Be a Good Girl, Get Married
Marriage Is Not a Reward for Being a Good Girl.
There is something women are quietly sold from a very young age. It does not always come as a direct instruction, rather it is often implied. It mostly arrives through advice, expectations, or the particular silence that falls when a woman’s life doesn’t unfold on the expected timeline.
The message is loud and clear.
Source: Pinterest - The FairytaleBoard
Be a good girl.
Make the right decisions.
Carry yourself properly.
Do not be “that kind” of woman.
If you do this, eventually, life will reward you with the things that matter most.
A husband, a family and a stable life.
This narrative exists across society broadly. As a Christian woman, in religious spaces I’ve seen this narrative become even more pronounced. The message becomes about being a “good” Christian woman. Finding your “kingdom spouse.” Follow Christ and stay pure. Do everything right. Then somewhere along the line, many women quietly absorb the belief that marriage will naturally follow. However, life does not always work that way.
The “Good Girl” Equation
I had a picture in my head of where my life was supposed to be by my mid-twenties. When that picture didn’t match the reality, I did what many women do. I turned the question inward. What am I doing wrong? What do I need to fix? Why am I choosing the same type of partner?
These questions came with their own headaches.
Then thirty came.
Whilst I was happy to be out of a decade that in many ways felt like the trenches, thirty carried with it a certain heightened angst and of course the particular mythology that says life either begins there or is somehow already behind schedule. Which is, I should say, another lie and a strange one given that our brains aren’t even fully developed until around that point.
God arrested me here and began upheaving my identity, pulling everything from under my feet that I had idolized over the years, including many foundational ideologies I held.
It was during this season I began to seek the answers for why I wanted things, and what they would mean in my life. I began to deconstruct even the religious beliefs that had shaped my understanding.
You see, I have watched women who did everything the church encouraged, who carried themselves with care and grace, who waited, prayed, fasted and followed the “formula” faithfully and yet they remained single.
On the other hand, I have watched women who lived completely differently from the “good woman” trope, women who made choices that would have our grandmothers clutching their pearls, who are married with their third child on the way. That observation alone dismantles the equation.
Here’s what I’ve found.
Marriage is not a reward for being a good girl and equally, singleness is not punishment for doing something wrong.
The Cost of the Belief
There is a silent question that doesn’t get spoken about enough. It is that when a woman who desires marriage, believes the good girl equation - and it doesn’t deliver, what happens to her?
I would argue it costs her something far more immediate. It costs her the present. It stops her from absorbing right now.
When a woman quietly places her sense of wholeness, and her permission to fully inhabit her own life on hold until a particular thing happens, she is not living. She holds herself back from the fullness of who God created her to be right now, because some part of her believes that version of herself is just the prologue. Deep inside she believes her real story begins when her knight in shining armour arrives.
So what does she do if the timeline doesn’t unfold the way she imagined? What if the hallmark age passes? Or the years keep moving and still no ring?
As a British-Nigerian, I’ve seen several African communities dogpile a woman who reaches a certain age without marriage. It is these same gossipy people who also have the most to say when a woman gets married after 40, or when a woman is divorced lol. Never quite happy with how others are living, instead of tending to their own garden.
In all of these scenarios, the questions begin immediately.
What happened?
Is something wrong with her?
Will she ever settle down?
The irony is, many of these same women grew up in environments where dating was discouraged or tightly controlled. This contradiction is rarely acknowledged. The gap between the expectation and the preparation is wide and mostly silent.
I am of the school of thought that what makes this so persistent is the silence around it. The women on the other side, aka the ones who could speak honestly about what marriage is and is not, who would tell you to slow down, to ignore the comments, and pour into your relationship with God first, to stop waiting and start living — often don’t.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way as women we stopped having those honest conversations across the “divide.” We’ve handed women a formula, without the tools for navigating it when it fails, setting women up for a particular kind of quiet devastation.
What God Actually Asks
Scripture makes it clear that for the believer, marriage is about assignment (Genesis 2:18-24) and covenant, it is a high honour (Hebrews 13:4) that involves advancing the kingdom of heaven here on earth (1 Corinthians 7:32-35).
