You see them at church religiously every Sunday, painting the picture of the happy couple. You can see by their greying temples that they’ve been married a long time, sometimes working in unison with each other. You can’t help notice the closeness, the camaraderie, and the actions of attachment. When church ends they walk together to the car and drive off.
What you don’t see though is what happens when they are alone: the silent treatment the entire car ride home, and walking to opposite ends of the house to their rooms. The husband will get his dinner and leave home, sometimes returning only in the early hours of the morning. The wife simply exists in a state of disconnectedness until the following Sunday when they keep up appearances at church.
This scenario, though fictional, represents the lives of some married couples in Barbados. Their unions are entirely superficial in nature, devoid of any semblance of love and basic feeling you would expect from people married over 20 years. Observing such clearly unhappy individuals leading separate lives, one often wonders why they stay in those marriages.
“Some women feel insecure, they feel as though they are not able to stand on their own two feet and hence they learn to adjust to that kind of environment,” says Haynesley Griffith, CEO of Family Heartbeat Ministries. “They get accustomed to it and say they can’t do anything about it. They’ll say, ‘I know he has another woman but I know he loves me’. They have what I term a misunderstanding of love. Some feel if they separate themselves from the union from a societal standpoint, they would have failed. So they put up with the man and expose themselves to all kinds of dangers.”
Griffith also addressed the economic component as well, citing money and financial reasons as a big incentive that makes women stay.
“Some of the wives are not economically strong, and the husband may be bringing in the kind of income that can sustain the home and send the children to school, so they put up with the abuse, the other women calling and so on,” he adds.
Culturally in Barbadian society, that type of philandering behaviour has been sanctioned and even encouraged through the years.
But both parties often have different reasons for staying in unhappy relationships, and these can differ along gender lines.
“To a large extent a lot of men stay because of the children,” Griffith says. “I’ve had men say to me ‘I love my children real bad and I don’t want to see them suffer at the hands of my wife’. They feel the wife would take out the anger on the children. Some men know that their wives have an outside man and they forbear. Some men would say, ‘My mother brought me up not to hit a woman, but I love my children’.”
Very often what both parties are running away from is the fact that divorce is difficult, so they invent reasons to justify staying, especially if there are children involved.
“Children do not really hold marriages together, nor were they ever meant to be the core of any relationship,” Griffith adds. “They were meant to be on the periphery. If there is a situation where abuse is taking place and parents are staying for the children’s sake, you’re actually doing more damage to those children. It does not work, it has not worked and it will not work. That is why you have a high divorce rate taking place 20 and 25 years after marriage.”
So why do so many opt for self-sacrifice? For many people, staying in an unhappy relationship is easier than the alternative. A high number of those who stay are products of divorce themselves, who have sworn that they don’t want to put themselves through what they endured.
“There’s a twisted concept that has perpetuated through the society without a clear understanding of the long-term implications for the individual, their spouse, their children and the society,” Griffith says. “It has implications all down the road in terms of a person’s health and happiness. It is major cataract to the moral eyes of the individual.
“It goes back to goal-setting, how do you see yourself, what value do you place on your life, your children, and your health.”
