The women in my family don’t get married. That’s what I observed when I was growing up. They give birth to children who have different fathers. Even my grandmother had her kids with three different men. I saw the same pattern in my aunts. Some of them settled down eventually but after they already had kids with other men. The rest of them didn’t get husbands. They moved from one terrible relationship to another.

When it comes to the men in my family, it’s quite the opposite. If you are a woman and you marry any man from my family, you are counted among the lucky women who landed themselves good husbands. We are Fantes. These men take very good care of their women. Unlike the women, they don’t have kids out of wedlock. They marry the woman first before they start making babies.

I asked myself how it is that things are different between the men and women in my family this way. I didn’t want to continue the family cycle. I aspired to have the kind of marriage my uncles had. So I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t have kids out of wedlock.

I am not trying to brag but I am no plain Jane. I have an hourglass figure – like the TV personality, Serwaa Amihere’s body type. Except mine is all-natural. I am a graduate and a fashion designer. I own a thriving fashion business. So I am not the kind of girlfriend who demands material things from a man. I can take care of myself.

I have been told by my friends and family that I have a humble personality, and that I am respectful too. Yet with all these traits, I am still unmarried at thirty-four. This is not how I imagined my life would go. I become so depressed when I think about it.

My younger brother is married with three kids. Like I said, it’s different for the men. They find love and enjoy happiness in their marriages. But I am a woman so I have been served plate after plate of disappointments.

My whole life, there were only two men who came into my life and promised to marry me. Things worked out between us in the beginning but it got to the point where everything became chaotic. We couldn’t see eye to eye on anything.

It wasn’t until the relationship ended that I gained clarity and realized the things we fought about were insignificant compared to what we had to lose. By then it was too late because too much damage had been done. This happened with the first man. And the pattern repeated with the second man too.

The brighter side of all this is that I am not under pressure from my brothers to get married. There are fourteen of us, and no one among them ever asked me to bring a man home.

The other day I was on the phone with my older brother who lives abroad. I told him, “I am tired of trying and trying and trying again to make something work with someone only for it all to collapse to the ground. I am tired of having to pick up the pieces and start all over again. So I decided that if this one doesn’t work, I will have a child.” He laughed about it but I wasn’t joking.

I am currently in another relationship. We’ve been together for three months now. So far it’s going well. Just as I prayed in all my previous relationships, I am praying hard for this one too. I pray and hope that it leads to marriage. If it doesn’t end the way I hope it does, then I will find someone and have a baby with them.

This is what is troubling me now. It appears the cycle I tried my whole life to break is going to welcome me as one of them. My cousins have already started having kids out of wedlock. I wanted to be the one who would do things differently but now I am not so sure anymore.

When I discussed my dilemma with my aunt and asked her for counsel, she told me; “You are stuck on this fairytale notion that there is such a thing as ‘the one’. Forget about finding love and get a man who will give you a child.” This was her advice to me.

When I talk about the pattern in the family, everyone acts as if they can’t see it. I also don’t like troubling situations so I don’t talk about it anymore. My question is, is it a good idea to have a baby out of wedlock? My biological clock is ticking. I want to have kids before the time for that passes me by.

—Araba

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