When a woman’s fed up: that point of no return when your woman leaves

This is the fifth year of my mother’s second marriage, and the fourth year of my father’s third marriage. Yet, these two cannot have a civil conversation between them. If there’s family event both have been invited to, my father will refuse to attend once my mother is going to there. And yet for nearly 30 years, these two were married to each other. And as far as I know, all they did the entire three decades was complain bitterly about the other person.

It was an awful marriage. I remember being young and getting livid with my mother: IF ALL YOU’RE GOING TO DO IS TALK ABOUT THIS PERSON IN SUCH A MATTER, WHY DON’T YOU JUST LEAVE HIM????? Did she leave? No! Did she really want to leave him? Hell no! Sure, relocating to London made it easier for her to eventually cut ties, accept the marriage was deader than dead and had been for centuries; but did she and my dad play “married couples” for a few year? Of course. Did she complain throughout? Ah, she hasn’t lived with the man for eight years now and she still won’t stop complaining about him!!!

When A Woman’s Fed Up, She Will Make Changes!

When she wanted to remarry, were people on her side? Hell to the no! Everyone asked what was she looking for in another marriage, when she had boys and she had girls. Did that stop her???? Mbanunu! Because even the weakest woman has her moment of strength when she says fuck that shit!

Women who remain in bad marriages, in bad relationships, do so BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. Yes, they hate the abuse, and probably hate everything about their lives with their abuser, but they stay because they want to. There is that something that still keeps saying to them, hang on. Their hope for, as Christians say, life springing out from the ashes, isn’t dead. And as long as the hope and want remains, they are going to tell themselves and everyone what they want to hear in order to buy more time; waiting for their miracle.

What the external influences do – the pastors preaching against divorce, the parents saying “go back to your home”, the police who treat DV with levity – what they ultimately do is fuel the hope, and strengthen the want. They validate that innermost desire of hers – she really really wants to stay. It could be out of love, it could be out of fear, or it could be the need for security, or it could be out of the lack of self esteem.

Because the day that she’s utterly had enough, nothing will stop her. Not the battalion of children she once used as excuse for hanging on, not the money or lack of job she cries kept her from leaving, not the shame of being branded a divorcee and a loose woman she wanted to avoid, not the fear that nobody will marry her daughters if they learn her mother “couldn’t stay in marriage”. Nothing will hold her back!