It’s time to stop minding our own business

I had wanted to write about something cheerful, something that you, dear reader, will find humorous, something that will make you chuckle. Unfortunately, what I am about to write kept coming to mind and I knew that I would not make much progress with my humorous piece. And so I gave up.

Lately, there have been many shocking stories about couples killing each other, or one of them committing suicide, triggered by their dysfunctional relationship. Ideally, people in relationships are brought together by mutual love.

There’s something that they saw in each other that nudged them to gravitate towards each other, but down the road, the relationship soured and the ugliness that characterises quite a number of relationships nowadays began to unravel – disrespect and irresponsibility fuelled by alcohol abuse, emotional, verbal and physical abuse, cheating here and there, and to wrap up this nasty package, money issues, especially lack of it.

Rather than look for ways to heal the relationship or part ways if healing is not an option, both stay put in their hell of a marriage. They are profoundly unhappy, but they feel trapped – there are children involved, after all, and if that’s not the issue, they have not only invested in this marriage emotionally, they have also invested in it financially.

Joint projects

Perhaps invested in joint projects, which are still ongoing, maybe paying a mortgage for a home they jointly own, a mortgage that they are about to pay off, and should one walk away, who gets to keep the house? Maybe they even co-own a business that they run together.  For others, they have no job, or other source of income, so if they left, how would they provide for their children? The list could go on and on.

Should one of them choose to walk away, chances of losing all this is high, after all, the wheels of our justice system turn slowly, the system itself is corruptible, so there is no guarantee that the law will help you get an equal share of the property you and your spouse worked so hard to amass. And I am yet to see a couple that parted amicably and agreed to share what they own fairly. And so you continue sweating it out in that loveless load of a marriage.

Also read: GBV: How lack of family values is siring cycle of violence

I know, ideally, if you’re this miserable, you should walk away sooner, rather than later, after all, you have one life to live and it is a short one. Unfortunately, as many in such situations will tell you, walking away is not as easy as some paint it to be because of so many factors, some of which I’ve mentioned. With this in mind, power and respect to all those that found the willpower to walk out of their toxic unions.

But we were talking about the increasing cases of couples killing each other, in some cases, quite a number of them actually, taking their children’s lives too. My feeling is that we are staring at a big crisis as a society if it has gotten to the point where couples, even the young ones with little tying them to each other, (not married, no children together, no co-owned property, don’t even live together, negligible emotional investment in the relationship) think the only way out of their misery is to kill the offending partner, or the one that tried to leave. Or kill themselves.

 It’s a huge mental crisis we have in our hands and I shudder to think of the state of the world we’re bringing our children in, especially when we factor in social media.

But my apprehension is useless, what we need is deliberate national dialogue that will get to the root of the problems nibbling away at our social fabric, but before we get here, there needs to be dialogue in our homes.

Also read: Why male GBV survivors don't speak up

We parents need to start having heart-to-heart conversations with our children, teach them healthy ways of dealing with disappointment, betrayal, unmet expectation, unrequited love and the general hardship of life that is bound to visit us all at some point.

But you cannot teach your children all this if your relationship doesn’t reflect this, if your way of dealing with conflict or unmet expectations is to drown yourself in alcohol then go home and beat up your wife, et cetera, et cetera. charity begins at home, after all.

Oh, we also need to stop minding our own business if we find out that a relative, friend, colleague or neighbour is in an abusive relationship. Intervene, talk to them, talk to their family, call the police when the screaming and the banging starts – do something, and even if your efforts are fruitless and it ends in tragedy, at least you tried, don’t be those neighbours on TV that are self-righteously recorded saying, “Hao tulijua watauana siku moja tu…”

The writer is editor,  Society and  Magazines, Daily Nation.   Email: cnjunge@ ke.nationmedia.com