It took me seven years to divorce my emotionally abusive husband

“Before I was married, I truly believed love conquered all. When I, therefore, returned from Tanzania where I had graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science in 2000, I was looking forward to an exciting career, and getting married to start a family. It is no wonder I married the first man I dated. He was 14 years older than me, financially stable and ready to settle. We got married in 2001 after dating for just six months.

Almost immediately into marriage, I realised my husband was relating with me more like his child than his partner. First, he said he did not want me to work, something he had not expressed during our courtship. When I insisted on working, he let me but grudgingly. He always found something to complain about my job. He, for instance, said he was uncomfortable with my male-dominated work environment. But the field of computers is always male-dominated so there was nothing I could do about that.

Upgrading my academic credentials also became an issue. He decided he wanted more children when I expressed a desire to pursue my masters when we still had one child. I tried to reason with him to no avail, so I went ahead and enrolled anyway, first for my masters, and later, a PhD.

He was abusive
My husband may not have beaten me up but he was emotionally abusive, which seemed to stem especially from him continuously treating me like a child. He seemed to isolate me, impeding my female relationships who he said would “hook me” up with their brothers. I dreaded going back home because it was like walking into a court, having to explain where I had been, with who and what I did. When I told the truth, it meant a guaranteed quarrel. When I censored what I told him, he insisted I was hiding something.

He perused through my phone and demanded that I explain each call I made and the ones I received. I was being isolated from my social support system, leaving me with no friends at all. He also started threatening to kill me because of my interaction with male friends. I had been reading in newspapers of women killed by their husbands. I decided not to wait for death.

Besides being called a Mrs and having a child, there was nothing else to my marriage. It neither made me proud or happy. I wasn’t even happy with the way our child was being raised around my husband because he was so harsh.

The last straw was when he denied he was the father to my child when I was pregnant with our second child. We had spent four months travelling on work assignments. He accused different male friends of mine for being responsible for my pregnancy, accusing a different one each month. My only response was that he could wait and go for DNA tests after the baby was born.

Divorce is not an easy choice
It took me seven years after I first conceived the idea to file for divorce to actually come through with it. There was always hope that things would change. I had left my matrimonial home three times during those seven years, the first being about three years into the marriage when I had insisted on going for further studies. Every time I went back, I would instruct the lawyers to halt the process. When I left, the file would be reopened. I had also involved the police when the death threats started, just in case he carried through with them.

The process of securing the divorce took two years when it finally kicked off, but it would have taken longer if I had fought for property too. I, however, told him I did not want anything from him, not even his support for the child. He signed the papers in 2011. He has full custody of the older child who I see every weekend, and I the younger one who he can only see in the presence of the social worker due to his violent tendencies.

Happily ever after divorce
My post-divorce era is a happy one because I always dreaded returning to my marital home. I would always pray I found him gone on a safari, as only his absence gave me peace.

When I left that marriage I became happy and that was important for me. My only fear was that he could hurt me or my male friends. Soon after leaving him, I got a boyfriend who gave me companionship and the emotional support that helped me not dwell on the loss of my marriage. It was a smooth change because it was planned and not sudden.
-----
What the Law and the Church say

The civil and religious institutions are recording varying levels of divorces in marriages and the trend seems to be on the rise. According to family lawyer Peter Busiku his law firm receives on average 30 divorce cases every month, with adultery being the major cause for seeking a divorce. On the other hand, Fr Andrew Kato, a Judicial Vicar of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal of Kampala says he gets not more than 10 cases a year at his Rubaga Cathedral-based office.

In the Catholic Church it is referred to as annulling the marriage because marriage is not tangible and the reasons advanced for the nullification of the marriage once investigated are always spiritual though they are presented in a material way, the way it’s done in the civil courts.

According to Fr Kato, cases advanced for the nullification of the marriage include:
• Adultery

• Impotence

• Domestic violence

“These are the reasons those seeking annulment front. When we investigate further though, we usually find the underlying causes are love for wealth and deceit. People make vows they don’t take seriously and others lie about who they really are before the wedding, hence coning their spouses,” says Fr Kato.

According to the Family Lawyer:
• Adultery is the most prominent cause and the complaints cut across men and women.

• Multiple marriages: Some spouses discover their partners are married somewhere else, in another country or town.

• Wealth: When one marries for material gain, which is not forthcoming.

[email protected]