By Felex Niwagaba
Marriage is often presented as a union built on love, companionship, commitment and shared responsibility. Yet money, intimacy, family expectations and material security can also shape the way modern relationships function.
In When I Am Asked Why I Am Not Married, Felex Niwagaba examines those tensions through an intentionally provocative idea he calls “neo-prostitution.” He does not argue that marriage and prostitution are the same. Instead, he asks what happens when affection or sexual intimacy within a relationship increasingly becomes conditional on money, gifts, lifestyle or financial performance.
His argument moves through bride price, changing expectations of men and women, household responsibilities, commercial sex and the Ugandan concept of sente za kameza. At its heart is a larger question: when does mutual support within a relationship become transactional exchange?
Marriage, Conflict and Expectations
When I am asked why I am not marrying, my mind often goes back to the stories couples share about their relationships. Both elite and non-elite couples frequently speak the same language when describing the challenges they face.
Legally married and unmarried couples often experience similar struggles in the management of their families. Religious and non-religious couples, despite their different beliefs, can also find themselves practising many of the same behaviours.
This raises an important question: What is the essence of marriage, and what has become the major disruptive factor within it?
It is worth observing that, in many cases, village couples appear to demonstrate stronger matrimonial commitment than couples living in towns. This may partly relate to the expectations individuals carry into relationships before they form a union.
Every couple experiences conflict, irrespective of background. I do not intend to minimise the contribution that disagreement can sometimes make to family growth.
However, when family conflicts continuously reach the public, police, religious leaders or courts of law, it becomes difficult to insist that such conflict is merely a healthy part of marriage. It is therefore important to examine the root causes of persistent conflict within families.
During Uganda’s first COVID-19 lockdown, reports of family conflict increased significantly. However, such conflicts were not entirely new. Uganda had experienced similar cases long before the pandemic, with some disagreements becoming serious enough to lead spouses to seek divorce.
Divorce may occur among couples from different social classes, but it becomes particularly visible among formally married families because legal separation may require formal processes concerning children, responsibilities and property.
Property consequently becomes an important issue in discussions about marriage and divorce.
When some women are asked why formal marriage is important, the conversation may include questions of security, inheritance and ownership of family property. Religious people may, understandably, emphasise marriage as a requirement or institution established by God.
The motivations that individuals bring into marriage therefore deserve examination.
It is from this point that I introduce what I call neo-prostitution within modern relationships.
Sex, Value and Exchange
Prostitution is commonly understood as the exchange of sexual services for money or another form of value.
From a traditional perspective, however, the discussion becomes more complicated when we consider practices such as bride price. If prostitution is described as the exchange of sexual access for value, one may ask how bride price should be understood when marriage itself historically involved an exchange of wealth between families.
Bride price, however, was traditionally much broader than the purchase of sexual access. It represented an agreement between families, recognition of a union and the creation of social obligations between clans.
Traditional marriage therefore created relationships not only between a man and woman but between families and communities. Divorce was often discouraged, and when difficulties occurred, families became involved in reconciliation. Intermarriage could even strengthen relationships between previously separate communities.
Sexual behaviour was also strongly regulated by cultural expectations. Virginity before marriage, particularly for women, was highly valued in many communities, while open commercial sex was socially condemned.
Modern society has changed many of these expectations.
If prostitution is fundamentally about exchanging sexual access for money or material value, then we must ask where the boundary between ordinary relationships and transactional relationships actually lies.
Trade remains trade regardless of whether payment is made directly in cash or indirectly through goods, services, protection or financial support.
Similarly, where sexual access becomes conditional upon obtaining material value, the relationship begins to contain elements of exchange.
Many young people grow up absorbing the idea that relationships require such exchanges. Boys may believe that obtaining intimacy requires spending money, while girls may be encouraged to measure a man’s seriousness through what he provides.
Marriage itself has also become increasingly expensive. For many young men, the financial expectations surrounding courtship, ceremonies, housing, lifestyle and family responsibilities have made marriage appear more expensive than temporary sexual relationships.
This creates an uncomfortable economic reality: when the perceived cost of marriage becomes much higher than the perceived cost of obtaining sex outside marriage, society may unintentionally encourage short-term sexual relationships rather than stable unions.
Marriage as an Exchange of Expectations
The expectations of men and women within marriage are different, although they frequently overlap.
Both men and women value intimacy, affection, companionship, security, respect and economic stability.
For purposes of this argument, however, I use the traditional economic language of demand and supply to examine how some relationships operate.
