If you have been a keen consumer of social media, especially TikTok, you will realize that a lot of women all over the world are coming out of marriages that they claim to have been abusive or lacking in one way or another.
While a lot of people in the comments sections empathize with them saying things like, “Welcome home soldier. The war is over”, or “Another soldier returns to us alive”, there is a good number of those who say that the word “Narcissist” has been thrown around a bit carelessly and they say that a lot of women don’t want to own up to the part that they played in these abusive or unhappy marriages.
Everyone is entitled to their truth. A lot of women are indeed leaving abusive relationships that might have been abusive even before tying the knot, or having children but for one reason or another, these women chose to stay. Either way, no one deserves to be put through any type of abuse; man or woman. Generation Z, also known as Gen Z, have been heard saying that Millennials and older generations were used to stress they won’t be taking. Millennials on the other hand, are now seen more often than not, walking away from marriages that some of our mothers would have fought to maintain.
Some people endure an unhappy marriage for long because of pressure to get married due to ticking age clock or unplanned pregnancy, living for public applause especially in this social media age, living to prove a point to imagined enemies of progress or thinking that the man’s exes were the problem. That either you are brighter, richer, more well connected or simply more appealing physically than they were, and because you are a whole package, he’ll finally settle. I’ve learnt over time that a man settles where he wants to settle, details notwithstanding.
Giving up on trying to change a non-committal man is one reason why some women are leaving marriages. One might try to change a man in many ways, including making him a father when he clearly said he doesn’t see himself raising a family any time soon. You start to imagine that he needs just a little push and with his big age, he’ll thank you for siring him heirs and making him look good to his peers and relatives.
What he might have meant is that he doesn’t plan on getting children with you. You do not feature in his future. He’s just passing time with you until he can find the one. You are in denial especially because you feel entitled to some permanence in his life and recognition by his people, for the years you invested in him. You, therefore, go ahead and give him a child, he raises the child out of obligation, but he starts to show repulsion to you because you no longer serve the good-time purpose he intended for you, you are around all the time and your body cannot do so much to serve his needs as you clearly need a break to heal and get back to his preferred “factory settings”. You are in denial for months and before you know it, you have not been intimate with him for years. Your attention has suddenly shifted from the child as pre-school means independence, and now he no longer has an excuse to avoid you. You become lonely and can no longer avoid those friends and family that noticed problems in your marriage from the beginning. Some of them even know who he is with these days but you can never advise a woman in love. Those who you’d spoken ill off because to you, their statements, warnings and worries meant they did not celebrate your moment. You accept the truth, reality hits you properly and you file for your exit.
Giving up on changing a man who is seemingly committed to you by bringing cows to your people or even giving you your dream wedding but will not stop cheating, is yet another reason why women are leaving marriages. They realized that even after siring two or more children for him and him seemingly loving his children so openly, even giving you ownership to some of his property, it doesn’t guarantee that his ways have changed. You might be raising one of his many families and the day you find out about the others, is when you decide you can’t continue.
How a relationship started also matters to the longevity of any marriage. Denial only makes the way to the exit longer. If a man cheated on someone good in order to be with you because you are more thrilling or open minded between the sheets, you have only one job; treat him like a picky eater and change the recipe every time he gets bored with the usual diet. It might not guarantee he’ll only have eyes for you, but it might keep his interests in you a little longer.
A lot of women manage to keep their marriages together because of the intimate research and experiments. However, no matter how smart your ways are, a man who is still searching will always bump into interesting finds. One day you will wake up tired of spicing things up and out you’ll leave. Such a man can also make a ridiculously dangerous suggestion just to get rid of you and you will have to raise your hands in surrender. That man knows how he met you and while you assume he’s with you because you fought off unnecessary unworthy competition, he might be seeing you as an easy find with no standards and so he must leave you before you leave him.
One-sided investments and unmanaged expectations of gratitude also some of the reasons why women are leaving marriages. A woman will choose to support her man financially because of the potential he holds. She’ll even take loans to buy property and some even finance their weddings, build a house at his rural home with the expectation that once the man makes it, he’ll give her major returns on her investments. The good ones do. They exist. The bad ones are many. The type of man that will tell her that he never asked her to go out of her way for him. He’ll suddenly say he’s been feeling suffocated in that marriage and has never been able to feel like a man because she has always been able to provide more than him. He will move on with someone else while still married to his wife, provide better there, knowing that this woman who went out of her way for him will never leave him.
A woman who is keen on impressing the in-laws, her religious group and fellow married women will pray for her marriage for another few decades with the hope that God will open her husband’s eyes and he’ll return to her. Another one focused on self-healing will accept the reality, count her losses and leave the marriage.
Some women are known to be leading single lives within their marriages. This means that their husbands, not out of unemployment or any form of disability, just do not provide in any way expected of the head of the family. That unfortunate woman will pay rent and other bills at home, school fees, health insurance and still figure out how to sort everyone out when sick. She’s the type to hire a car or service and fuel their car for a trip to his rural area with the boot a little lowered because of the bulky shopping done by her, only for her to be given jobs like washing cow offal, be the first to wake up and make breakfast for the village, cook ugali for 20 people, and be the last to sleep after cleaning up, all while the husband has gone drinking with his village buddies and their girlfriends in the name of watching some soccer. Women are known to have a sixth sense, so she might one day get to know naturally what is happening or one day her husband will refuse to buy chang’aa for the local drunks and one will out him during a random funeral in the village. That is when, after 20 years, never-ending visits to the doctor for urinary tract infections, 5 children, a huge bank debt and a bruised heart, the woman will file for her exit.
All in all, good marriages exist. We just need to accept a bad partner is a bad partner from the very beginning, and know that neither time nor children can make them see what they’re losing as they leave trails of broken women on their way to the one. Let’s also not assume that our dreams of marriage equals the dreams of our partners. Women know when a mistake has been made, women know when they’re loved or not loved. That should guide us to where we should settle.
Those attacking single mothers will always find a reason to do so. It is not our job to correct them. Single parents are a result of failed unions that bore children. Let us be kind to each other so we can reduce the desperation to prove we’re marriage material, and the mental health miseries that come with being with partners just for the sake of applause.
Rosebella Kwamboka Ototo is a Radio Traffic Controller currently with Radio47, a mother to a teenager and a toddler
