I did not grow up watching my parents practise 50/50. My dad once narrated to me how my mother carried the financial responsibility of the family at a time when he had no job. After their wedding, she paid 5 years' rent with her own money. She bought him a Peugeot 504 Evolution, his first car, and was patient until he learnt how to drive. She sponsored him through his M.Sc. at UNIZIK. My mother worked at USAID and earned very well. Dad had no job, but was never laid back. And this was a woman who had rejected a marriage proposal from a German man who was completely in love with her. But she chose my father because she wanted a man she could build a new life with. My dad even told me that, apart from the bride price he paid, my mother sponsored that elaborate wedding. Yet, in the midst of these, she never weaponized any of these. Instead, she packaged her husband differently to her family until he found favour, and got his feet elevated around 1999. Yet throughout that period, my mother submitted to her husband 💯. I never saw her spend money without his approval. The respect she gave her husband was extraordinary. Those two people never had an argument or disagreement in my presence. Now, that was the marriage I grew up watching. I observed it. I internalised it. And I began to see marriage through that lens. My mother eventually left USAID in 2005. Today, my father is the financial pillar of the entire family. The Anambra man literally practises 100/0 till today. He will detonate a grenade on anyone that disrespects his wife or tries come between him and his wife. There was this day my mom took me out on a date. While we were eating, she opened up to me about why she married my father. She told me she saw a king in him, a man fighting to build a kingdom. She talked so grand and inspiring; I just sat there eating and listening. So when he asked her out, she said yes because she knew that God had not blessed her with resources, networks, and opportunities so she could spend them on bags, shoes, wigs, vacations and hoeing around. She said any woman who is not willing to become the primary resource that builds her man's empire, should have no business desiring marriage. I did not understand this as a woman becoming inferior to her man, or disappearing for her man to be seen. I understand as purpose. People need to recognize that marriage is not two people sharing bills. It is two people building something that neither of them could have built alone. This is why I find some of the things I read from both men and women on this app about relationships and marriage extremely wack and strange. Some of the takes sound more like foolishness acquired from life and more like people designing theories around their fears, insecurities and unresolved childhood experiences. This is why my mother would never tolerate just any woman around me. In fact, the woman who eventually disappointed me was someone my mother had warned me about. And this is where my disagreement with the obsession over 50/50 begins. I believe 50/50 people are trying to turn marriage into some accounting system where each partner must bring in half of their income for the marriage equation to balance. That's nonsense if you ask me. In marriage, you may start with 100/0, and move to 100/50. Then, eventually, with growth, stability, opportunity and shared responsibility, you move to 100/100. There may even be seasons where the percentages change completely. No successful marriage started on 50/50. My point is not that one spouse must permanently carry the other. My point is that marriage should have enough trust, vision and commitment for one person to carry more when the other cannot, without turning that sacrifice into a debt.