INTERVIEW: Why many Nigerian marriages fail – Therapist Shamseddin Giwa

In this exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES, marriage therapist Shamseddin Giwa discusses the factors contributing to marital breakdown, the societal pressures that keep some women in unhappy unions, and why women should consider leaving toxic relationships.

PT: What hurts more in a marriage: infidelity or the lies and manipulation surrounding it?

Giwa: The actual infidelity hurts more because it doesn’t just begin with the affair; it begins with the intention behind it. There was a thought, a desire, then a deliberate action that followed, and it is this sequence, confirming a breach in loyalty, that hurts. The lies make it worse, but even without the lies, the infidelity on its own will still sting.

The lies don’t exactly stand alone; they form a part of the complete package of disloyalty. will factor into how much it will sting: who the infidelity is happening with, how long it has been going on, and the circumstances surrounding it. Complexity without wisdom and decency should not be enough reason for marriage. Has society become too obsessed with physical attraction at the expense of character?

Giwa: Unfortunately, this has been the trend for a while now; surface-level features have become much more important than deeper-level substance.

There aren’t enough people presenting themselves as worthy examples to the younger generation, and as such there’s a question mark over the essence of marriage to them. Many grew up hearing only the negative side of marriage and will argue it isn’t worth the stress, so they opt for something that can immediately offer the reward of fame and glamour.

Physical looks and beauty are important; attraction is key, but to sustain a marriage you’d need more. Social excitement has settled; the reality hits home on how much work needs to be done to make the marriage a success. That’s the point many realise: the beauty they went for needs so much more. Again, I’m saying beauty improves your chances of success with physical attraction, but it shouldn’t be the only thing to look for.

That said, if there aren’t many success stories of marriages out there, what incentive does that give society’s deeper values? Aren’t people and mentors helping to teach the coming generation about the importance of character, honour, loyalty and much more? How will they acquire this knowledge? We are a social media generation, but we are not maximising it to help reshape the narrative around marriage. I receive hundreds of messages daily on marriages, and most of them are negative.

This isn’t because there aren’t more success stories; it’s because people experiencing them choose to stay silent, believing it helps protect their homes. At some point, we need to step up and see this situation beyond our own units, from a broader societal perspective. That point, by the way, is now. Beauty without wisdom and decency is not enough for marriage, but what does that matter to people who want to snap pictures for weddings, push hashtags, get visibility, and be done with it?

PT: Are we witnessing a collapse of traditional marriage values, or are people finally becoming honest about unhappy unions?

Giwa: There’s an evolution in what marriage means, and there’s a huge decline in the popularity or practice of marriage using so-called traditional values. The socioeconomic angle is a huge influence. In the past, being a husband centred around financial provision and welfare, while being a wife was mostly about keeping the home. Today, the reality is very different.

Women have grown in aspiration and no longer want just to be confined to household chores and tending to children. This may not conform to traditional values, but it has numerous advantages, especially if balanced so the home front doesn’t suffer. How many young men today, given the economic state, can single-handedly provide for the homes and marriages of their choice?

This has shifted the mindset, with a more team-oriented approach taking hold. Instead of waiting several years in uncertainty, it is easier to find a woman to build with. For a woman to be financially present in the home, she needs a proper source of income, which takes us back to the earlier point about ambition. You’d find that having a means of livelihood certainly makes a woman stronger even from the marital perspective (again, if balanced right).

This throws up another issue, though. If the woman has to support herself financially, she needs to earn. She needs to work to earn, and work takes time, meaning she’d have less time to dedicate to the home. Unfortunately, many young men today want this support but aren’t ready to compromise by being more available themselves to help on the home front. The above is only about finances and welfare; every other area of marriage is evolving too. Men are being asked for emotionally.

Quality time is more of a priority now; you cannot just claim to have provided the funds and then become a spectator, as was common in the past. Now, you need to build an emotional connection that involves higher-quality intimacy, and Cohen, people speak about values changing; it is true, but it is not as negative as they make it out to be. Unhappy marriages have always existed in sizable numbers; the only difference is that the women from previous generations weren’t as vocal.

They were told to manage and focus on their children, almost as if having a happy marriage didn’t include emotional satisfaction. We saw many of those women grow into older women who neglected their aged husbands and went around to spend time with their children as nannies to grandchildren; the same children they were told to focus on when society should have helpedaage; the achievement achievement achievement achievement achievement achievement men should have been helped to become better and face the emotional needs of the wives. Today, more of those women are speaking up, and that’s why it seems like there are more unhappy marriages.

PT: What conversations about marriage make society uncomfortable but desperately need to happen?

Giwa: Any conversation around religion and tribe tends to be very sensitive and emotionally charged. This is even more important in marriage. One of the important things for a marriage to be successful is aligned values. A man must be on a life journey the woman can key into. The same goes for a woman; her journey must be one the man can and is willing to be a part of. We call coming together for continued growth and happiness a marriage.

