Impotence is perhaps one of the least spoken about challenges in marriage. But this has not stopped it from wrecking a good number of unions in the country.
In one marital dispute, a woman told the court that she and her husband got married in June 2011 at the registrar's office in Mombasa.
After their union, the couple lived in Mombasa and then moved to London in October the same year.
In 2014, the woman filed for divorce stating that their marriage was yet to be consummated as the husband was impotent and therefore unable to engage in sexual intercourse.
She told a Mombasa court that at no time had they been able to have sex due to the incapacity of the husband. The woman said that even on their wedding night, her newly-wedded husband was unable to consummate their marriage.
The husband made no effort to deny her claims.
A medical report availed before Justice Maureen Odero by an obstetrician and gynaecologist confirmed that the woman's hymen was intact.
"This is proof that no consummation of the marriage had taken place. On this basis, I am satisfied that a proper basis for annulment has been laid. I therefore grant this petition and declare the marriage between the petitioner and respondent annulled," the judge ruled.
But while men who have been subjected to accusations of impotency, barren women have also have been on the receiving end.
In October, 2012 a couple in Kitale sought divorce on account that the wife was unable to bear children.
The wife, who was the petitioner in matter, wanted to walk out of the marriage claiming her husband had mistreated her as she could not have children.
She said her husband treated her with cruelty throughout their marriage.
She complained that her spouse started calling her barren and had said that it was a waste of time for them to cohabit or for him to provide support to her.
The woman accused her husband of adultery and, in particular, having a relationship with another woman out of which a child was born in 2008.
She further alleged that he had brought a woman to their matrimonial home, thus the marriage was irretrievably broken down.
In support of her grounds for divorce, she testified that before she found employment that necessitated her to move to the United Kingdom, the husband had started mistreating her for failure to bear children.
She said he would spend nights out of their matrimonial home, and as if that was not enough, he would refuse to talk to her which caused her agony.
While working in the UK, she said she used to send her husband money regularly.
However, a year later he told her that he had found another woman who had borne him a child, which prompted her to return home in September, 2010. She found that he was already cohabiting with the woman and applied for dissolution of the marriage.
In his defence, the man told the court that he did not wish to live with his wife because he did not know how she had lived for the six years she was in the UK.
"Whatever the case, I find this marriage is broken down as demonstrated by the fact that the parties are not even able to communicate. The respondent has not been able to explain the relationship between him and the woman living in his house and if indeed she is a house maid as he claimed," Justice Martha Koome said in her judgement.
