#IWD2022: Is marriage for better and for worse?

Today, I am getting vulnerable with you. I will share a bit of why I am leaving my marriage...

Mar 08, 2022

My friend, it’s International Women’s Day today.

The theme this year, is breaking the bias. I wanted to share with you a bit of what I have been dealing with in my relationship of a decade- especially when I said I wanted to end it.

I know this is a public mailing list, and anyone could be reading this. But today, and for the next three months, up till my birthday, I will not keep quiet. I will break this bias.

I made a call to my partner in July, 2021, saying I wanted to end the relationship, after he took my being vulnerable with him for granted, among other things.

I called him to express that I met a friend, and we had become very close. This is someone I must say is nothing like my partner. So I was emotional, as I told him about my friend. My partner claimed that I had committed adultery, hence the reason I was crying. You will find details about this in my book.

Now, my partner trivialized everything I have had to endure for close to a decade, before I moved to the United States. It was as if he was suffering from dementia- may be I was too. But not anymore! When I told him I was done, several unthinkable things happened. Professors in my university were sent emails, with messages about how I have been committing adultery in the US. Next, speaking with my children became difficult, as they are now been weaponized. He recruited people to monitor/stalk me on social media and even in my university. Even more, I have been receiving all kinds of threats and abuse since then, from him and his flying monkeys.

There are several biases about relationships, and it is important that you recognize the biases, and never be silent. The system may not give you justice, but you have a voice, do not be silent!

Today is not the day to tell the entire story. But, I will tell it all. Soon! I will invite you to stay with me as I tell you every part of it.

Meanwhile, I wrote a class paper, titled: Is marriage for better and for worse, and I wanted you to read it. It captures the bias we have about marriage.

Please read it below.

Title: Marriage is for better and for worse

Author: Bisola-Mariam

“Saturdays are for weddings in Nigeria. These wedding parties, popularly called owanbe1, are graced by men and women, dressed to impress in their best outfits. These events always leave people emotional, and as they watch the love birds dancing, locking hands, smiling and kissing deeply, the onlookers long to have such love and intimacy. Beautiful weddings often shape people’s perception for the possibility of a long-lasting relationship and they envisage a happily ever after. Even more, the exchange of marital vows during these events, leave people hoping that these relationships will be for better or worse. As a young lady who grew in Nigeria, I formed my perception about marriage from three settings. Namely the family, media and religious settings. I first heard the saying, marriage is for better, for worse, from watching television shows, with themes on marriage and relationship. I n those movies, when couples have crises, people encourage them to endure. From seeing how this message pervaded media at a young age, I also began to think that marriage ought to be for better and for worse, and that endurance is a key ingredient for a lasting marriage, no matter what happens. But my curiosity began, when as I grew older, I began to see marriages break. On one hand, the television stars in movies made me think that marriages can last forever, but on the other hand, I became confused whenever I read newspaper headlines that the celebrity who looked happy, and whose marriages lasted forever in these movies, began to confuse me, when I read newspaper headlines, that their marriages were not working.

In the same vein, the religious circle had their fair share of these breakdowns. It was often preached that marriages should be for better and for worse. I had great faith in these teachings. But what I was made to belief was far from the reality even in the religious circles. This is because some of the religious leaders I grew up to belief, and who promoted the ideology of a lasting marriage, went through divorce at some point. What often followed the news about religious leaders with failed marriages in my country, were criticisms. These criticisms stem from the idea that they were expected to me more tolerant in their marriages as they were meant to be prototypes for good marriages. Most people never consider that these men and women of God, are first humans. This wide spread belief about the marriages of religious leaders being the standard, also made me curious to know if being publicly perceived as God-fearing is what makes a marriage last forever.

I am from the southwestern part of Nigeria. As a Yoruba2 girl, I was trained from a young age, that women must make their homes stand even in the storm. In order words, it was my responsibility to ensure that my union lasts forever. I grew up with this script, and it shaped my perception about marriage. My first confusion about the validity of this statement, was when I discovered that my mother and step-father, were separating. I did not have much time to process this as I was young, and no one even educated me. But as I think about it now, I am even more curious to know if the saying, marriage is for better for worse is true, or a myth, or some complicated idea that can’t be explained.

