My Marriage Broke Down Around Age 30 — And So Did Most of My Friends' Relationships by Eva Woods.

We began dropping like flies, one divorce or breakup after another...

Things started out so well. My wedding day was perfect. The sun shone down on the 15th-century castle we’d hired for a hundred guests, even though it was April in Ireland. I wore a silk and lace gown with hundreds of tiny sequins, and I was marrying the man I’d been with for three years.

We’d met working for a charity, and we both cared about trying to make the world better – we imagined ourselves living overseas, and probably having a baby in a year or so. He was straightforward, and kind, and supported me. Surely marriage would be easy… Yet just a year later I was contemplating divorce.

Things seemed to change at our one-year anniversary when we went to Germany for a friend’s wedding. On that trip I remember wondering: is this all there is? Spending whole days apart on holiday, because I wanted to go to museums and he wanted to shop? Having to beg him to turn off his work emails for a few days? Coming home and not speaking for hours at a time. At the time, I dismissed these as silly doubts. There was no question of it not working out. And all my friends seemed happily settled too, and my parents and sister had both been married since they were teenagers – I didn’t know how to admit to them marriage wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for. I told myself was just being naïve, expecting everything to be perfect. 

But things continued to change. I would lay awake at night and wonder about leaving –where would I live? We owned a beautiful house together and I hadn’t rented in years. Would I even get a place on my freelance income? I couldn’t go back to a flatshare at 31, especially not when most of my friends were buying homes with their partners. Who would look after our dog? Who’d get the car? What if I never met anyone else and never had children? I couldn’t face the final decision to leave, so I put it off, frightened of what might be on the other side.

However, I was amazed when, the year my friends and I all turned thirty, a wave of break-ups began. One day my friend Michelle emailed us to say she was leaving her husband of five years, and that things had not been right for years. This finally forced my ex and I to have the difficult conversation we’d been avoiding all this time. He said we could work on it, see a therapist which we did try to little success. He kept insisting that I was giving up too easily, refusing to face up to my own issues. We struggled on, but then just a few weeks after Michelle’s revelation, our friend Cathy called off her wedding. One day they were looking at venues for an elaborate celebration, then the next it was over and she’d moved out of their house. I felt stunned. It seemed as if the break-ups sent seismic waves through our friendship group. Suddenly, couples were having to face the fact that maybe they weren’t that happy, either. 

I realized then that I couldn’t keep putting off the decision about my own marriage. The only way I could do it was in small steps. I found a flat, moved out and finally worked up the courage to tell my friends. With one in particular, I remember being at lunch together, ready for me to tell her my news when she blurted out, ‘So I’m getting divorced.’ She’d been with her husband for ten years and I had no idea anything was wrong. All I could think to say was, ‘Um…me too.’ 

My biggest surprise was how easy it is to hide an unhappy marriage from your friends. I had no idea they were on the brink of a split, and they didn’t know I was. I only told my parents a month before I moved out. I was ashamed to tell them – after all, they’d paid for the wedding. They they were very surprised, but supportive. It made me see I should have talked to people sooner, explained that our marriage – on the surface so great, with our nice house and exotic holidays – was falling apart. It might have made me face the problems sooner, rather than hoping they would just go away. I don’t know if anything could have saved our marriage, but perhaps I would have had the courage to end it sooner. 

Over the following year, while I was moving all my things out and trying to start my life again, four other friends had big break-ups, like a divorce domino effect. We were all in our early to mid-thirties, without children, and had been married or in serious relationships since our twenties. In most cases the splits happened because people grew apart and changed, started wanting different things from life. My friends are quite ambitious, high-flying people and maybe that makes it harder to compromise – or maybe we chose the people and lives we thought we should want, rather than what we actually needed. 

I’m not sure if I would get married again. I would feel strange making those vows, knowing how impossible it is to promise things on behalf of your future self. I wish we had thought about that more carefully before getting married, and that I’d been clearer about what I wanted from life instead of just trying to support him. But three years on, I am in a committed relationship, doing work I enjoy and living a life I love. All it took was that one leap of bravery, and perhaps a bit of that domino effect. 

Eva Woods is the author of The Ex Factor, out now.

 

 

African Weddings and the Ominous effects of Evil Principalities.

Among Nigerians, very much like other Africans, there is always a very strong belief in the ominous effects of juju, voodoo or evil powers. This belief is sustained by the constant occurrence of mysterious phenomena in the lives of the people. And the belief can not really be discounted as unfounded or rubbished as a mere superstition because even the Holy Scriptures acknowledged the existence of witches, familiar spirits and other evil principalities.

