Beyond hot takes and joining trending conversations, it is important that we draw sober lessons from this collective experience, not out superiority or vindictiveness, but out of empathy and equality.
1. Love is not continual sacrifice by one person.
Don’t normalize pain. Suffering is not a virtue. Endurance is not a virtue. Your freedom and happiness begins when you reject the lie that love requires your to self-annihilate yourself. The glorification of female martyrdom in relationships exists so that women’s emotional labor can be mined to sustain the empires of their men. It is social conditioning that tells women to “invest” in toxic relationships as if they are stocks, where they can hope for delayed dividends like social status of “married woman” or financial stability of becoming rich man’s wife. The game is rigged against you. Oftentimes, the “reward” for suffering is more suffering.
2. Separation or divorce is not a personal failing on your part.
It is the society that we are in that has failed to sustain love. We live in a patriarchal society where men are women are told they are not equals. Inequality cannot sustain love, so it is not your fault. Don’t feel less than your worth because you are a divorcee and don’t feel like separating or getting a divorce will make you a lesser person.
3. Your body is not a commodity to be “taken” or traded.
Unlearn the lie that male validation defines your worth. Your virginity is not a transactional “gift” to a man. A woman’s worth is not determined by her sexual purity. That logic only normalize male entitlement, and reduce women to property.
I was still a virgin when I met 2Face, infact I am his first girlfriend. This man took my virginity and then went outside and had 5 children with 2 other women and never bothered to tell me. I only found out about his other five children on social media after I gave birth to our first child. This man has dated over 200 ladies since he married me and I just can’t take it anymore.”
Annie Idibia
4. Don’t ever let any man pit you emotionally against another woman, whether it’s his side-chick, baby mamas, ex or wife.
Remove yourself from any situation that allows you to be pitted against another woman emotionally.
“My first child with 2Face was his 5th. But guess what? I was with him before everybody and I’m his first love.”
Annie Idibia
5. If you must date a male celebrity, don’t allow your relationship to be used for PR and commercial goals of image making.
Male celebrity status grants impunity while women bear the emotional labor of maintaining the façade of a “perfect marriage”. We are in a society that rewards male polygamy and punishes female agency.
6. Grief is a valid feeling when separation happens.
No matter how much you presently disliked them, you once liked them and that’s enough reason for grief to happen. Allow yourself to grief your loss as much as you need to and then move on.
7. Reject that myth that marriage is a woman’s ultimate achievement.
It’s the biggest lie in the world.
8. You will never be alone.
This world is a huge network of care. Open yourself up to care from as much as possible people, and let these people come and go as they wish.
9. Fight Patriarchy.
Fight it like your life depends on it. It really does.
“We Are Not Free Until All of Us Are Free”
Written by Omole Ibukun.
