Friday. 5.30pm. Time was of the essence. He had a plane to catch, I’d been stuck in traffic. There was only time to grab the cases, snatch a hug and a kiss goodbye before the dash to the airport. 5.32pm. The hug lasts thirty seconds too long, yet he doesn’t seem as anxious as I. He holds me and as we peel ourselves off each other, he asks, “Will you marry me?” Time stops…
Having dated L for almost a year and a half, the question of marriage is not new. Without wanting to boast, he’s been proposing for a good six months now and up until last Friday, my answer has been a categorical ‘No! …

“Nana, why is it that people who are married want to get out of their marriage, and those who are not married want to get married?”
This is a question a friend posed to me a few days ago. Let me answer what I perceive as the simpler question first.
People want to get married (and here I speak specifically of the Ghanaian context) because we are brought up with the expectation that by a certain age we should be married. That’s just what happens (or so we are told) in our society. As a dutiful daughter, (or son) once you are ‘of age’ you get married. Our society does not expect you to sow your wild …

I found myself getting irritated Saturday afternoon, I was at my favourite Auntie’s grooming & nails centre (Q’ticules & Nails, 8 Volta Street, Airport Residential) and the radio was tuned to Joy FM which was transmitting a live feed of the presentations being made at their Bridal Fair. I hadn’t been irritated throughout the presentations. In fact I had enjoyed the presentation by Bernice Sam who spoke about the legal aspects of marriage and reminded the audience and Joy Fm that the Bridal Fair needed to be more diverse in recognizing that in Ghana there are 3 legal forms of marriage – traditional, Christian and Islamic. That led me to turn and say to my …

Recently, one of our readers (Naa) mentioned in a comment that she has been enduring what I consider a HORRIBLE ordeal for the last 11 years. Her husband, who I assume she has been committed and faithful to (she didn’t indicate that she has cheated on him), performs very poorly in the sack. Specifically, he is prone to premature ejaculation and has been for the duration of their marriage.
Now, what one person deems as “premature” ejaculation is subject to experience and preference in my opinion. It can range from cumming before there is any insertion at all (which has been my sad experience) to lasting only a few strokes once there is pelvic-to-pelvic contact. For …

Last Saturday I was invited to be a guest commentator on Joy Fm’s “Home Affairs” programme, hosted by Araba Koomson. The topic was “why do people use sex as a tool in marriage?”
One of my opening gambits was that for the majority of women, sex is not enjoyable; research such as that documented in the Shere Hite Report has indicated that 70% of women generally do not orgasm during sex. If you follow that logic this means a lot of women are having sex purely to please their husbands/partners/lovers so if for any reason your husband/partner/lover upsets you then your reaction is “No sex, until you have done x, y, or z”. If women were …