When choosing a partner, I have one important characteristic that I look for, and that is a partner who would make an excellent father. My reason is logical because I am someone who prepares for various eventualities.
I live life in such a way that I'm prepared to tackle whatever life throws at me. While I see women desire to have good husbands who would love and cherish them, I have also seen that we do not always get all that we want, and in most cases, we resolve to compromise.
One thing is certain, and that is I will never compromise my children's happiness or well-being. Divorce or not, it has never been my intention to do parenting alone because it takes two to tango. It is for this reason that I look out for a man who would be a father first before anything else, such that when the attraction that we share fades, he doesn't lose sight of his role and responsibilities as a father. I can always find a man who tickles my fancy, but would my children be that lucky with another father?
Moving on, I have seen men neglect their children simply because the woman they had them with remarried or separated from them. I have also seen women who would hate their children or turn them against their father because he left for another woman. Such situations are undesirable, and as adults, we need to realise that no matter what we feel towards our partner, the children should not be involved. We should realise that our children are separate entities from our marital affairs. So, regardless of the dispute and status with our partner, when it's time to be parents, we should be parents without any unhealthy competition or show of negligence.
Being from an African setting, divorce is rarely an option, especially for women. Most times, divorced women get stigmatised by society, and due to this stigmatisation, most women remain in unhealthy marriages. Ironically, men are stigmatised too, but it's just that they are not as vocal about it as women are, and somehow they are more supportive towards one another.
It is worth noting that the fact that both genders want to put up a picture-perfect, socially accepted image when it comes to marriage often leads to a more detrimental situation for society. I have seen women who put up with all forms of abuse from their partner, and they remain because that's the only thing that they know, given the home that they are coming from.
I had this friend whose husband beat her to a pulp because she was in the same shop as a male resident he had warned her to stay away from. She was at the shop to get some household items when the neighbour came, and she didn't mind him.
Unfortunately, her banking network was poor, and she could not transfer funds, causing her delay. When her husband came to look for her as he needed some beverages for dinner, he saw the man leaving the shop, and that's how my friend got into trouble.
I have since resolved not to get involved in people's marital crises, but given my friend's condition when I went to see her at the hospital, I asked her one question: Is the marriage worth your life?. She responded with a question, Where would she go? What happens to her children?
She went further to remind me of the embarrassment she faced from her family before she got married. It's even worse that her mother told her to keep fighting for her marriage despite knowing what's at stake. It felt weird because I know my mother will never advise me of such.
At that moment, I saw that the mother didn't really have a better option when it came to marriage, so I asked my friend what her parents' marriage was like, and she narrated it to me. Listening to her narration wasn't different from what she was going through, as her father would often bring other women to the house and send her mother to cook and serve them. If her mother refused, her father would lock her out and make her sleep outside in the cold.
When I asked her why her mother didn't leave, she said it was because of her and her siblings; Her mother didn't want them to grow up without a father.
I couldn't say all that was on my mind because I did not want to come across as insensitive, but one thing I left with her was to let her know that the future of her children is hanging on whatever decision she makes.
I informed her that if she remains, she's teaching her sons that it's ok to be an abuser and her daughters that it's ok to be abused.
Sometimes we might feel that we are protecting our children by fighting to keep an abusive marriage together, but in the long run, we are causing more damage to the mentality of our children, who will grow to have their own families someday.
My friend's story is one of many situations that uphold the importance of divorce. If my friend had grown up in a different setting, she might have had a better marriage experience or at least known it's ok to walk away. Unfortunately, it becomes a generational trait passed on from her mother to her and ultimately to her daughters. Thus a vicious cycle is created.
