On our last day of 2021 in the office I jocularly told a female colleague of mine that the new year 2022 will be her year of marital settlement. She (also jocularly) responded in the affirmative with a lot of excitement. Naturally the idea of marriage resonates with many young adults (who're not growing younger), perhaps including me. It's like after NYSC, the next should be to SETTLE DOWN. Or once someone hits the 30 mark (age), settling down should just be the next thing. So for some people who have finished NYSC since many years ago and have still not been able to settle down, or for some people who have crossed 30 and have not settled down yet, the pressure is understandable.
An eminent woman was brought to give us some motivational talks in NYSC camp, and one of the things she advised us is to get married and start making babies early in life, so that we would not have to be struggling to train our children in our old age. I've heard/had such kind of advice from several other sources. It's quite a reasonable advice/argument which is agreeable to me.

All the same, people should not RUSH into marriage no matter the pressure, no matter how justifiable the basis of the pressure is. People should be patient and very meticulous about marriage. Some persons who rushed into marriage are either back to singlehood or they're enduring serious pains in their marriage. Marriage is one of the biggest steps in life, and as such it deserves the best of meticulousness.
In this new year the marriage pressure is what seems to have started finding expression especially in the social media. And I'm interested in giving a thought on it. The point I want to make:
1. BEFORE YOU GO INTO MARRIAGE, ENSURE YOU'RE WELL-PREPARED especially psychologically and materially. Ensure you've attained the psychological maturity enough to have a good understanding of the implication of marriage. And ensure u have achieved a reasonable level of financial/material stability. The point is not for you to wait till you have the whole world before you get married. The point is: when you get married (without financial stability), creating wealth and achieving certain material things would naturally become secondary in terms of priority, the primary thing would be to provide food and other basic needs of your family. So, the likelihood of a hand-to-mouth level of living becomes high, except God just wants to bless you or except you're not an ambitious person. But when you already have a good level of financial stability before getting married, and your woman is not a total liability, it would be easier for the two of you to join hands to build wealth for the family (marriage is life PARTNERSHIP, isn't it?).
Also, take time to build friendship before marriage. Marriage is FRIENDSHIP taken to THE NEXT LEVEL. That's my idea of marriage. Some people especially ladies have been so badly disappointed in their previous relationship experiences that they no longer want to hear anything friendship or relationship, for them it is like a waste of their time, they now just want to meet a man that would quickly marry them straight ahead. But it doesn't work well that way. When you meet someone with the the idea of a possible marriage journey in mind, a good time of first-level friendship is very important. At least one year for such friendship is neither too big nor too small. Build a first level friendship and then take it to the next level. The first-level friendship will give you the opportunity to build good intimacy and get well-acquainted with each other. In the course of the friendship you should relate very closely with each other so that you will know each other VERY WELL and you will even already overcome over-familiarity so that it will no longer be a bad factor when the two of you get married.

2. MARRY YOUR OWN. They say there's a man for every woman and a woman for every man. In this life there's somebody you can call your own, make sure you marry no other person than that person. That person that really likes and accepts you for true friendship, that person that really loves you beyond a reason, that person that sees something in you when others see nothing in you, that person that is attracted to you when others don't find you you attractive, that person that is naturally comfortable with you and you don't have to do anything special to impress him/her (and vice versa), that's the person you can call your own. It excites me anytime I see a husband/wife who're still happily living together even after many years of marriage. Marriage should give us happiness and peace of mind, not too much sadness and troubles.

For those that strongly desire to get married in this new year 2022, may you find YOUR OWN and may it be a year of marital settlement for you.
HAPPY NEW YEAR.