Now, when it comes to value sets, nothing divides us like religion. Yes, it’s a live-and-let-live world, but there’s a huge difference between being good friends or neighbours and being married. In marriage, you are supposed to be aligned. If you believe salvation exists on a path, you should have a spouse who’d not just believe in that but be able to help you grow in it. This is unlikely to happen if your partner believes your path will lead to damnation. When children come, they inherit this disunity and often float around without proper grounding, or drift toward whichever parent they like better.

For me, worship of our creator is the primary purpose, and marriage should key into that. As such, it should be reflected in one’s choice of a partner; otherwise, there’d need to be a compromise of that worship (the one thing you should never have to compromise). Of course, people will point to prominent members of society who practice it, but just because a few popular people do something doesn’t make it the standard.

The complexity that comes with it also makes it a direction one should actively avoid, but speaking this truth in our community means being labelled. When these cases come to me, on the verge of a breakup, I often wonder why they weren’t told how complex it was going to be.

PT: If you could change three things about how Africans prepare young people for marriage, what would they be?

Giwa: The first will be in upbringing. The focus has mostly been on the girl child. While it is compulsory to raise the girl child right, it is also to raise the boy child right if we are to have a balanced society. In the end, girls’ education gets the focus, and boys are left untrained to choose from as husbands. Next is how much focus is placed on professional premarital counselling. Many people have been going through marriages for generations, making mistakes and gathering experiences in the process.

For a continuously growing society, it is key to leverage that knowledge to improve your chances of marriage. You cannot know it all, but knowing what’s possible and how to handle such possibilities upfront will definitely help people create stronger marriages. The third is our society’s value system. Truth be told, when you hear how some people talk about marriage and what they believe it should be, it feels abusive.

A wife cannot express herself freely; a woman engages in infidelity and gets pardoned or even applauded, while it’s taboo for women, domestic violence, emotional abuse, neglect, lack of care, and so much more. If, as a society, we can create more loving narratives of marriages built around inclusiveness, transparency, honesty, loyalty, kindness and mutual growth, we’d be better for it.

PT: You often challenge men to take accountability in marriages. In your view, why do many men still struggle with emotional responsibility despite claiming to love their wives?

Giwa: You cannot give what you don’t have. A man raised to believe that marriage means he’s a ‘leader’ and, as such, can do whatever he pleases without question will often become a husband who lacks accountability. Our society doesn’t challenge men in this area. If you take society’s position on welfare and financing the home, there is no ambiguity: it’s clearly the man’s responsibility.

Unfortunately, it is not the same when it comes to emotional responsibility. So a man goes into marriage believing all he needs to do is provide money, and that’s it; job done. He conditions his mind to meet this task and does so after a lot of hard work. At that point, because that’s all he planned for, there’s nothing left in the tank to be there emotionally except when he has a sexual urge. What consequences exist for the neglect? Nothing.

Our society tells the wife to manage what he provides. When we were defining responsibility in marriage, we, as a people, did not include the emotional aspect for men, and we appear to continue to make it acceptable. The irony is that this is contributing to cases of extramarital affairs by wives. A woman is human, too; she has emotional needs. Women in previous generations were told to ignore theirs and focus on children; we know how that played out.

The women today are either embracing their vulnerabilities in this capacity and engaging in extramarital affairs or remaining in marriages like that, broken and depressed. We need to do better in this regard.

PT: Some critics argue that social media has made women “too independent” and men “too defensive.” Do you agree, or is social media simply exposing problems that always existed?

Giwa: Social media, in this regard, merely acts as a resource tool and a convergence point, enabling expressions like never before. Whatever social media appears to be showing already existed. If a woman is speaking up more because she has found a space that makes her feel safe enough to express herself, it is because those feelings already exist. Social media didn’t create the feeling.

A man doing well as a husband and leader has nothing to get defensive over. Long before social media, salons, marketplaces, and radio call-in shows existed where people shared their feelings, found social connection, and discussed issues. Yes, social media does a significantly better job at this, but in the end, it all goes back to individual conduct within our spaces. A happy wife, treated well in her marriage, will have beautiful things to share. A man who is a good husband has nothing to worry about.

PT: You’ve said some men use pregnancy as a condition for commitment. Why do you think many women still fall into emotionally exploitative relationships despite seeing the red flags?

Giwa: We live in a society where marriage, as a woman, raises your status in people’s eyes. They see it as achieving something massive, and in some ways, it is. This increases the pressure to achieve it, especially when parents and family members keep piling on, urging you to bring somebody home. When friends run into you after a bit of time, the question they want to ask is whether you are married. Beyond that, low self-esteem can also make people accept poor standards as the norm.

A man asking you to get pregnant is directly telling you he wants to have the ability to sleep with you as he pleases until you get pregnant, if you get pregnant. He is not hiding his intentions; he is telling you directly how he rates you. Only if you get pregnant will he consider marrying you. That man, at best, will marry you as a vessel for bearing children or, at worst, will sleep with you until he is tired and moves on. You’d think this should be easy to refuse, but when social pressure and family taunts become too much, the man’s offer starts to feel like the easier option.

