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Fight for your marriage they say, but what does it really mean to fight for one’s marriage in the Nigerian context? I asked some friends and these were few of their responses:
“Fight every perceived side chicks or in-laws that you think are against you. This is always directed to wives anyway but it is being misused. You don’t necessarily have to die in a relationship because you want a marriage to succeed. If it is not working, walk away.”
–Emeka Basil
“It’s because Nigeria is a society where women get the shitty end of the stick. Otherwise, in developed countries, men fight for their marriage when it seems like everything is going south and the woman isn’t feeling the marriage any more. In Nigeria, it is almost a taboo for a woman not to be feeling the marriage anymore.”
–Paul Uche Nweke
“For the woman, it may mean stay and fight for the future of your children irrespective of all negative signs.”
–Vincent Anthony
“Fighting for your marriage is mostly misconstrued to mean only fighting marital enemies be they real or perceived. I believe it is more about making sacrifices, bending backwards, going the extra mile, playing the fool to make things work. Men and women fight for their marriages everyday.”
–Gregory Onokwai
“The truth is when you go into marriage as a woman feeling less of a human in the first place, that is when all these fighting for marriage becomes an advice to you. In marriage, with my experience, two people went into a lifetime love journey and they must both fight equally to make that journey a fruitful one else there’s no marriage. If fight for your marriage means become the oppressed, then count yourself out else you will be another case of who he or she once was. As a man with common sense, you will know that you need your marriage as much as your wife needs it, but if that’s not the case, then life wouldn’t be easy in such marriage.”
–Prestine Akaeze
It is only possible to fight for a marriage when the two people involved desire to make it work. One person cannot be making all the sacrifices to keep the marriage in one piece while the other behaves as they wish.
No matter your level of patience, long suffering and love, one day you might have a temper outburst that may not be contained.
Women are often admonished to fight for their marriage, that for any marriage to survive, its 90% the woman’s responsibility. So they are encouraged, manipulated and shamed into fighting to keep their marriages.
They are further reminded of our mothers and how they endured all manner of inhuman treatments, yet stayed put sake of their children.
This means you have to fight for your marriage even if your partner may have infected you multiple times with sexually transmitted diseases.
Fight for your marriage by enduring domestic violence and toxic behaviours. Fight for your marriage by staying put even if he rapes the house help, his daughters or neighbours children or sleeps around.
Fight for your marriage even if he is completely irresponsible to all your needs and those of his children. He is weak and deserves to be endured and helped, it doesn’t matter if you are in danger, losing your sanity or 100% unhappy and depressed.
Many women have taken this advice and stayed at all cost fighting for their marriages for fear of what society, religion and family will say or how people will see them afterwards.
Unfortunately many of them are fighting for their marriage literally. They have turned murderers and arsonists. If they are not using knives on their husbands while asleep, they are poisoning their meals, ripping brakes off their cars, scarring them with hot water and fighting side chicks on the streets instead of taking it all in silence like their mothers did.
Know this, if you start fighting for what should be a natural association, that relationship is dead already. A marriage you have to fight to keep is like war that sucks life and sanity out of you.
A relationship makes deposits and refreshes. If they do not value and complement your efforts to keep the home together, then you are not fighting for your marriage but your spouse.
To fight for marriage means to reduce the risk factors and increase the protective factors. It means fighting to overcome an addiction, be it pornography, drugs, alcohol or sex addiction to save your marriage. It means to stand by your loving partner through hard times be it financially or health challenges.
Fighting for your marriage means admitting you have anger, controlling and toxic behavior that require going for therapy to help fix you. It means knowing that your partner deserves better and striving towards giving them the best and many more.
Fighting for your marriage does not include giving up your safety, sanity, happiness and peace of mind just to keep a home. Don’t lose yourself fighting for your marriage. You deserve better.
