The Basis for Successful Marriages

Young men tell me that some brides (I suspect that the number is still quite small) are not actually virgins, but the ideal that they be is very strongly held by the community in general and by both her family and that of the groom.^[16] These same young men say that the groom would mind less if his bride were not a virgin than would his father and the woman's father.

Until recently, the failure of the wedding night to result in evidence of the

bride's virginity (in the form of blood on the cloth that had been beneath her hips on the marital bed) could lead to serious difficulties. From the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s, no quarreling of this sort came to my attention, as I am sure it would have had it been public. Nevertheless, informants say the groom's family would accuse the bride of promiscuity and the bride's family would insist she was a virgin but that the groom was impotent. In such cases, the marriage would be ended without delay. A few marriages, in fact, do end very quickly, and it may be that some of these are due to difficulties related to understandings about the bride's virginity and/or the groom's potency.

The successful marriage, a number of men and women have separately told me, is based on love (upendo). This despite the fact that marriages are often arranged and that, even in the later 1980s, marriages contracted because the prospective spouses are attracted to one another before the wedding are considered less likely to flourish than those based on family choices. The expressed understanding is that parents and adult family members have sounder and more mature judgment than the young prospective spouses do and that family judgment is likelier to bring together a couple who is truly suited.

When such a couple is brought together, the ideal view holds, they will develop a lasting love for one another. Even initial incompatibility will, informants say, be overcome as the couple gets to know one another. A proverb, sometimes used with regard to people getting used to things quite outside of marriage, holds, Walioana, wataambana (They were married, they will [learn to] speak to one another, i.e., as they stay together, they will learn to get along).