A True Divorce Story

I heard a true story of a marriage from someone I know.

I hate to use words like this: true story, heard from someone I know, but now I know why people use such words. It's to protect the people involved in the story, and the person who told you the story.

The story went back to about 20 years ago.

A 21-year-old girl married a man older than her by more than 10 years. The man loved her dearly and would obey all her commands. He also treated her family and relatives very well, cooking delicious food for them whenever they visited.

They seemed to have a happy marriage and went on to have two children. The man opened a coffeeshop but the girl chose to go out to work at an office.

When she was 29, she decided that she wanted a divorce. It was not clear why she wanted a divorce. Perhaps it was because what a girl wants is different from what a 30-year-old wants. She started to hang out with her boss. Her uncles and aunties also saw the man she hung out with and advised her to stay away from the man, but the girl insisted that she was going to get a divorce anyway and would not break off with the man.

The husband went in search of a solution: he found someone who practised black magic and got a pill or powder for his wife to ingest. He asked his mother-in-law for her permission to do this to her daughter. For the sake of the children, the mother-in-law agreed. However, she stated that he would have to do it himself as she did not want her daughter to blame her if it was found out that she was the one who did it.

At this point, the wife refused to accept any food given by the husband. The husband didn't know what to do. He had to go back to his mother-in-law and asked her for help. The mother-in-law reluctantly agreed and cooked a bowl of boh-boh-char-char with the black magic element for the daughter to consume.

It seemed unbelievable but it seemed to everybody that the black magic worked!

The girl subsequently broke off with her boyfriend and quit her job and went to the husband's coffeeshop to help out. After that, they went on to have a third child. And everybody thought all's well, ends well.

Fast forward to 10 years later, when the girl turned 40 - suddenly, as if she had awoken from her slumber, wanted to have a divorce again!

She said that there was no love anymore.

She refused to sleep with the husband. She loathed the sight of the husband. 

This time, no one was willing to help the husband to feed the black magic element to the wife. They did not want her to wake up from the black magic ten years later when she was 50 to want a divorce again.

The husband spread some unknown powder on the steps of the house. The wife saw it and was careful not to step on it.

Then the husband found some pills equivalent to pills that cause one to be semi-conscious and put them in the water jug, which the wife drank.

While she was in a semi-conscious state, he slept with her.

When she was fully conscious, she was incensed. She felt raped (and she was!) and totally disgusted at what the husband did. She was determined to divorce the husband.

Now they are in the process of separation. The wife is a much happier woman than she was when she was married. She climbs hills and hangs out with friends every other day. On the other hand, the husband became haggard and thin. 

The woman is a pretty and slim woman despite being 43. No visible lines or eyebags. I thought she looked like she was in her thirties. The husband is balding, with a huge paunch.

Superficially, I could understand the split. It really sounds superficial but men are not the only visual animals on the planet. Women needs visual pleasure too, man! That's why I have often asked William to go slim down his tummy. Who likes to be seen with a 7-month pregnant husband all the time? He blames it on his age. I would retort,"I am older than you! And women are supposed to have more fats than men!"

Of course I am sure there are more than just the loss of physical appeal. The age gap between them could mean a lot of issues eg. communication, frequency differences, thought differences.

I was wondering if the husband had treated the wife badly and apparently, the man was a henpecked husband. He would go change into a pair of pants if the wife as much as expressed displeasure at seeing him in a pair of shorts and vice versa.

A few other cases of divorce that I have seen recently make me wonder why these people divorce, given their sound financial states and the lack of third parties. A few are second marriages too! How much love does it take for a man to marry a second time and have very young children when they are in their late forties, when the children from their previous marriage were already in their 30s and 20s?

Then what made them split up?

Life does not have an answer most of the time.