Retrospectively, I consider how my relationship with my ex evolved. I got married in 2012 with the typical pomp and pageantry that accompanies African weddings. But as I write from my side of the table, I no longer see a for better for worse. Thinking about how my relationship of close to 10 years with my ex evolved to this point, and the fact that I have now made plans for a divorce, increases my curiosity.

In African homes, women are taught early that for a home to stand, the woman must be fully responsible. This ideology is strengthened by the Bible verse, “A wise woman builds her home, and a foolish one pulls it down with her hands.”3 Through out my relationship with my ex, this was my guiding principle from my subjective perspective. But despite this, we could not achieve a for better for worse. I chose to investigate this popular belief about marriages, because it will afford me the opportunity to understand if this is an ordinary myth, resulting in unrealistic expectation of married people, or perhaps there is some truth in this popular belief, and in what context or situation it retains its validity. At the end, I will be able to understand better why some relationships don’t become for better for worse, and what make some (if there are) stand the test of time. The result of my investigation will help educate people about romantic relationships and also help people to identify the red flags and help them make good decisions before and during the marriage.

Marriage is for better and for worse

To determine if there is some truth in the saying that marriage is for better for worse, I examined three articles. These papers gave me some insight into some of the various lenses’ researchers have tried to examine this statement. My first goal was to understand what factors cause people to enter into a marital dyad in the first place, and how it degenerates or hopefully gets repaired. To understand this, I engaged Trost’s (1986) article, What holds marriages together? Secondly, I explored Karney (2010) Keeping Marriages Healthy and Why it is so difficult, and lastly, Gillian et. al (2021), Why Women Choose Divorce.

Trost (1986) demonstrates that if one understands what holds marriages, then one automatically can understand the things that break marriages. Trost proposed that there are two concepts that people in a marital dyad often consider in their choice to stay or leave a marriage. These are “bonds” and “affection”. Bonds are created when individuals think that their shared emotions or values can be fostered by someone else. In a marital dyad, there are a number of bonds, whose presence can make it difficult for people to leave their relationships, and whose absence, can increase chances of divorce.

Trost talked about a number of bonds that keep people in a marital dyad, and I will make connections to the ones that resonate with the goal of this paper. They are sex bond, economic bond, and children bond. He also mentioned how some expectations may make it difficult for people to end their relationships. These are legal and social expectations, and I think these two types of expectations, resonates with my relationship. Sex bond can lead to two types of “forced” marriages. The generally known “forced” marriage is when families coerce people to marry, but Trost described a different type of forced marriage. “This one is the case where a couple decide to marry sometime in the future, but the unplanned pregnancy has resulted in their decision to marry sooner (p. 305).

As I reflect of this definition of forced marriage, my perspective is that people enter into marriage because of an “unplanned event”. This makes me think about how my relationship with my ex started. I never planned to have sex with him, but this “unplanned event” made me feel emotionally bonded or stuck with him. As a Yoruba woman, my culture holds a very strong tradition about sex and virginity and which made me think I was culturally obligated to marry my ex, since I had sex with him. Let me add that this cultural obligation is an unwritten code or a guiding script that was handed down to young girls in my culture, while growing up and strengthened by religion. I remember the scripture, “marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.”4 With this guiding script for a young naive girl like me, I felt obligated to marry my ex. I also thought that no other man will ever want to accept a girl who had lost her virginity, if I chose not to proceed with the relationship with my ex, who disvirgined me at the time. In my line of work as an anti-stigma and social inclusion advocate, during many of my media sensitization talks, many women shared with me, how they felt bound to marrying a man because of “unplanned events” such as sex and pregnancy. Based on this cultural expectation, I remained in my marriage with the notion that it ought to be for better for worse.

