What you need to know:
The hope that things will get better has a lot of people hanging in abusive or festering relationships. Many hold onto false hope that their partners will change some day. But sometimes, it is more than hope that keeps one from taking the final step towards ending a bad relationship. The reasons could be as basic as social and financial compulsions.
“I will never divorce you till I come back to Uganda, but if you want you can go on and sin,” Zhurah Nakityo shares a message she received from her husband after she had filed for a divorce in 2018.
In 2009, Nakityo and Fahad (not real name) first met as workmates at a clearing and forwarding company. The two were friends, but went separate ways, until September 2012, when they bumped into each other. For the duo, this might have been fate.
After nine months, the two decided to make it official. Like many women, Nakityo was excited about her new journey.
“I never saw any red flags, but months after tying the knot, the jolly, loving, caring, friendly, calm and open man I fell in love with was a shadow of his former self. I discovered he had rekindled his love with an ex,” she recalls. She decided to keep quiet in order to save her marriage. Little did she know more ugly incidents would be unveiled. And she chose to ignore to keep up appearances.
Nakityo says disrespect, physical and emotional torture became the new definition of her marriage. But then, who would believe her if she opened up about it? Fahad was that loving and caring husband to everyone else except Nakityo.
There was no way she would run to her father to tell him that Fahad had turned into a monster. So many regrets, so many what-ifs, so many flashbacks … So many mistakes.
“Are you sure this is the man you want to marry?” Nakityo recalls her father asking her a couple of times before he officially handed her over to her husband in a nikah ceremony in 2013.
“He would text and flirt with his lovers on phone in my presence. We were married but I was so lonely,” she narrates.
Nakityo could not reveal anything to her siblings either. The only person she would confide in was her cousin, who kept pushing her back into an abusive marriage. Guma (Keep strong) is the only comforting word she ever heard. Click to read more
