It is sad that what many Nigerian women call happy homes are nothing but slave camps and endurance marriages.
I marvel when I hear women gleefully talk about being isolated from family and friends who have been in their lives before their husbands came around.
I wonder what went wrong with some women when they can’t differentiate between abuse, subjugation and love. They call control and abuse love.
I know a woman who doesn’t entertain visitors whenever her husband is home. She claimed she was being respectful because her husband doesn’t want people in their home.
Another woman doesn’t pick calls when her husband is around for fear of being slapped for being disrespectful to her Lord and master. This woman doesn’t even pick the calls of her parents because of her husband.
And this woman tells other women that she is enjoying her marriage and has a happy home. She’s always teaching women to do everything their husbands demand of them so that they have happy homes.
Love and control are not the same. You can’t claim you and your husband are in love but whenever he calls you, you become tense. You become jittery, you start rushing to go back home to avoid being beaten and verbally abused.
You can’t say your husband loves you and that is why he doesn’t want you to go out, you are not his prisoner. You are an adult who has the right to have a social life. Marriage is not a slave camp.
You can’t say your husband loves you and that is why he is preventing you for making your own money. He’s rendering you useless financially so that when he starts abusing you, you will have no money to move on with your life.
You can’t say your husband loves you and that is the reason he doesn’t want to see, friends, family, relations and acquaintances around you.
Are you his slave? Did you fall from the sky? Were this people not in your life before you met him? Must your life revolve around him only?
He doesn’t love you, he is isolating you, by the time he has completely isolated you, he will strike and you would have no where to turn to. You will have no one to help you. Love is not abuse. Love is not control. Any man who controls you is your slave master.
It’s a pity that many Nigerian women are willing victims in their own abuse and subjugation. They will come and cry to you and if you advise them, they will turn against you, use you to have make up sex with their abusers and call you home breaker afterwards.
I ignore them these days. I don’t say anything. I allow them vent. If you come and ask for advice, I will tell you to go and pray because God will help you. I have suffered because I tried helping some of these women.
I pray Nigerian women stop deceiving themselves with this happy home talks when they are enduring abuse.
I pray they possess the spirit of discernment to differentiate between love, abuse, control and wickedness.
