When is enough, enough?

(What’s love got
to do with it with Ruth Chigubu)

How many of us would marry our current partners all over again? I am guessing the wish list you used 20 years ago has since expired. You are a different person today, a little thicker around the waist too. Some of you are suffering from high blood pressure just because…
The point is your needs have changed as you have evolved as a person and besides life is about growth. You certainly wouldn’t want to be, think and behave as you did two decades ago.
Your needs in your 20s are so far from what you need today. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy, we are actualising.
We should be comfortable with the thicker waist line and should be able to look back and smile on life … some of us that is… some could still be on the lower level, basic needs, I appreciate that we all have different milestones and opportunities in life.

Those that are happy to remarry all over again have appreciated growing together through the turbulences that life throws. You have stuck together through thick and thin.
I guess the wedding vows you took you certainly meant them, in sickness and in health, for richer for poor.

You managed to stay connected, you evolved together and today you are still on the same page. Whatever drove you 20 years ago is still going strong. You are still passionate about each other.
Sex is not a tour of duty and you enjoy each other and cannot imagine life without the other. Admittedly this is not easy and it takes some serious hard work from both parties to make it work.
On the other side others would never choose their current partners even if they got paid for it. What happened? What killed the passion they once had? The skip of the heart beat when they called, the longing to be with their beloved. You now find yourselves as strangers in the same house. Is this the time to throw in the towel? Should you throw in the towel? But we were taught that you try and try some more. The union is dead and you   are happier apart. Can this be fixed? If not why   then do you stay together? When is enough, enough?

I guess this is where one party was left behind, while the other developed themselves that now you don’t connect intellectually. One climbed the corporate ladder while the other remained a’cooking, a cleaning,  back home.
While your other half is globe trotting you are happy to be left home. Sisters there is no excuse for ignorance, get on the programme and be stimulating for your man, intellectually, sexually and emotionally. Get on his programme otherwise…and vice versa.

Yet others are caught in a rut and there is bitterness in the relationship, there is a discord. One has put their life on hold for the sake of the family. You  shelve your dreams till the kids leave home, till the other part has become the CEO, till the business is financially sound.
You go through life with what ifs and never feel content with the union. You are the one who compromises for the sake of the marriage, one who gives up their dreams, one who puts in the effort, and the one who is willing to say “sorry” even when you are not wrong just to maintain the peace.

The connection is broken to say the least and poor you you go along just because, when is enough, enough?
Is enough the time when the kids have all left home? Is enough when you land the big job so you are financially sound? Is enough when you have enough evidence of “smally”? Is enough when he goes first?
That connection died a long time ago. Is it fear of the unknown that keeps you in this space?  Fear to embrace change or you are too busy worrying about how it will look to the family? Take note that you only live once!!!!!!
– Ruth Chigubu is freelance writer and businesswoman based in Harare. She can be reached on ruthchigubu@yahoo.com