MARRIAGE has become frightful. I have heard this expression more than once lately and asked myself why people say so. The first woman I heard her frustration with marriage was a mother who I knew very well. She had a bitter experience with her son-in-law. Though very young, her daughter was enlightened and responsible. She decided to learn all the skills necessary to make her marriage a success, especially that she would travel abroad with her husband who was on a scholarship program. The young woman left her home and family and traveled abroad with her husband. A few days into the marriage she discovered that her husband was selfish and irresponsible. He would not take care of the household needs nor would he care for her if she got sick. He was not willing to spend anything on his wife or home. When she had her first child, the father did not move to buy medicines or diapers. She was doing everything alone because there was no one to help her. The mother said she traveled to be beside her daughter, especially that she had just given birth to her first baby. "The fridge was empty except for a bottle of water and a small bottle of ketchup," she said, adding that her daughter was living on milk and cornflakes. The mother said her daughter had no time or energy to cook for herself and that the husband was most of the time out of the house. "If the husband was in the house, he might order pizza of which he would eat and leave some for his wife but when he was out he would never remember her," she said. The mother said the house was gloomy and everything in it needed repair. The rule made by the husband in this regard was that the wife should fix everything or else the house would remain as it was. The husband would not trouble himself by fixing the electricity, plumping or carpentry issues. He was busy watching the TV or browsing the Internet. To increase her horror, the mother realized that her husband was physically abusing her daughter. Once day, she saw him slapping her hard on the face. The mother lost no time in informing the police who immediately investigated the case and saw traces of torture on the woman's body. The husband was arrested and both the mother and daughter came back home. The daughter insisted on coming home with her mother because her husband threatened to "deliver her bones home in a bag if she stayed behind". With a sad voice the mother said: "I handed him over my daughter like a flower beaming with life and beauty but a year later she came back to me a devastated person, weak and with a child." The woman and husband have become apprehensive of marrying off their other daughters. They have been terrified by the experience of their first daughter with her husband in his place of study. When they gave him their daughter, they thought that he was educated, respectable and from a good family but they discovered later that he was neither of these. If we dispel the issue of physical and verbal abuse, the scenario of divorce remains the same. It is caused by the problems, which existed before marriage consisting of a lack of responsibility, unwillingness to spend and depending on the wife to do everything in the house. Has our culture changed with the presence of housemaids and drivers in our lives? Have we brought up a new generation who is dependent on others for everything? These are legitimate questions that usually come to my mind whenever I think of the large number of divorce cases in our country. I hope that we would bring up our children to be responsible persons who would consider marriage a partnership between two individuals who love each other and who are determined to make a family together. Lastly I thought it was only the wives who were abused but some instances showed me that some men were victims of the wives' brutality. So the domestic violence goes both ways.