Scripture does not say, put romance above all; that you are lost without a person by your side, or that if you are single your life is unworthy or somehow incomplete. In fact, in Psalm 16:2 King David reminds us that apart from God we have no good thing.
Let me be clear.
This is not a bitter essay, nor is it an argument against marriage.
Marriage to the right person is a beautiful thing. Love is a gift. To build a life with someone, to grow alongside another person across decades, to share the ordinary and the extraordinary is something worth cherishing.
God loves marriage, He created us as relational beings after all. But marriage shouldn’t be just a want because everyone else is doing it. We are called to check our heart stance (Psalm 139:23-24) because everything we do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23).
Marriage is a responsibility and with that comes stewardship. When it is grounded and right, with two people who are genuinely building something together, it is one of the great joys a life can hold.
I was raised in a two-parent home. I have seen what a good marriage looks like from the inside. I understand the stability it offers, the particular warmth of it, the way it shapes a family across generations. I do not write any of this to diminish that.
The desire for companionship, for intimacy and family, are not weaknesses. They are human and they are good desires worth honouring. But a desire held with open hands, looks very different from a life placed on hold because of it.
Here is where I want to offer a reframe, not just culturally but theologically.
I do not believe God calls us to merely be “good girls” or “good women.”
I believe He calls us to simply be His (Isaiah 43:1).
His child.
Totally.
God’s ways are above the good girl framework, and as His children we must remember this (1 John 3:1).
The good girl framework even in its most faithful, well-intentioned form is a performance. It is an attempt to earn something and be qualified for a standard that unlocks some kind of reward. But that is not the nature of the God I know.
God does not want our performance.
He wants our surrender.
He wants us close to Him.
This is not because we have behaved well enough to deserve proximity (Romans 3:23), but because we belong to Him and He is calling us back to that. Nowhere in that calling is marriage the measure.
As I have been learning, there are idols that form quietly in the heart. Idols that take over our focus. Desires that begin innocently and over time become the thing you have placed, almost without realizing it, above the One who gave you life. This is not because you are faithless, but because you are human. Because you want beautiful things and there is nothing wrong with that.
But above that, we ought to remember that we are new creations in God. We are led by the Spirit of God and are thus co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). Because of this, when we give even our deepest yearnings and pangs to Him we are able to elevate beyond who the world tells us to be, and opt for His Spirit first and foremost.
His will for you may involve marriage, it may not. Either way, God, in His kindness, asks us to hold those things loosely. Not to bury the desire. Just to release the grip over to Him.
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
This is not always easy. Yet it is the difference between a desire that is alive and open and a desire that has quietly become a bottle neck and demand.
The Truth Many Women Need to Hear
Jesus lived a life of extraordinary purpose. A ministry that changed the world entirely… and He was never married.
I know, I know *rolls eyes* this is not what some ladies want to hear. But hear me out. That does not make marriage unimportant. It simply reminds us that a life of meaning, depth, and genuine contribution is not contingent on marital status.
Marriage can be a blessing, but it has never been (nor will it ever be) the measure of a woman’s life.
If you have it, cherish it. Steward it well.
If you desire it, there is nothing wrong with that.
Keep the desire. Pray over it. Be honest. Then give the desire to God.
Know that if you are believing for it and it has not happened yet, your life is not on pause.
You are not behind.
You are not disqualified, and you are not being punished.
I don’t have a tidy ending for this one. Honestly, I am not sure there is one.
However, I keep coming back to this:
What would it look like to live as though your life has already begun?
Not to abandon the desire, or perform contentment you don’t feel. Rather to genuinely ask:
What is available to me right now, in this season that I might be missing because I am waiting for a different one?
Beyond marriage, are there versions of yourself you are holding back until a particular thing happens?
None of these are questions with quick answers. Nevertheless they are worth sitting with.
Especially for the woman who has been good for a very long time - and is only just beginning to wonder what she was being good for.