Marriage that no longer has to survive, by Stephanie Shaakaa

There was a time when marriage was not something you left simply because it had become difficult. You entered it knowing that money would sometimes be scarce, affection would sometimes become quieter, children would change the rhythm of the household and life would eventually bring illness, ageing parents, disappointment and responsibilities nobody had imagined on the wedding day. Marriage was not expected to make life permanently beautiful. It was expected to survive life. That understanding of marriage is changing, and nowhere is the change more revealing than in Nigeria, where an institution once held together by family, religion, culture, economics and social pressure is increasingly being negotiated by two individuals who believe they have the right to decide whether the relationship still works for them.

It is tempting to look at rising separation and divorce and conclude that people no longer understand commitment. There is some truth in the criticism. We live in an age that can encourage people to mistake dissatisfaction for incompatibility and ordinary marital difficulty for evidence that they chose the wrong person. But that explanation misses the larger transformation: marriage itself has changed. For the previous generation, leaving a marriage could mean returning to one’s parents, losing financial security, disappointing an entire family, facing religious condemnation or becoming the subject of relentless community gossip. In Nigeria, marriage traditionally involved far more than the couple. Parents, siblings, churches, mosques, elders and extended families could all have a say in whether a marriage should survive. Children, bride price, family reputation and economic dependence could make separation feel less like a private decision than a public rupture.…