GLANCE FACTS
Ditch ahead! How to avoid emotional divorce
• Even the fairy-tale couple is prone to this, so learn to appreciate each other as a couple, irrespective of your backgrounds, personalities and mistakes.
• Talking of mistakes, learn to solve issues as they come. Keeping grudges is a no-no here. Solve it and be done with it already!
• Nip the problem in the bud; they say slipping is not falling, but it should serve as a warning. Look out for the red flags, and please, don’t let your marriage slip into a coma.
• Communicate; it’s almost cliché, but talking helps. It doesn’t only allow you to vent, but to connect emotionally. Keep talking!
Marriage is supposed to be the place you connect emotionally, physically, spiritually, and intellectually. Well, not always as emotional divorce now become more common in marriages, writes Njoki Chege
A morning radio conversation on a controversial radio talk show revealed shocking details of the state of some marriages in Kenya. People called in, talking about how they have detached themselves from their marriages and relationships, although they were still physically together with their partners.
You would wish to assume that all this are fallacies and tall-tales, but the sad reality is that emotional divorce is here with us, and in more marriages than we could ever care to admit.
Emotional divorce is best described as a situation where couples separate their emotions from their relationship and generally live as two separate people in different worlds, albeit being in a marriage institution.
According to Dr Gidraph Wairire, a sociology lecturer at the University of Nairobi, emotional divorce is marked with a lot of uncertainty and falsehood.
Getting there
He says: “Couples in such relationships will do things together, pretend all is well, but inwardly, they both know they are not connected, but are not willing to publicly call it quits,”
Emotional divorce, Wairire notes, is a climax of a series of events, a culmination of frustration and disappointment from unfulfilling relationships. But this situation is not only brought about by frustrations and a bag of disappointment, external inferences and a negative perception of your spouse could land you in this ditch.
“External inferences emanate from suspicions. What we hear from other people about our partners and one is unable to ascertain such allegations,” he says.
Many married couples will confess that their partner has changed over the years and “Is not the person I married”.
Jennifer Karina, a motivational speaker and author of the book Marriage Built to Last reckons that unresolved conflict is heavily implicated in emotional divorce.
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