When I read or hear people say that the marriages of those days lasted longer than the ones of today ,I shake my head in disagreement. If truly our ancestors had little or no divorce cases, I thought it wise to dig into their belief systems, their way of life and religious orientation, because as far as I’m concerned, people are still the same though we may live in a different world . The decision not to divorce was directly influenced by their belief systems and more importantly the pattern by which their world was shaped, not necessarily because they were better than the people of this time and age. In other words, the reasons why today’s divorce rate is high, reasons like violence against women, adultery etc has always existed in our societies then and now. However, for the reasons listed below, divorce was the last or unavailable option. 1)Women lived in fear and silence. The discrimination of the girl child prepared her for a womanhood of oppression. Hence, she considered herself a second class human who was destined to serve her husband and nothing more regardless of the marital problems she faced.
2)Culturally ,divorce was considered a taboo for a woman. Even when physically assaulted, she was tutored to see it as the cross bestowed on her by fate.
3) Financially, most women were handicapped, they solely depended on the man, who been the breadwinner had absolute power to enforce the triumph of might over right. Obviously the woman couldn’t afford to take care of her immediate needs let alone detach herself from her matrimonial home to rent or buy herself a house. Therefore, she had to stay in that man’s house no matter what storm raged against her.
4) The religious orientation that was adhered to those days gave no room for divorce. The 3 religions practiced in this part of this world gave no space for divorce. So couples were not just culturally joined, they were spiritually joined to be separated only by death.
5) For the woman, living as a single parent was perceived as a curse. Hence, she was willing to endure whatever hardship the marriage inflicted on her even to the point of death.
6) Due to illiteracy, those people had little or no information on their rights and privileges as stated in the constitution , if there was any.
7) The movement for women liberation did not exist. Women who had issues disturbing them in their homes could not voice it out as there were no organizations to listen to them. Hence, they suffered in silence and hoped things would improve.
For those men who had issues with their wives or were just tired of them, culture permitted them to marry a second wife or as many as their pocket could fund. In fact, the more wives they had, the more respectable they appeared. So divorce wasn’t necessary for the men of those days.
These are some of the reasons why I think there were fewer divorce cases back then compared with our contemporary society . Things are a lot different now, our women are financially empowered, information is everywhere, cultural orientations are changing, been a single parent is no longer scandalous, religious ideologies are no more dogmatic, NGOs addressing domestic issues are springing up, certainly it’s a different world compared to the world our forefathers lived in, probably that’s why our courts today are busy with divorce cases.
Lastly, for the single, be double sure of what you want to do before you say I do.

Fp

Then women were not allowed to speak out and the man was lord and master. Thank God for the changes today

One simple reason_feminism!wives are to be submissive and husband shd equally love their wives.however,the devil called feminism has disrupted this biblical arrangement.women now challenge their husbands instead of trying to gently coerce and understand with them.I rest my case abeg.

Things have really changed.