Any #hope for #marriages ?

THE breakdown of songstress Tiwa Savage and her manager Tunji Balogun’s marriage kept the media engrossed for the better part of two weeks. It was, however, just one more failure in a long and widening line of celebrities’ broken marriages. Distressed marriage, or its more final variant, divorce, is of course not a staple of celebrities alone. You don’t have to be famous, live in poor countries, or reside in a developing or underdeveloped democracy to divorce. Virtually the same reasons that predispose the rich and famous and the bond and free to divorce apply among the poor and dispossessed as well as among those living in democracies and under dictatorships. Indeed, divorce is fast becoming the leitmotif of humanity.

Nigeria, for which this column can speak a little authoritatively, has found coping mechanisms for distress in marriage.
From culture that frowns more at a divorced but sometimes innocent and decent woman and rhapsodises a coarse and brutish philanderer, to the law itself which is loth at every stage to weigh in with expert ideas and sensible interventions, and on to the admissibility of harems either through religion or native law and custom, it is all but guaranteed that there may never be a reliable statistics of broken marriages in Nigeria. But for many other countries outside Africa, statistics show that the marriage institution is under grave threats. More than half or two-thirds of marriages end in divorce in many developed countries, with Russia topping the list by some estimates.

So, whether Nigerians are shocked by the reasons Ms Savage gave for the collapse of her less than two years old marriage or not, or whether they frown at the seeming irresponsibility and childish tantrums of Mr Balogun or not, there is nothing extraordinary about their inability to sustain their marriage beyond a few beggarly years. They have laundered their dirty linens too openly for the relationship to heal. As most newspapers yesterday showed through copious reporting of celebrities’ failed marriages, that special group of entertainers has a difficult task keeping their marriages going. Not only do they wed in public glare, they are literally performing marital duties, down to its salacious contents, in pure and censorious daylight. And when the crash comes, thanks to an undifferentiating and lascivious social media feasting on their stories and lusting for blood and tragedy, the fall is often mighty and irredeemable.

This column has no interest in examining why Ms Savage and Mr Balogun’s marriage collapsed. It is a needless exercise. The damage is already done, and no celebrity, let alone an anonymous commoner, will learn any lesson. Were that possible, every celebrity would learn to pick and choose well after examining the grief a colleague came to. Indeed, how do you counsel someone who is by nature not reflective to reflect on a prospective partner? How do you advise someone whose testosterone is racing, and who is determined to give free rein to that untethered, high-pitched momentum till his 70s, to avoid a prudish lady of high breeding who has mastered her own desires? How do you prod an irreligious man whose every instinct and pore exudes polygamous fantasies to sustain a sedentary lifestyle revolving around one great and perhaps deep and professorial woman? The world is a fantastic pastiche of multiplicity and florid display of personalities. Success will always mix with failure, and evil with good, until utopia comes.

The marriage institution is today being redefined. In times past it could not exist except between a man and a woman. Now it has multiple and even legal and constitutional meanings. It is not yet known how far and wide the frontiers of marriage would be expanded; but perhaps in this generation, newer and more troubling definitions would become legally and constitutionally admissible. For the purpose of this piece, a traditional definition of marriage will be assumed. Furthermore, it will be assumed that a distinction between a peaceful or good marriage and a warring and unstable marriage exists. The unstable marriage may not always end in divorce if a spouse exhibits the forbearance needed to accommodate an unreasonable partner. But it is far better for a prospective couple to study each other beyond the surface to discover common grounds, common worldviews, and internal constitutions transcending the meretricious.

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