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Beatrice Tonhodzai-Ngondo
Make a Difference
For as long as we have been alive, there are things that are expected of a person. I call it striving to complete the full cycle of life. Even the Bible, the book of life, refers to the different seasons of life.It refers to there being a time to be born and a time to die. In between there are things that one, as long as they are live, expects to do and complete. These things include going to primary school, high school, college or university on one hand.
On the social front it includes things like dating, courting and getting married.
Everyone is socialised to expect that they too will go through some of these major milestones.
Such is life and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. However, the cycle does not turn the same way for everyone. And there is need to accept that for us to move on as a society.
What am I going on about, one may wonder? I remember a conversation that took place earlier this week when we were discussing the high levels of violence in the domestic sphere at the moment.
We were also talking about the high levels of infidelity, which have seen both men and women enter into relationships with third parties without as much as batting an eyelid.
This has seen violence spike to unprecedented levels while sexually-transmitted infections (STIs), which were in the past on a decline, start to rise.
Posing the question to a group of women who are in different fields, such as law, programming, activism, media and communications, among other professions, all the women said the problems we are facing are largely to do with how we have been socialised as a society, which prescribes how we must live and what choices and decisions we should make at certain points in our lives; taking us back to that cycle I alluded to.
The cycle expects that by a certain age, a woman should be married and have a couple of children. Just look at how your cousin who is over 30 is treated at family gatherings if she is not married. And look at how the married ones are treated.
The married ones are allowed to participate in important decision-making and be it before the council of elders. The single ones, unless they happen to be very moneyed, are not given much respect. In fact, it is not unusual that relatives and friends will keep asking a woman who is past her 27th birthday when she will be settling down. That is how we are socialised as a people.
If you are not part of the group that goes beyond 30 without being married, you may not totally understand it. A colleague of mine said in this day and age when women have gone on to acquire degrees, at times in twos and threes, it still is not an achievement if it is not accompanied by a ring on one’s finger or a “Mrs” title.
While there is nothing wrong with a society that values marriage, is it not a problem when the society begins to value marriage and not happiness and love?
I pose this question at this juncture when we are in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence and will be commemorating World Aids Day tomorrow and marking other important days such as the Human Rights ones. There are too many couples that are beating and battering each other. There are too many women who are verbally abusing their men.
There are too many men who are emotionally, economically and psychologically abusing their women, and yet the couple stay together, locked in a dance of pain that is at times ending in death.
There are too many couples who are cheating on each other, long fallen out of love but yet stay together because being married or belonging with one person is the right thing to do.
Instead of sitting down to address the obvious issues and get past them, which would be the best thing to do so that a relationship can go back to a state of good health. When we solve the obvious challenges in our relationships by getting into other relationships, aren’t we further complicating issues?
For when it is found out, there is a lot of trauma and violence and relationships irretrievably break down.
The children, who some people in bad relationships say they are protecting by holding on to diseased relationships, are also affected when this happens.
Just think about those H-Metro headlines we have become accustomed to seeing? When it ends that way, what good would we have served?
Would we have protected the children? Will the society that we are so desperate to please come in and mop up the mess?
When we get infected by STIs because we do not want to be honest and face up to the fact that it is not working out or there is need to work things out, what good would we have done?
Yes, the cycle says one should get married and have children by a certain age but nowhere does it say one should stay in an abusive relationship and this applies to both men and women.
I stress both sexes because while physical and sexual violence are more applicable to girls and women, there are also men who suffer different forms of violence.
They too, like the women who traditionally have been known to “gomera uripo” (come what may, I will not leave) and “ndinogarira vana vangu” (I will stay for my children) also say they stay on where there is no more reason to because they do not want to hurt and confuse their children.
While not advocating for divorce and separation at the smallest sign of trouble, I write today to say when love has gone, there is need to agree to disagree and move on. When love hurts more than it pleases, it is time to move on. When being together poses more harm than good, it is time to move on.
When violence is now in the home, it is time to honestly face facts and move on.
When your child, daughter or friend says she needs to leave, let us support them rather than condemn them to an early grave by saying “a woman does not walk out on her marriage.”Instead, let us say life is more important than a title. The focus should be on high quality relationships not just relationships at whatever cost.
Therein lies the difference.
Online Reporter