They arrive and sit together at family outings. At least the formal bits. This morning, like most, they barely said good morning to each other but have an understanding that he tells her the evening before what time they are leaving and they meet in the car. Other than family outings you never see them at the same outing. One avoids the other’s outings. That is the extent of their current relationship as husband and wife.
She told me she would never forget the day he told her he was no longer in love with her and that the marriage had been a farce from the first day. She had watched him float from one affair into the next for the last 15 years.He made no attempt to hide them from her. She described him as a practiced butterfly sucking nectar from one plant after the other. She knows he doesn’t have the nerve to ask her for a divorce and even if he did she would not give him one easily. She admits that it is a great distraction to them both and it has affected their fortunes individually, but she doesn’t care.
The last time they saw each other naked was almost 10 years ago. She had separated their bedroom a few months after he told her the marriage was hanging on shoe strings and she was tired of his coming in with whiffs of ladies perfume all over him. So she had moved her stuff into what used to be their married daughter’s bedroom. For about 2 years after she moved out they had sex in her bedroom when he wanted it. She thought that was her weapon until she realized it was her turn because the ladies did not have time to service him. Then she stopped allowing him to use her.
The story above describes how many homes are today and it doesn’t matter that many of them refuse to acknowledge so to the outside world. No one is deceived by this,not even the family members they put up a front for. The pain that each is going through cannot be imagined nor described.
People are counselled before they get married but marriages are breaking up faster than the crockery at parties. What is wrong with the counselling? Why are people sacrificing their chance of a good life because society expects them to stay married? Why is the church insisting on not divorcing and yet they are shying away from confronting the issues that lead to break up of marriages?
It is fool hardiness to remain in a marriage because it is said to be ‘convenient’. Whose convenience? What convenience? Hear what some people give as excuse
‘I cannot afford to get my own place’
‘The children would suffer’
‘What would people say?’
‘As long as I carry on my life and he doesn’t get in my way, I am happy to live with him as housemates’.
Am I suggesting divorce? I am certainly not advocating an unhappy marriage. I am suggesting that if it is broken, fix it and if it beyond fixing leave it. A happy relationship, marriage or not, involves a lot of work and if both parties are not willing, then it is broken and beyond redemption. Hanging on to a broken marriage leads to emotional, physical and financial violence. It is self inflicted abuse. It leads to infidelity and hatred of the spouse.
Divorce is not a hydra headed dragon as we are made to believe. A few women run away from the broken home under the guise that they are babysitting their grandchildren. If a woman stays away for any length of time up to three months from her husband, its because she is running away from the man and the torture of seeing him daily. Why bother then?
Why not simply get a divorce?
