Recently Daniel promised to shock us with his choice of the girl he would marry.
“You will all be surprised. She will be the last thing you would have expected. Some of you will come to ask me if I am sure I ma doing the right thing,” he said grinning in his characteristic manner.
The reason why he knew his choice would shock us was that Daniel loves his girls dazzling and flashy. The more outrageous and stunning the better. The surprise he had in store for us was that he intended to marry the exact opposite of that kind of a woman.
“There are girlfriends and there are wives. Those girls who hung around me will never make me a wife,” a seemingly wiser Daniel said.

I was naturally amused. Not by the kind of girl he was next going to introduce to me as his belle, but by the logic. May be if I could crack that I could help a lot of women who were wondering what the heck they were doing wrong when it came hitching a man for life as they always seemed to be side stepped for another woman they felt was no competition. Did men really date different kind of women and marry a different kind?

The next person I talked to, Kipchumba though could not agree with Maina. He had no intention of dating a girl he could not marry.
“Whenever I date a girl, it is because in her I see a woman I would want to settle down with. It might not work out of course but if it does, then we will marry.”
Consequently all pat relationships ended up with serious heartbreaks- his.
“I get into the relationship genuinely, with the future in mind. But most of the girls are just there for a good ride.”
He all the same agrees that many men take out girls for prestige or entertainment but look for different characteristics when they want to settle down.
“When you think of a wife, you think of the mother to your children and the woman you want to introduce to your mother. Some of those girls would never make a mother.”

Kiarie a married man says that it is common for young men to date for show before they think of settling down.
“Most career men do not think of marrying until they are over thirty. He wouldn’t want to meet a girl who will pressure him for marriage before he is ready. He therefore stays around girls he knows he cannot marry.”
That is what he did when it came to time to marry.
“Most of my girl friends were former college mates. We had done trash together and the bad I knew about them was more than the good. People tell me I went to church to look for a wife. The truth is I found my kind of girl in church.”

Manga agrees with Kiarie’s school of thought but insists that the decision is more between looks and character.
“Girlfriends are for show, to parade around. As I walk on the streets I see so many beautiful women. But I tell myself that they might not have a character to sustain it.”
He believes that character is the greatest determinant for a wife.
“A wife does not have to look beautiful. The physique is temporal. Anything can happen to that body that I adore. Character is key. Most times beauty of character and beauty of the body will not come together.”
Doesn’t he care for a beautiful woman of style? “It is amazing what the right clothes and make-up can do to a woman. She may not have much going for her physically but we can work on that easily.”
His argument is that the style is easier to work on where there is substance than the other way round.
“Seven times out of ten, style and substance will not go together. Once a chick knows that she is ok physically, she knows men will come trooping around her so she does not have to work so hard on the rest. You do not want a chick who feels so hot she thinks she is God’s gift to men,” Manga says.
Would he date one kind of girl and marry another kind?
“No. I do not want to waste my emotions and money on a girl I have no intention of marrying”.

John T. Molloy, author of the book Why Men Marry Some Women and Not Others published in 2003 says that the double standards are very real. More than 80 percent of the men he interviewed said that the women they were going to marry were the kind of women they would be proud to introduce to family and friends. According to them, women are divided into two categories: beddable and weddable. “Men still marry ‘good girls,’” says Molloy. “They probably won’t marry a girl who sleeps with them on the first date or two.”

SIDE BAR
Molloy advices women who want to marry fast to only date the marrying kind.

• Men whose friends and siblings are married are more likely to marry.

• Men often marry women whose backgrounds- religion, politics, values, socioeconomic status- match theirs.

• Men who have their own places and have lived as independent, self-supporting adults are more likely to marry.

• Most men think sowing their wild oats is a rite of passage and will not even contemplate marriage until they have been working and living as independent adults for several years.