Whenever I introduce a friend to my mother, she asks me for their biography. When I was young, I used to find it nagging. I would express amusement at her inquisition about my friend’s family, tribe, village of origin…etc. I would answer two or three questions before pointing out that I didn’t ask my friend all those "irrelevant” questions.

In my childish ignorance I would wonder; why are old people so nosy? Why are they so closed off and suspicious of people from other walks of life? As a young ‘elite’ I used to find it laughable that in the olden days, parents could stop their children from marrying outside their village.

But then life taught me that people are complex. And when you allow them in your life, you don’t get to take the parts that you want. You take them wholly. You take them with their character and background and beliefs and dreams. Your life gets intertwined with their families’.

Therefore, the decision to be with someone forever is (in my unmarried opinion), something that should not be done without thorough inquiry. You need to ask a lot of questions.

Sure we can talk about feelings. But realistically, feelings are not temporary. They can vary and they can go. But the person’s conduct and decisions (which are often based on their character, beliefs and background) affect your life and the lives of your children.

For instance, there is this woman who, against her parents’ advice, decided to marry a man whose cultural background she wasn’t well-acquainted with. Because she subscribed to the notion that love knows no boundaries. A few years later when her husband asserted that their daughter was to be circumcised as par his culture, feelings didn’t matter anymore.

There is also a man who pretended to be rich to snag a rich man’s daughter. He succeeded. There was a lavish wedding. But things did not end very well. When she found out that he was poor, she decided to go back on her vow to be with him in times of poverty.

I want to believe that such situations can be prevented if 21st century people learn to feel less and seek to know more. People refer to this as the age of knowledge. But a lot of us are not very interested in knowing. We are quick to fall in love. We are too trusting. We are so impatient we don’t have time for details.

We fall in love with fraudsters and gold-diggers and we stay in bad relationships and we advise women that in order to stay happy in a relationship, ignorance is bliss.

But ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is responsible for countless deaths. Ignorance is the reason why people are victims of scams. Ignorance is very bad. And when ignorance is combined with feelings, it is just disastrous.

I don’t advocate for skepticism. But the fact is people are not always well-intentioned. So I think it is only practical to acquire as much as knowledge as possible about someone before you decide to trust them with the one life you’ve been given.