True or false? Women + success = failed marriages?
Jun 25, 2013
The rate at which couples are splitting, especially the seemingly successful ones, leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Are successful women synonymous with failed marriages? Are men too insecure when their wives have more money than them?
Sunday Vision
The rate at which couples are splitting, especially the seemingly successful ones, leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Are successful women synonymous with failed marriages? Are men too insecure when their wives have more money than them? Or could it be the character and upbringing of the couples? Carol Natukunda sought answers
trueAt the height of her career, Beatrice Kiraso was described as the blend of beauty and brains.
The former East African Community deputy secretary general had everything going for her in her career. As Kabarole Woman MP, she had a good job, fame and a heavy paycheck.
Many people could not fathom why her four-year marriage could fall apart. In her book, Making a difference, Kiraso reveals that she suffered physical abuse from her husband.
When she could not stand it anymore, she called it quits. “Even with an abusive, demeaning marriage, I was able to jump out and still feel I was a winner,” Kiraso writes.
She shares the lessons she learned and the relationship she lost. In the book, you follow her life journey as she finds love, loses it and moves on to concentrate on her career and looking after her children.
Like Kiraso, another powerful woman, former vice-president, Specioza Wandera Kazibwe, shocked the nation when she revealed that she was divorcing her husband because he constantly battered her.
Although her husband claimed he had “slapped her only twice”, the reality was this couple was successful, but their marriage was no more.
Internationally, prominent personalities and celebs are separating as soon as they get married. When she filed for divorce in 2011, Kim Kardashian’s 72-day marriage to Kris Humphries entered the records of brief celebrity unions.
So, what comes in the way of women’s marriages? Is it success? Why is it that when a couple seems to have everything — fame, fortune, health and adorable children — somehow, matters of the heart just do not work?
And to be honest, it kind of makes the rest of us hopeless. If these powerful people have everything and cannot make it, what are the chances for the ordinary people ?
Worry not
The very fact that they have it all, is the very undoing of a good marriage. According to experts, fame and power is dangerous to relationships because of various reasons.
“By the nature of your job, work demands that you are away from your spouse most of the time, and if it goes on and on, the man definitely feels unhappy,” Beatrice Nandawula, the director of the Makerere Youth and Counselling Centre, says. It should come as no surprise that time is necessary to sustaining a happy marriage.
“You are away at work all the time. You do not even call him because you are busy. He calls and you do not pick up.
Tomorrow he sees you in the newspapers smiling with another male colleague. It eventually breeds jealous and a jealous man can do anything to you,” Nandawula says, adding that in the event that violence and quarrels break out, this ‘empowered woman” will quickly decide to move out, than deal with such a jealous man. Nandawula says naturally, some men are egoistic.
“Emancipation is here, but it is still a patriarch society. Some men cannot stand the fact that a woman has more money, a powerful job and fame. It just bruises his ego when he is always in the backyard,” she says.
This explains the dilemma some women are battling with. One outspoken female legislator says she had to separate with her husband because he just could not understand her. As a new face in Parliament, she wanted to explore her potential to the fullest. That means she had to attend all the parliamentary committee meetings and plenary sessions.
If there was a workshop she was invited to by her electorate, she would still find time and go. But at the same time, she had to squeeze time to be the best wife and mother.
“When I did not, it was a problem, yet you cannot do everything at a go,” she explains.
The legislator explains that women find marriages more fulfilling because they learn to juggle from birth. “Being a public figure does not mean that I cannot change my baby’s diapers. It is just that by the end of the day, you might be worn out.”
However, some men still believe that successful women become big-headed eventually.
“She does things her own way. As a man, I still want to carry the breadwinner and head of the family tag,” Dickens Opolot, the director of Homes Engineering Consultancy Firm, in Industrial Area, Kampala, says.
Different careers
Adjusting in a marriage is not easy, particularly when the spouse belongs to a different industry, according to some couples.
Dr. Hilda Kahunge Mirembe, a physician in private practice, says her husband did not like the fact that she had to wake up in the middle of the night to attend to patients, more so male ones.
“He was working in the business sector and found it difficult to imagine me diagnosing a naked male patient. We even argued about it, but with time, he understood that work is work,” Mirembe says, adding that while success does come in the way of marriage, it is up to couples to do a balancing act. “You need to make them understand the kind of job you do.
Your family is very important, but you also need to do the best at work, so that you have enough resources to support that family,” Mirembe says.
Nandawula agrees and says increasingly, more people are marrying from the same professional background. She thinks it can work best. “If you are politician, marry a politician. A teacher, marry a teacher, then you both know what actually is involved in this industry,” she says.
But it remains a paradox. We have seen successful couples whose marriages go down the drain even when they are both from the same industry.
For instance, earlier this year, the international media had stories of the seemingly perfect marriage of Hollywood power couple Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett-Smith splitting.
One newspaper quoted Smith as saying: “I think a lot of people think that when you have money, that everything gets really easy. Hell no!” Whether they will actually divorce is still in the rumour mill.
What then is the way forward?
Time is everything, says Rev. Peter Matovu, a counselling psychologist at Nkumba University. He says even though work schedules might keep couples apart, they must create room — at all costs — to have physical time with each other, to be together and have fun with the children. “Beyond that, it is a recipe for disaster. It means you are not talking at all.”
Matovu says having money or everything, without a sense and purpose for the marriage, is useless.
“You should be able to chat about the day and talk about things other than the stresses of life. Remind each other of what you are building together and if you do not have a good answer to that, find one immediately,” he says.
Matovu adds that when there is respect, it should not matter who holds what job, rather supporting the spouse. “Success comes with the support from the family. Failed marriages are happening because spouses do not want to appreciate the other,’ Matovu says.
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