However, I discovered in my marriage that I was not the first virgin my ex ever had sex with. Therefore, what I held as a bounding cultural code, did not matter to him. For instance, my ex began to make sexual advances to my friends, and so, he did not feel bounded by cultural cum religious code that the marriage bed should not be defiled. With this conflict in moral expectations, the marriage could not survive, and soon the for better for worse idea could not hold longer than nine years. Therefore, from my subjective perspective as someone with a personal experience with a marriage which eventually did not work, I figured out that the unplanned sexual intercourse with my partner, made it difficult for me not to enter into a marital dyad, even though there were a few signs that under normal circumstances, should make me decline the marital offer.

Another bond that keep couples bound by the for better for worse code, is children bond. In my marriage, when we began to have children, it became more difficult for me to leave the relationship, despite that my partner had become physically, emotionally and financially abusive. Trost also described children bond, as one of the reasons people stay in a relationship. “The parents perceive social expectations or social norms that children need the family, based upon an existing marriage. These social bonds are stronger when the children are minors” (p.305). In order words, couples hold the notion that marriage is for better for worse because they feel that their children are dependent on them, or would thrive better if the marriage continues to exist as a unit.

In addition to Trost’s explanation on children bond, I propose that one of the parties in a marital dyad is often afraid of single-parenting. I personally was afraid of ever becoming a single parent, because I was raised by a single parent. I saw the struggles my mother went through to raise my brothers and I. With the traumatic childhood experiences, I had to endure as a child in a single parent family, I was fearful of ever raising children in one. Therefore, I clung to the idea that my marriage should be for better and for worse, and I should stay in the relationship no matter what happens. Even if I wanted to walk away at the early part of the marriage, I could not do so, because I was not economically self-reliant.

According to Trost, economic bond is another reason people find it hard to leave their marriages. During the first 3 years of my marriage, I did not have a source of income, and I was economically reliant on my partner, and even when he would abuse, gaslight and minimize me, I did not have many options, as I lived in fear and broke down emotionally. When I finally began to find my footing financially, and the children began to grow older, the children bond and economic bond reduced. As I became less dependent on my partner, and as the abuse increased, we continued to drift apart. The dissatisfaction I began to feel in my marriage and the fact that I was now financially self-reliant, made me choose divorce. My action in this case follows Gillian et. al’s (2021) prediction that “with women's greater earnings comes less interdependence between partners. This could change women's willingness to tolerate annoyances in their marriage by altering their welfare trade-off ratio (i.e. the willingness to sacrifice personal welfare to increase partner's welfare” (p. 306). In order words, another reason I could not bear to stay in my marriage is what Gillian et. al calls reduced inter-dependence, but what had earlier made me tolerate his excesses was what Trost refers to it as economic bond. However, in my opinion, it is possible to stay in a relationship where there is no economic bond, but both parties enjoy quality intimacy, are able to trust and respect each other. These for me, are the sine qua non, or prerequisite of a for better for worse marriage. These expectations I had of my marriage were high and that led to reduced satisfaction.

Therefore, it followed that the parameter for determining if my marriage was going to be worth it, was if my partner was meeting the high expectation I had of the marital dyad. ‘If a person has high expectations of his/ her marital relationship and if the perceived reality does not meet the standards set by the expectations, then that person has lower satisfaction with the relationship” (Trost, 1986, p. 306). I had high expectations of my marriage, and when that did not happen, the bond became weaker, and it became impossible for us to have the for better and for worse.

Another concept that I chose to explore, to determine if a marriage can be for better or for worse, using scholarly perspective, was legal expectations. In Nigeria, the legal system is weak, and highly bureaucratic. Hence, it becomes difficult for many women for instance to see the end of a divorce. This is because the legal process frustrates anyone seeking a divorce. The low legal expectation keeps some people stuck in relationships that are below personal expectation. With this conflict in internal need, and the external reality, people in marital dyads experience cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance5 produces a feeling of mental discomfort, leading to an alteration of one’s attitude. It is an action that someone takes to ease the conflict in their thoughts. Personally, as I began to experience mental discomfort in my marriage, I had to alter my attitude or overall expectation of the union, and rather than think that things would get better, I held on to the idea that long suffering is good, and if it worse, it can still be better. What also forced me to adjust my internal thought and reduce the high expectation I had, was the external reality, which is the fact that the legal process for leaving a dysfunctional marriage in Nigeria was complicated.

