You all know Kobe Bryant right? That famous basket baller who has been compared to the legendary Michael Jordan in his style of play… Well, Bryant could have a turbulent 2012, not on the basketball courts, but in his marriage.
http://liarcatchers.com/cheating_spouses.html
Vanessa Bryant, wife to the famous basket baller, is divorcing him on grounds of infidelity. She estimates that during their 10-year marriage, Kobe could have cheated on her with 105 women. That’s approximately 10 women for each year they were married!
But that’s not the mouth-gaping bit to this story. According to news reports, Vanessa knew about Bryant’s philandering ways years back but she decided to play the fool. She hired a private detective for years who gave her the ammunition she would use against the basket baller during her divorce battles in court.
In other words, Vanessa lied to her husband for years that all was fine, yet she hated him, despised his character and possibly wondered how on earth she ended up with a sex addict for a husband! She did that for years. Boy what a pyscho-like marriage that was, don’t you think?
Vanessa’s situation mirrors many women’s situations here in Uganda. The husband is a dog, and she hates him with a passion (or to “tone down the language”), she “tolerates” his ways, that includes coming home late from I don’t know where, to his philandering ways. Somehow these women stay in their marriages!
It even gets a little depressing when these women tend to accept their situation, giving a million and one excuses as to why they stand the nonsense. “So long as he pays school fees for our children, it’s fine,” they say. “I already have two children with him, so for the sake of stability in the home and for my child’s sake, I decide to stay!” she moans.
So we have these dysfunctional marriages that limp on for decades, with each party pretending or psyching themselves into some artificial marriage bliss of sorts. How disturbing!
How does one pretend that they are happy in an arrangement that gives them total sadness, the kind that gets embedded deep in your heart? How does a husband settle for a cheating wife just for the sake of maintaining the status quo that if shaken, he believes would cause irreparable damage to him and the family?
Culture, the lack of money, religion and a fear for risk are the main reasons. Kalumba can’t leave wifey because according to culture Y, it’s a taboo to do so. When Kalumba attempts to go to church to address the problem, his pastor (with a smile) will point at all kinds of verses in the Bible that make it a sin to leave wifey.
When Kalumba decides to go it alone, he is halted in his tracks when he quickly calculates the school fees of the five children they have, amounting to a ga-zillion shillings every term…and that’s minus rent, fuel and food costs. So what does Kalumba do? He resorts to night prayers and as a zealot Christian, his main prayer request always is, “Lord please save my marriage.” Sigh.
You see marriage is a bitter sweet pill. And no one can stand up and claim to have a PhD in how to have bliss in it. But you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out a dangerous marriage. What even beats me is that at times, dangerous streaks like wife beating, drunkenness and womanising can be spotted in someone during the dating phase, but somehow that couple get married. Then five years down the road, the woman is bemoaning his womanising! Why in God’s name did you marry him?
The more we tolerate mad-like marriages, the more we give our children a distorted view about the institution. The more we tolerate the beatings, the more we give our daughters a wrong understanding of the word submission. The more we tolerate his drunkenness, the more we give our sons a flawed meaning of what it means to be a man.
So we have these dysfunctional marriages that limp on for decades, with each party pretending or psyching themselves into some artificial marriage bliss of sorts. How disturbing!
How does one pretend that they are happy in an arrangement that gives them total sadness, the kind that gets embedded deep in your heart? How does a husband settle for a cheating wife just for the sake of maintaining the status quo that if shaken, he believes would cause irreparable damage to him and the family?
Culture, the lack of money, religion and a fear for risk are the main reasons. Kalumba can’t leave wifey because according to culture Y, it’s a taboo to do so. When Kalumba attempts to go to church to address the problem, his pastor (with a smile) will point at all kinds of verses in the Bible that make it a sin to leave wifey.
When Kalumba decides to go it alone, he is halted in his tracks when he quickly calculates the school fees of the five children they have, amounting to a ga-zillion shillings every term…and that’s minus rent, fuel and food costs. So what does Kalumba do? He resorts to night prayers and as a zealot Christian, his main prayer request always is, “Lord please save my marriage.” Sigh.
You see marriage is a bitter sweet pill. And no one can stand up and claim to have a PhD in how to have bliss in it. But you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out a dangerous marriage. What even beats me is that at times, dangerous streaks like wife beating, drunkenness and womanising can be spotted in someone during the dating phase, but somehow that couple get married. Then five years down the road, the woman is bemoaning his womanising! Why in God’s name did you marry him?
The more we tolerate mad-like marriages, the more we give our children a distorted view about the institution. The more we tolerate the beatings, the more we give our daughters a wrong understanding of the word submission. The more we tolerate his drunkenness, the more we give our sons a flawed meaning of what it means to be a man.
So what should we do?
Well let me tell you what Vanessa Bryant did. Her and her hubby got married in California. And according to the California divorce law, the wife is entitled to half of Kobe’s massive fortune if the marriage has lasted 10 years and more. Vanessa filed for divorce in the tenth year of the marriage and she now stands to earn, according to news reports, more than $150m!
