There’s a particular kind of judgment that Kenyans dispense freely and without warning. It comes from aunties, from campus friends, from that one cousin who always has an opinion about your life choices. And it sounds something like this:
“Huyo ako na pesa lakini najua humpendi. Is it even worth it?”
It’s said with such certainty. As if choosing a partner who can actually pay rent is somehow a betrayal of your soul. As if love and financial sense cannot possibly exist in the same decision. As if the most romantic thing you can do is suffer beautifully alongside someone who makes your heart flutter but your bank account weep.
But here’s the question nobody stops long enough to ask: What exactly are you selling out, and who made those rules?
Where the Guilt Comes From
The idea that choosing money over love is shallow didn’t come from nowhere. It was fed to us slowly, through years of telenovelas on Citizen TV, through church sermons about the purity of love, through fairy tales where the poor girl marries for feeling and somehow everything works out by the final chapter.
We were taught that love is noble and money is dirty. That the heart should lead and the head should follow quietly, apologetically, like a guest that wasn’t really invited.
And so when someone makes a calm, considered decision to choose a stable partner over an exciting but financially chaotic one, the world reaches for the worst possible interpretation. Gold digger. Sellout. Mpango wa biashara.
Nobody stops to ask what that person has already been through. What they watched their parents endure. What they themselves survived before arriving at that decision.
What “Selling Out” Actually Requires
To sell out, you have to betray something real for something cheap. A musician who abandons their art for a corporate jingle has sold out. A journalist who buries a true story for a bribe has sold out.
But a woman in her late twenties who has spent years watching love fail in the absence of stability: who has held a sick child alone because her partner’s “business” never quite took off, who has explained to a landlord one too many times that the money is coming, that woman choosing differently this time around?
That’s not selling out. That’s paying attention.
There’s a difference between chasing wealth for status and choosing stability for survival, between marrying a wallet and marrying a whole human being who also happens to have their finances together. The language we use flattens all of that nuance into one lazy accusation.
The Romanticization of Struggling Together
Kenya has a complicated relationship with the idea of suffering together as proof of love. There’s almost a cultural badge of honor attached to it. If you stayed when things were hard, your love is real. If you left or chose differently from the start, your love was never real to begin with.
But struggling together is only romantic in retrospect, when things eventually got better. Nobody writes songs about the couples who struggled together and then broke apart under the weight of it, and there are far more of those stories than we admit.
Shared hardship can build resilience in a relationship, yes. But it can also build resentment, exhaustion, and a slow, quiet bitterness that love cannot survive. The line between “we built this together” and “we broke each other trying” is thinner than the movies suggest.
Choosing not to start from zero isn’t cowardice. Sometimes it’s the most honest thing you can do.
Growing Up Looks Different Now
Our grandparents grew up in an economy where a man with a small shamba and a government job could provide a decent life. Love was the variable, the thing you hoped would come and deepen over time. Arranged marriages weren’t about selling out. They were about building something sustainable first and trusting that affection would follow.
We look back at that and deem it as old-fashioned, but in our attempt to be modern and romantic, we swung too far the other way: treating financial consideration as something shameful, something to hide, and something that cheapens the love story.
Growing up in 2026 means understanding that love and money are not enemies. It means knowing that the most loving thing you can do for yourself and for a future partner is to be honest about what you need to thrive: not just emotionally, but practically.
It means asking the uncomfortable questions early. It means walking away from something that feels good but cannot hold the weight of real life. It means choosing sometimes with your head, and trusting that your heart will catch up.
But What About Real Love?
Here’s where it gets honest. Choosing stability over fireworks doesn’t mean settling for someone you feel nothing for. That’s a different conversation entirely, and it rarely ends well either.
The goal was never to choose money instead of love. The goal is to refuse the false choice: the idea that you must pick between a person who makes you feel alive and a person who won’t leave you drowning.
Those people exist. Stable and loving. Financially grounded and emotionally present. They’re not mythical. They’re just not always the most immediately exciting option in the room. Sometimes they’re the quiet one at the end of the table who actually shows up when things get hard.
Real love, the kind that actually lasts a Nairobi lifetime, is rarely just a feeling. It’s a decision. Made every day. With both the heart and the head sitting at the same table, negotiating like adults.
So, Are You Selling Out?
No. You’re not.
You’re just finally old enough to know that love without a foundation isn’t romance, but its risk. That choosing wisely is an act of self-respect and not a betrayal of your feelings. The person who judges you for wanting stability has probably never had to choose between electricity and dinner.
Selling out means betraying your values for something hollow. Choosing a partner who brings both love and financial groundedness is a sign of maturity. It shows you finally understand your own worth and refuse to settle for less.
