Rescue Is Not Romance: Why I Refuse to Be Saved
Medium | 24.12.2025 01:24
Rescue Is Not Romance: Why I Refuse to Be Saved
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On the invisible hierarchy of “mercy” and the courage to demand partnership instead.
By ‘Rele Pearce
There is a version of love that looks noble from the outside, but feels hollow once you are inside it.
It arrives loudly, with urgency and solutions. It carries the promise to fix, stabilize, and upgrade. It is called Rescue. In many societies — particularly mine — it is the most socially acceptable form of relational imbalance.
A gentle note before we go further: This essay is not an indictment of men or marriage. It is not written from bitterness. It is written from lived experience and compassion for women navigating love under scrutiny and men navigating responsibility under expectation. Growth often begins where comfort ends.
The Context No One Likes to Name
In Nigerian society, single mothers occupy a uniquely unforgiving space. They are rarely seen as women who endured, adapted, and carried on. Instead, they are framed as moral warnings; failures in feminine negotiation whose dignity is treated as conditional.
When a man chooses to marry a woman with a child, the narrative is rarely centered on love. It is centered on charity. The assumption lingers quietly but persistently: He must be doing her a favor.
Once love is framed as mercy, power quietly tilts.
In our culture, a man marrying a woman with a child is often framed as mercy, not mutual choice.
When society has already declared you “less than,” the one who chooses you is unconsciously elevated to the status of a benefactor. In this dynamic, gratitude becomes expected, compliance becomes polite, and silence becomes a form of survival.
After the Wedding, the Questions Begin
Then the marriage happens, and the tone changes — quietly at first, then insistently.
In a society obsessed with bloodlines, existing children are often treated as footnotes or placeholders. The woman is pressured to reproduce — not necessarily out of love, but to legitimize her place. To prove gratitude. To justify being “chosen.”
This is where rescue turns corrosive. The “rescuer” is applauded simply for showing up, while the woman is expected to earn her place indefinitely. Love begins to feel like probation. Not intimacy. Not partnership. Performance.
Rescue demands gratitude. Partnership demands respect.
The Discipline of Addition
In a society obsessed with biological markers, there is a quieter, braver way to build a family. It is the refusal to rank children. It is the understanding that belonging is not a competition between the past and the present, but a steady, daily expansion of the heart.
I saw the fruit of this at our wedding, when my daughter, Damilola, stood up to give her toast. She spoke about how Dokun didn’t force his way in, how he simply “fit.” But then she told a story that captured the exact moment he became the father he is today.
It was her birthday. She had just topped her class and made the school’s “Top Ten” board. I was flying back from Scotland, and she had sworn him to secrecy: “Don’t tell her. I want to tell her myself when she lands.”
He agreed. And then, he immediately called me on the flight.
“I have news,” he told me. “Damilola told me not to say anything… but I didn’t promise not to show you.” He proceeded to turn her achievement into “breaking news” in the family group chat. When she called him, full of teenage drama, to protest his betrayal, he simply laughed and said: “You know I can’t keep secrets from my wife.”
In that moment of group chat drama, Damilola realized something profound. He wasn’t just a guardian; he was her fiercest advocate. His loyalty to me was the foundation of his loyalty to her.
As she said in her closing: “Thank you for being the kind of person who makes a place feel like home — while still being just the right amount of chaotic.”
Building a family is not a performance of authority or a search for “placeholders.” It is the work of addition. It is choosing — daily — to protect the joy of the people you have claimed as your own.
Why I Refuse to Be Saved
I am not opposed to support; I am opposed to hierarchy disguised as love. I reject narratives where marriage is absolution and where choosing me is framed as a sacrifice.
Partnership says: “I see you as whole — even if society refuses to.” It does not rank children. It does not weaponize biology. It does not confuse lineage with love.
I am not a cautionary tale. I am not a project. I am not a favor. I am a woman with history, agency, children, and a voice. The man who loves me must stand beside me, not above me.
Love is not a lifeboat offered from higher ground. It is two people standing on the same shore.
About the Author
Omo George-Lawson, writing as ‘Rele Pearce, is a Legal Practitioner navigating the complex architecture of modern partnership and the joys of raising a brilliant daughter. Her work explores the intersections of agency, cultural expectation, and the quiet discipline of peace. She believes that true love requires no rescuers — only equals.