The problem with this belief however is the flawed tendency of our African folks to ascribe every incident, including the consequences of personal recklessness and negligence to the unseen spiritual forces.

In 1987, my wife and I had a huge society wedding. This occasion came on the heels of some scary, mysterious events that occurred a few months before the wedding. From a strange illness that almost claimed the life of my wife to the subtle threats of spiritual harms from certain quarters, a low-keyed wedding ceremony would have been the ideal thing to do under the circumstance. As a couple however, we chose to brave through the scare.

And we did have our fun-filled wedding while enjoying the momentary fame as the cynosure of all eyes. Finally, we thanked God that everything went well as planned.

A few months after the wedding, my wife and I invited Goddy (the best man at our wedding) and Bimbo (Best Lady), to the annual Christmas party hosted by my employers.

We all went to the party in my car.

The week preceding the party had been one of great accomplishments for me in terms of my professional life and private business. With this sheer sense of joy in mind, I proceeded on a drinking binge as soon as we arrived at Federal Palace Hotel, Victoria Island, the venue of the party. When the bar ran out of my choice of white wine, I simply switched to VSOP Brandy that was much stronger.

We called it a day at about one o’clock in the morning of the following day. I remembered vividly how I opened the front passenger's door for my wife and the rear doors for our guests.

But that was all I could remember.

About an hour later, I looked in the rear-view mirror and found the rear seats empty.

“Where is Goddy…and Bimbo?” I turned to ask my wife.

Thinking that I was about launching into one of my dry jokes, she stared at me without a response.

“Listen…” I continued to say. “I’m serious. And by the way, where are we now?”

This time, my wife stared at me with a controlled anger before responding to my question.

“What are you talking about?” she asked irritably. “Can’t you see that we are in Ikeja?”

“Ah!” I exclaimed in panic.

“What do you mean by ah?” my wife asked again. “Aren’t you the one driving the car?”

In place of a response however, I continued to drive toward home.

Finally, we both arrived at home.

That was when I called my wife aside to tell her that I could not remember how I drove the car from the parking lot of the Federal Palace Hotel in Victoria Island all the way to Ikeja, covering several miles of distance in the process.

For a few seconds, all she did was stare at me in shock.

“What really are you trying to say?” she finally asked in fright. “…that you passed out while driving?”

“I guess so…” I answered, nodding my head solemnly. “Because I can’t remember anything.”

“Oh my God.” she remarked. “No wonder you were so quiet all the time Goddy, Bimbo and I were chatting and laughing. You just kept staring at the road ahead….”

“No, my eyes were shut tight.” I stated. “I only opened them when we got to Ikeja.”

“Really?” she screamed while clasping her palms atop her head in shock. “But…but you pulled over for Goddy to step out of the car at Palm Grove bus stop.”

“I did?” I asked, staring at her in surprise. “I can’t remember doing anything of sort.”

“What?” my wife yelled in astonishment. “And what about the time you pulled over at Maryland for Bimbo to get off?”

“I can’t remember doing that either.” I shook my head.

“But how then did you drive so smoothly all the way to Ikeja?” she wailed in shock.

“I don’t know…” again, I stated, shaking my head.

“Ah!” she exclaimed for the umpteenth time. “For God’s sake, you drove all the way from Victoria Island, a journey of several miles with curves and turns…all through the long Third Mainland Bridge and you can’t remember anything?”

“No…I can’t.” I answered.

For the next few minutes, we both meditated quietly over the strange phenomenon.

We both wondered aloud about whatever strange force had taken control of the car all the time I was unconscious. Without the benefits of that strange force or providence, which we finally ascribed to another special grace of God in my life, the car could have plunged into the looming, dark Lagoon beneath the Third Mainland Bridge if I had lost control of the car. And this was more so, after such a very flashy, lavished wedding ceremony.

“Do you know what people would have said?” my wife asked in consternation. “Our families, relations and friends would have blamed it all on the wicked engine of witch-crafty, sorcery or some other evil principalities.”

“Of course, yes. “ I nodded solemnly. “Even though, it would all have been my fault.” 

I marveled at the phenomenal event of that fateful day and resolved never again to drink, eat or do anything whatsoever in excess.

It has been 25 years since the incident took place. Had the situation been the other way around, someone else would probably have written this story as an eulogy in a memorial to me, my wife and our guests. May God be praised, thanked and glorified at all times.