Men are often portrayed as placing a strong value on sexual satisfaction. Women, in turn, may expect men to fulfil responsibilities associated with being providers or breadwinners.
Traditionally, a breadwinner is expected to ensure that important household needs are met. When those expectations are not fulfilled, conflict can arise.
Likewise, when emotional or sexual expectations are not fulfilled, conflict may arise from the other side.
This means that many marriages operate through an exchange of expectations: provision, affection, loyalty, companionship, protection, intimacy and responsibility.
There is nothing inherently wrong with spouses supporting one another. Mutual responsibility is one of the foundations of family life.
The problem begins when affection or sexual intimacy becomes a bargaining instrument.
When one partner communicates, directly or indirectly, that intimacy will only be available after receiving money, gifts or material support, the relationship becomes increasingly transactional.
A long-term relationship does not automatically stop being transactional simply because the people involved are married.
Society’s Double Standard
Commercial sex exists because there is a market for it.
That market includes men, many of whom also belong to families and occupy respected positions in society. Society may strongly condemn the woman who sells sexual services while saying comparatively little about the man who purchases them.
Religious communities use terms such as adultery and fornication to distinguish different forms of sexual behaviour.
These terms have theological meanings, but from the perspective of the sexual act itself, many of the physical actions remain similar. What changes are the relationship, consent, commitment, morality, circumstances and expectations surrounding the act.
Prostitution survives wherever there is demand for commercial sexual services.
But sexual interaction generally requires some form of willingness and mutual readiness between participants.
Within commercial sex, this willingness follows a monetary agreement. Within marriage, it should ideally arise from affection, intimacy, trust and mutual desire.
Yet where financial performance becomes a precondition for intimacy within marriage, the boundary becomes less clear.
This is why the popular Ugandan concept of “sente za kameza”—money provided by a man for household responsibilities—becomes relevant to the argument.
A husband is reasonably expected to contribute to the welfare of his family.
However, if failure to provide a particular amount of money automatically results in the withdrawal of intimacy as punishment, sex risks becoming a bargaining tool.
On the street, sexual access may depend upon an agreed payment.
Inside a troubled marriage, sexual access may sometimes depend upon satisfying financial demands.
The environments are different, the commitments are different and the social meanings are different, but the transactional mentality can begin to resemble one another.
Where either party attempts to obtain sex through force, however, the matter becomes entirely different.
Forced sex is not a transaction. It is sexual violence, and marriage should never be understood as automatic consent.
The Idea of Neo-Prostitution
People marry for many reasons: companionship, love, family, children, social stability, faith, belonging and sexual intimacy.
Commercial sex workers primarily exchange sexual services for value, although individuals involved may have many different personal motivations.
Married couples, on the other hand, are expected to build relationships based on commitment, mutual responsibility and affection.
However, where husbands and wives begin continuously attaching sexual intimacy to money, gifts, lifestyle or financial performance, I describe this development as neo-prostitution.
I use the term not to claim that marriage and prostitution are legally or morally identical. They are clearly different institutions.
Rather, the term describes the growing transactionalisation of intimacy inside relationships that are supposed to be based on deeper forms of commitment.
This mentality becomes dangerous during periods of financial hardship.
If affection, respect and intimacy depend heavily upon money, then unemployment, business failure, illness or economic decline can quickly destabilise the relationship.
A spouse who once met every financial expectation may suddenly fail to do so. If the relationship was built primarily around material exchange, its foundation becomes weak.
This may partly explain why some marriages fail when families experience serious financial or social challenges.
The solution is therefore not simply to condemn prostitution while ignoring transactional attitudes inside ordinary relationships.
Society must rethink how young people are educated about marriage, sex, responsibility, love and economic expectations.
Families, schools, religious institutions, cultural leaders, academics and political leaders all have a role to play.
Young men should not grow up believing that every form of affection must be purchased.
Young women should not grow up believing that their primary value in relationships comes from what men can financially provide in exchange for intimacy.
Likewise, men should not use financial provision as a justification for demanding sexual access.
Marriage should be a partnership in which both people contribute according to their abilities and circumstances, while intimacy grows from mutual affection, respect and consent rather than commercial calculation.
Until society confronts the increasingly transactional nature of modern relationships, we may continue condemning prostitution on the street while quietly reproducing some of its economic logic inside our homes.
Perhaps the deeper debate should therefore not only be about whether prostitution should be criminalised or legalised.
When did intimacy become something that people increasingly believe must always be bought, earned or exchanged?
— Felex Niwagaba
Systems Architect
