However the typical pattern of how Igbo individuals marry is definitely the absolute most essential aspect in describing why you are able for females in southeastern Nigeria to create identities nearly as good spouses, regardless of their intimate histories.
The process of marriage usually runs back through a woman’s (and a man’s) place of origin while women’s premarital sexual behavior tends to occur most often away from their natal communities. Although many Igbo communities are patrilineal and wedding is often lineage exogamous, in a wider sense Igbo culture is very endogamous. In Igboland, there was a strong choice and expectation that individuals should marry from neighboring communities with who their own families and communities have actually dependable and long haul ties.
High levels of out migration additionally the blending this is the consequence of urbanization, co educational schools and universities, and livelihood techniques that take also rural residents to far flung locations have actually put force with this endogamous pattern.
Increasingly more young adults look for to marry spouses from far away communities, and families are starting to identify that in a time of financial change, this could be a strategy that is good. However, many marriages among individuals who have otherwise circulated commonly in Nigerian society during their young adulthood nevertheless happen between folks from exactly the same local areas in Igboland. Future partners in many cases are introduced to one another on visits house through the Christmas time duration, whenever all Igbos are compelled to consult with their places of beginning. Further, whenever young Igbos meet possible partners in towns and cities, it is through introductions by individuals from their area that is same of, as most people are mindful regarding the norm that such ties take advantage stable marriages.
The practical consequence is the fact that numerous young adults understand almost no about one another if they commence to court, which is quite feasible for a female to cover any reputation for intimate relationships from a possible spouse.
When a couple chooses to marry, their particular families move into high gear to “investigate” if the match is a great one, but these investigations are concentrated almost completely on ferreting out of the status that is social genealogy and family history of this prospective in laws and regulations. Typically, an agent from each family members will journey to the city of this prospective mate’s family members and inquire about issues such as for instance financial status, spiritual affiliation, and any histories of or reputations for issues like criminality and illness that is mental. To your level that problems of intimate promiscuity might appear this kind of investigations, it could simply be within the context of the scandal of women’s marital infidelity within the household, but because far while she was an urban migrant or a schoolgirl as I know these investigations rarely extend to inquiring about a potential bride’s sexual behavior. For that reason, in the most frequent pattern of Igbo wedding, it really is quite easy for a young girl to hide her sexual past from her husband to be, their family members, and their community.
While this describes exactly exactly how in specific instances young women can marry and start to become good spouses without having the danger of a reputation that is previous them, it generally does not deal with just exactly how females adapt to this transition, or exactly just how men get together again the information that a lot of young women had concurrent intimate partnerships before wedding using their objectives that their particular spouses will soon be faithful. They were acutely hard concerns to navigate in interviews. The thing I report emerges partly from exactly what do be gleaned from interviews with younger men that are married females, but partly from the things I discovered through more informal conversations and straight black guys naked findings over several years of participant observation in southeastern Nigeria.