The epidemic of failing marriages

Observing the typical Sikaman family from afar, one can really be amused. You won’t fall to see a family member behaving exact­ly like a Vice-President and another doubling like a Trades Union Congress (TUC) man.

There is also every chance for you to meet an opposition flag bearer and if you’re lucky, you’d meet the President himself, His Excellency Sir Kwame Korkorti, commander-in-chief of the family forces, head of state of the Republic of Korkorti and Sons.

There are various family types with some having the wife as the President for reasons too obvious to mention. They are the breadwinners, and on top of that, they wield the power of the laddle; meaning that the portofolio of the kitchen is under their armpit.

In such a situation, the husband ceases to be a power broker. At best he is a linguist. He doesn’t make the rules, he interprets them. Such a fam­ily is a stable one because the woman is a better manager of family resourc­es for the fact that she doesn’t spend on alcohol. She may take ‘quarter’ once in a while, but that is only to trigger off a dull appetite against fufu and groundnut soup.

The sad thing about the Sikaman family is that many of them do not last these days. It is also a fact akin to a worrisome global trend. In the United States, three out of every five marriages end on the rocks. In Russia getting married today and getting divorced the next dawn is a common phenomenon.

Press reports on the Russian situation denote a sad palaver of a super-power society. Russian women are blamed for most of the divorc­es. According to observers, they are unfaithful to their husbands, a factor that has skyrocketed the incidence of the divorce comedy.

Some, however, blame capitalism on the bad turn of events. With a liberal political and economic atmo­sphere, everyone is said to be liber­ated, adventurous wives inclusive. So their husbands must bear with the situation or quit. No compromise!

The Russian situation isn’t an iso­lated one, though. The whole palaver is that divorce is becoming a global epidemic, a disease no vaccine is able to prevent. I was sad when Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley got divorced.

The lady claimed Mike could not do “things” to her. “He didn’t know I ever existed”, she bemoaned the last days of a tragedy-hit marriage. If that is true, then I’m sorry for her. She should have taken someone like Koko­tako. It would have been a different story altogether, because the guy reg­ularly drinks the dregs of palmwine. No lady comes and goes back without a dream in her heart.

Tyson and Lady Diana

Talk about the marriage of Mike Tyson to the beautiful Robin Givens and you’ll realise how it all started fairy-tale-like and ended in a bedroom that and often been transformed into a boxing ring – a mini Madison Square Garden.

When Tyson took Givens and her mother to Russia, I guess the cold en­tered into Mike’s head and he chased wife and mother around a hotel swearing to kill them.

The old lady did not know she was a good sprinter until the occasion pre­sented itself. And she ran as if she had mad-cow disease. The die was cer­tainly cast. In a television appearance with Mike, Givens told the interviewer that her husband suffered psychiatric problems and beat her. Mike could not bear it any longer. They divorced.

The marriage between Prince Charles and Lady Diana and its tragic coda is one that has brought doubts whether the monarchy is worth perpetuating or dismantling. My own opinion is that the monarchy is no lon­ger worth a dime. Not with all these sexual tragicomedies inundating the centre of the royal family by a relent­less osmosis.

Anyway, before the marriage, an astrologer announced it would not last. The prince, a Scorpio and the princess a Cancer, both of the water group were supposed to experience a very boring marriage. With a suppos­edly incompatible birth numbers and whatever, the astrologer declared the marriage was disaster-bound.

It is not, however, clear whether it is a prophecy come true or the mar­riage could have been saved if both had wanted to preserve the honour of the monarchy. And with the prince and princess having been very liberal with desecrating the temple of God in adul­terous escapades, the monarchy has lost the moral legitimacy of its exis­tence. Moreso when other members of the royal family like Fergie have been too morally wayward for the sanctity of and reverence for the throne.

In Sikaman, the cause of rock-bound marriage include money pala­ver, infidelity, sexual incompatibility, boredom and common snoring. Well, some wives complain that when their husband snore, the foundation of the building shakes. So they experience mini earthquakes at night and cannot sleep. So they must go to their par­ents and complain.

The palaver is that in some cases the women out-snore the men, but the men rarely complain. It is normal­ly the women who complain to their parents as a first step to quitting the marriage.

“I am terrified”, a wife will tell her parents. “I can’t sleep even if I take valium.

When he takes akpeteshie before supper, it is worse. It is like his nose has been plugged to high-voltage elec­tricity. I can’t stand it any longer. One day the building will collapse on us”.

“But didn’t you know the man was a dangerous snorer before you decided to stay with him?” her father would ask.

“At first it was not so serious. Now it has become like a criminal offence since he is depriving me of my sleep. He has to be put before the High Court”.

Problems associated with marriage can be minimised with counselling before and after marriage.

Very good marriage counsellors teach you how to become sexually compatible, how to resolve family crisis, how to bring excitement into a dull marriage and how to tone down a vibrating nose.

This is what the churches do these days. They have trained marriage counsellors that take prospective couples through the theory and prac­tice of marriage. Perhaps if Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie had been coun­selled, it would have been a different matter today.

And Lady Diana would still have been in the arms of the Prince of Wales.

This article was first published on Saturday, November 2, 1996