We talk about red flags, but how can a woman look out for red flags if she doesn’t even know what they are? The situation is so bad in some cases that the women are already conditioned to believe that if a man doesn’t desire them in this manner, then they are doing something wrong.

PT: Many people stay in unhappy marriages because of religion, children or public image. How do you help people separate endurance from self-destruction?

Giwa: As mentioned earlier, religion always sparks emotions, so the moment you begin to talk to people about what they can do better, they look at you as if you are asking them to betray their religion. There are so many exploitative interpretations that have been given to different scriptures across different religions, some twisted and the rest misunderstood. Take, for example, the concept of “for better or worse”, often used to keep people tied in many toxic marriages today. It goes further, even to keep people unable to marry if they somehow can break free from the marriage.

Our creator did not design marriage to be toxic, so when it is, the condition of staying together forever does not apply. Take the scenario of a woman who is married to a man who always beats her up physically. We all understand clearly that this woman should not be in that marriage, but somehow she is told to stay in it because of certain religious positions. Imagine this woman finding another woman who is ready to care for her and be kind to her in marriage, and she’s told that she cannot be married to that man because she was married to the previous man who was beating her.

Can anyone say that sounds right or is even fair? Yet, it still plays out in different areas because of religion. Marriage can be beautiful and good; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But if you have tried everything possible to make it better without success, then you know it’s time to leave. Pray for your marriage, have serious discussions about growth with your spouse, improve yourself, spice things up, create quality time, seek professional mediation and help. However, if you still find yourself on the negative side of life as a direct or indirect consequence of that marriage, I always tell people to draw the line there.

Don’t stay for the children; leave for the children! You do not want to raise broken individuals who would then go on to be spouses to other people someday, causing them heartbreaks and hurt. Perseverance is key, and patience is important, but if you have given all that’s listed above without any sign of improvement, leave that marriage before it breaks you.

PT: Do you think the African society romanticises suffering in marriage?

A good wife is the one who can manage lack and poverty while making the most of it. She is seen as the one who can keep quiet even when she is being wronged. She is the one who should never express herself, or it becomes disrespectful. She is the one who ignores the infidelity of her husband and focuses on her children. She is expected to be a glorified maid to her husband’s family before considering her own.

A popular cleric once said publicly, and it was reported across different media outlets, that the children of a woman who washes her husband’s clothes with a washing machine (and not by hand) will not be successful. If a so-called cleric is making such a statement publicly, imagine how much damage it does to his followers. But it’s not just him; many others, silently or vocally, share a similar mindset.

PT: What uncomfortable truths do men and women need to hear about marriage that society rarely tells them?

Giwa: There is always an option out there! Many people get married and fall into complacency, believing that a spouse is somehow stranded and cannot go anywhere. A spouse may stay, but it is never out of a lack of options. There is always a man or woman out there willing to replace you in whatever capacity. The false ideology of scarcity of men makes many women believe this, but in truth, there are more men than women in the world. There’d be many reading this and feeling the need to argue, but take five minutes to run the research.

Don’t just ask Google; check the numbers from the Bureau of Public Statistics. If you are not satisfied with that, check other reputable organisations like the United Nations, World Health Organisation (WHO), and even the World Bank. You’ll find the shocking truth that there are more men in the world than women. If this is the case, then you see how self-deceptive it can be for a man to convince himself that there are more women in the world and, as such, he can behave as he likes without consequences.

Also, you will change. Your spouse will change. It is easy to complain about physical changes, especially weight, but that’s normal. As you age, wrinkles will form, weight will fluctuate, erections will eventually weaken, the scrotum will sag, and so will the breasts. While it is important to be deliberate about fitness and wellness, accepting the normal ageing process helps condition expectations, especially for spouses. You should not be several years married and expect your spouse to have the body, energy, or performance level they had when you first got married.

Men engage in extramarital affairs; women do too. It is not one-sided. Don’t get so comfortable thinking your spouse cannot do it that you begin to neglect or maltreat them.

PT: From your experience, what are the leading causes of marital issues and divorce in Nigeria?

Giwa: At the top of the list are upbringing and values. Many young people today are going into marriage not even understanding what marriage means. They don’t understand the level of commitment required, and that’s what leads to many of the other issues that come up.

Take infidelity, for example, which is the most common case; the average man involved in it doesn’t even consider it an issue. To him, it’s a normal thing for men. Some would also hide behind seeking more wives, often with the statement “men are polygamous in nature”, when in truth, they only want to have multiple affairs.

While temptation is normal, your values and your ability to maintain boundaries keep you doing right by your spouse in marriage. Money is also a big issue today. This includes not meeting expected responsibilities, the distance created by seeking a livelihood in separate locations, and the general discomfort of lack and poverty. A family that is financially comfortable has one less area to worry about; arguments are less charged, frustrations are better addressed, and solutions are generally easier to find.