands. And then you see her.

Ngozi.

She looks unreal. Calm. Glowing.

She meets your eyes and smiles.

Your fear doesn’t disappear as she walks closer. It sits with you. A familiar companion. A scar that never fully healed.

You watch her walk toward you knowing you are scared. Knowing a part of you might always be scared.

When she reaches the altar and takes your hands, her fingers warm against yours, you realize something quietly monumental:

The best decisions in life don’t feel like confidence or certainty.
They feel like standing here anyway.

Not because you’re fearless. But because you’re choosing to do it scared.

THIS IS MIDAS

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