It’s time we rethought our idea of monogamy

We've had many celebrities' breakups all within three years of marriage these past years.

This week, the internet is awash with rumours of yet another marriage biting the dust. Word has it that TV personality Willis Raburu is no longer together with his wife, whom he wed in a beautiful ceremony in May 2017.

If the blogs are anything to go by, there is a gorgeous Ugandan lass in the mix. Of course, a lot has been speculated about the cause of their separation — loss of their baby, the man's celeb status, and so forth.

But for the purpose of this piece, I will not dwell on the couple's alleged break-up but to the state of our modern-day marriages.

Many have blamed millennials morals for these short-lived marriages, but I think that's not it. The fault is in how we choose to understand and practice monogamy.

If you had asked me five or six years ago as I thrived in my mid-twenties, I would have told you that there is one man out there who will meet all of a woman's needs at all times.

Now that I have lived a little bit, I know that your partner can't meet all of your emotional, romantic, and physical needs at all times.

FALSE PANACEA

I know that even amid a happy, functioning relationship, one could feel attraction to another. Accepting that no one person can be your everything at all times is how we will begin to restore marriages.

Monogamy can be difficult to maintain. I have seen women go to great lengths to rescue it. My friend, a single career woman, was chatty with a man on her apartment block a few months ago until he sent a text to her one morning that his wife was unhappy that they were greeting each other out in the corridors, so he couldn't talk to her anymore.

They leave for work at the same time and if he sees her coming down the stairs from her house, which is above his, he goes back into the house until she has left the parking lot.

My first thought when she told me this was, 'how little does this woman trust her man?' I don't think that monogamy is the problem.

It's how we get into relationships expecting that this person will be everything. We confuse monogamous relationships with ownership.

Expecting your man never to talk to any other woman apart from you is unreasonable. It's where the lying and eventually cheating stems from.

TRUST

Before booking that beachfront location for your wedding, have an honest conversation with your partner and draw the boundaries but be reasonable about it.

Be open to each other about your emotional and physical needs. Allow each other to have healthy, non-sexual relationships with other people.

While having the best of intentions is good, it is not nearly enough to maintain a relationship. It also matters how you carry on these intentions.

Forbidding your partner from contact with any other person of the opposite sex is not the right way to go about it. Trust him a little bit.

It will also help if we admit that marriage is not for everyone. Not everybody can wait to share their whole lives with just one special person.

Some people are just built differently. Some people are poor at compromising. Maybe if we stopped asking every 30-year-old we meet why they are not married, we will have much fewer divorces in the next five years.