Countlessly, I have been advised to marry only for love. I have been cautioned to refuse to settle down until I meet someone who makes my heart palpitate and my knees wobble. Someone who, according to Don Williams, will be my bread when I’m hungry and my shelter from troubled winds.

And so this whole time I have been waiting to meet someone whose mere presence gives me stroke-like symptoms. But I have had no luck. And it has nothing to do with me, I swear. I’m lovable, I’ve been told. I am soft. And I am so open to love or desperate for it (depends on who you ask) that I have unlocked the friendzone and let some people out. It hasn’t worked.

So for the past few weeks, I have tried to draw inspiration from people who claim to have married for love. And what have I found out? That none of them married for love. That in fact, no one marries for love. No one.

Don’t believe me? Look at the processes and considerations involved in ‘love marriages.’ First, you have to be physically attracted to the person. Then you date them and scrutinize them. What are their religious beliefs? What are their dreams? Are they resourceful? How many children do they want? (Because this is Africa and everyone must want children). Political affiliation?

If they meet your standards then you decide that you love them and want to spend your life with them. Otherwise you let them go. But is this really the way of love? Isn’t love supposed to be unconditional, ignoring all faults and enduring all things?

So then if you have to do filters and checks before you decide to feel a certain way about someone then it ceases to be about love. It is now about convenience. And from observation, that’s the actual criteria people use to choose marriage partners. They want to fulfill their need for companionship and offspring with the utmost convenience.

I wonder why no one has been honest enough to tell me these things. Maybe the people who have been enthusiastically selling me the idea of marrying someone for love don’t wish me well. They want me to be their forever single friend so that they can always look at me and feel better about themselves.

I am not going to sit through any more scary stories about the supposed unhappiness of people in ‘loveless marriages.’ Because now I know that marriage has nothing to do with love.

You have no idea what this revelation has done for me. It has awoken my previously lost hope of finding a man. I can now drop my plan B.

Plan B is about finding ways to draw my family’s and society’s attention away from my singlehood.

It involves making loads of money, dressing fancily and having a live-in makeup artist to ensure that when I wake up from snoring and drooling, I can still post photos captioned "I woke up like dis.”