Donate to Save Human History

Wedding Warnings: A Black Hen Will Lay a White Egg

Speaking life before the vows are exchanged, not every love should be followed to the altar. Some relationships lay eggs you don’t want to raise. And if you are not careful, you will wake up with a wedded partner and still feel alone. It’s not that you love fixing them, it’s that you are used to earning love through labor.

Black Hen Will Not Lay a White Egg

You can be the most nurturing being in the yard, but if you keep laying your love at the feet of someone who expects white eggs from a black hen, you will burn out trying to be what they imagine, not who you truly are.

Ask yourself: have I really been loving them or have I just been working for love that never shows up for me in return?


What is Black Hen Energy?

Black Hen Energy is bold and invigorating, but when you really look at it, it’s not built to produce the outcome you are hoping for. It's energy that feels like it should work, but deep down, you know it won’t.  You are expecting transformation, or a fresh start (white egg) from something that’s already set in its ways or carries baggage (black hen). 

Don’t be surprised when you keep getting the same results if you keep laying your dreams at the feet of someone who was never built to carry them.


When Someone Has Black Hen Energy

They talk the talk, but don’t walk it. they will quote scripture, attend therapy once, say the right things but the behavior never shifts. They look like growth, but they are stuck. you will spend your energy trying to believe in the version of themselves that only exists in theory. you will fight to hold onto potential, all while watching your own needs be neglected.

Emotionally and spiritually, they are still stuck in survival mode and not trying to leave. They don’t know how to love with peace, because all they have ever known is struggle. And they are not in a hurry to learn different. you will spend years mistaking motion for movement.

They need fixing, and they know you like to fix. You feel chosen but really, you are being recruited to do unpaid labor in their healing process. They make you believe you are the problem for wanting more. You ask for consistency, they call you demanding. You ask for honesty, they call you too deep. You think you love fixing but, that’s just the only kind of love you have ever been taught to give.

They are not choosing you — they are outsourcing their healing.

The Burden of Marrying Black Hen Energy

When you marry Black Hen Energy, you don’t just get a partner you inherit their unfinished business, and worse, they expect you to do the finishing. You become the fixer, the parent, the motivator, the therapist, and the target when they don’t want to face themselves. 

They saw your big heart and handed you their broken pieces now you are bleeding from trying to put them back together. Don’t carry what was never yours to fix. You deserve a love that’s ready not a project that’s pretty.

You say you love helping them, healing them, holding them down but I need you to hear me: that’s not love. That’s survival dressed up in sacrifice. And when you’ve spent your whole life fixing people who can’t or won’t return the favor, you start to believe that this is what love feels like heavy, thankless, one-sided. But love, real love? It holds you too.


Did you know?

Most black-feathered hens lay brown eggs, though some lay cream or tinted ones depending on lineage. But none lay white eggs unless there is a genetic surprise in there.

Listing to the wisdom of auntie African Proverbs, as a betrothed you may have accepted to enter into something that looks stable, a whole henhouse of tradition, promises, and ceremony. But if that hen is black, it’s not going to give you a white egg. 


Check out our posts from 2015 which are still relevant today:

Bride price in many African societies is tied to the economic life of the family, what do you really know about bride price?

Wearing gorgeous Maasai beaded wedding collars, bead working has a rich history among Maasai women on their wedding day.

While all marriages are susceptible to fraud, money in this African folklore is a hard-hitting lesson about deceit.

African Studies

African Studies
African Culture and traditions

African proverbs

1' A black hen will lay a white egg. 2. A snake bites another, but its venom poisons itself. 3. Rivers need a spring.