We all have dealbreakers in relationships. For some people, it’s kids, for others, it’s living in the city, but requiring $180,000 cash for a marriage is in a league of its own. How would you feel if the person you wanted to marry demanded six figures in advance in order to agree to marry you?
This 26-year-old man has spent the last year and a half dating his 22-year-old girlfriend. His girlfriend has mentioned that in her culture, they have a bride price, which is money a man is required to pay a woman’s family in order to marry her.
The money serves as a gesture of gratitude, a safety net in the event of divorce, and as an agreement for the future kids to take the man’s last name.
In his culture, a bride price is more of an outdated tradition, and nobody follows it anymore. It’s usually done in a ceremonial sense, and it’s a couple of thousand dollars.
The woman’s family will then pay that back to the groom through purchasing new appliances for their house or chipping in to pay for the wedding, meaning the transfer of money ends up being zero in the end.
So, a number of months ago, his girlfriend brought up how her mom is demanding $180,000 as her bride price, which he was gobsmacked by.
He articulated his surprise to his girlfriend, who accused him of being disrespectful to her culture. He attempted to negotiate the price down to a reasonable amount, and she stated that it would humiliate her family.
“Of course, I have emotional attachments to her, wanted to be with her, and was committed to the relationship, so I didn’t promise anything up front and essentially told her at the time that I needed to try and process the request myself and figure out what to do financially on my end,” he explained.
The topic of the bride price reared its ugly head again one week ago. His girlfriend said that since they were getting more serious, she needed him to give her a concrete number.
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He did say he was open to paying the full amount, despite his better judgment, but only when he reaches a time in his career where he can comfortably give six figures away.
This is unquestionably going to take him a few years, as he’s still working towards completing his Pd.D. program, which will take another three years.
“After I graduate, I feel like I would have to work for at least 5 years while taking a severe hit to my own quality of life (no vacations, living with parents, etc.) in order to save something like $300-$400k — a point where I would feel like spending $180,000 can be barely justified,” he added.
“So I tell her this, and her response is that she doesn’t want to wait that long, because at that point we would have been together for nearly ten years. I do agree that this is quite long to wait.”
“I’ve asked her what she thought of living together without being married as well, and she said it would be a hard no from her family.”
He switched to trying to get his girlfriend to understand that in his culture, the bride price is totally archaeic. He asked his girlfriend yet again if her family could be more lenient on the amount, but she argued it’s not possible before saying his parents should pay the price.
He responded that he didn’t think his mom and dad had that amount of money. By the way, he did inform them of the first bride price conversation, and they were just as shocked as he was.
He did find it offensive that his girlfriend thought his parents should be spending their money on her. He then came up with a solution: he told his girlfriend he could give her $180,000 in a prenup to protect her if they got divorced.
She insisted that wasn’t good enough either, and they kept going round and round about the bride price. In the end, she dumped him!
“I talked to some of my close friends after this happened, and they all said I was being completely reasonable here, or even too nice,” he continued.
“So that makes me feel better, but of course, the people I’m friends with, and the people I grew up with, are going to agree with me.”
He’s left wondering if he was wrong to try to get out of paying $180,000 to marry his girlfriend.
Well, him getting dumped over the bride price is a blessing in disguise. Good luck to this girl securing a man willing to cough up that kind of cash!
This totally comes across to me like extortion, and this girl is totally a gold digger. Good riddance!
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