Gillian et al. and Trost suggest that most marriages can survive if there is inter-dependency or economic bond. I disagree with their positions because despite that inter-dependence and economic bond were present in my marriage, the relationship did not survive due to lack of self-control. For instance, it was my ex’s lack of self-control that would cause him to be verbally aggressive in our relationship. My marriage deteriorated at different times, whether stress levels were high or not. For instance, when we experienced financial stress, my partner would be verbally abusive; and when we had financial relief, and had help with the children, my partner would spend money on other women and even engage in sexual conversations with these women, seeking pleasures outside of our marriage. Ability to manage vulnerabilities is one of the factors for building a for better for worse, as suggested by Karney. Karney adapted the VSA model to explain how marriages can be kept healthy.

The VSA or Vulnerability Stress Adaptation model, as described by Karney (2010), proposes that couples’ ability to adapt during stress or when vulnerable, directly affects their marital satisfaction. I agree with the definition of this framework that stress can affect marital satisfaction. In my relationship, stress-manifesting in the form of abuse, affected the satisfaction in my marriage. However, I disagree with Karney and Gillian et. al, who in their conclusions suggest that when couples experience less stress, have child care support from families, there can be more satisfaction in their relationship. This is because my ex and I had child-care support and finance improved and despite these, his lack of self-control still caused our relationship to fail.

Conclusion

Marriage is beautiful and a happily ever after is not a mirage. I have seen television stars in my country with enviable marriages, and that are thriving behind the scene. An example that comes to mind is Funke Akindele, who despite her first failed marriage, has now build a marriage with another television star, who had also been previously divorced. Also, there are people in the religious circles whose marriages have succeeded. For example, Pastor E.A. Adeboye6 and his wife, have an exemplary marriage for young people in my country. Also, I have mentors, who have built lasting unions, and whose marriages I have come to admire. In order words, there are people who are working to build healthy relationships.

In conclusion, my position is that the popular saying, marriage is for better for worse, is relative. It is not a universally valid statement. Therefore, there is some myth in there. However, it can become a statement of fact when couples are able to meet each other’s needs and have equal or similar expectation of their relationships. I find this analysis interesting, as it has given me the opportunity to evaluate the validity of this statement. For further studies, I would like to conduct a qualitative study to test the validity of this statement, by interviewing other married people, and having them share their lived experiences and attest to whether for better for worse is a statement of fact or a complete fallacy. Understanding the veracity of this statement from an evidence-based perspective is significant because it will help to measure the extent to which the statement is true or false, and this ration from a qualitative or quantitative study, can help educate other people. Many people need to be properly educated and not hold on to popular sayings or cultural codes that may cause them perpetual pain or grief, due to lack of knowledge. The essence of research is to liberate humanity from enslaving beliefs which if when not addressed, can cause more people emotional ache, and depression. Depression still remains one of the leading causes of suicide. Even more disheartening is the fact that the World Health Organization7 says, every 40 seconds8, someone dies by suicide.

References

Gillian, P., Kristina M., Durante, S. E., Hill-Martie, G. H. (2021). Why women choose divorce: An evolutionary perspective. 21, 129. Current opinion in psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.07.020

Karney, B. R. (2010). Keeping marriages healthy, and why it’s so difficult. Psychological Science Trost J. E. (1986). What Holds Marriages Together? Acta Sociologica. 29(4):303-310. doi:10.1177/000169938602900402 "

Did you read up to this point?

Watch out for my book…

How to …. Your ….

Talk soon,

Abundance is here