Zulu: Why a good career will not save you from bad marriage

One of the most uncomfortable lessons from the recent events in the family-work intersection is that success does not necessarily protect you from personal collapse.

We like to imagine that people who are doing well professionally have somehow figured life out. If you have a good education, a respected career, a comfortable home and money in the bank, surely you should be able to handle whatever life throws at you.

But human beings do not work that way. We should be careful not to pretend that we know every reason a person reaches such a devastating point as taking their own life. Suicide is complex, and outsiders rarely know the full story.

But there is a bigger question we should be willing to ask: Can a person have everything going right professionally and still be destroyed by what is happening inside their home?

The answer is, unfortunately, yes. You can build an impressive career and still go home every evening to a life that is slowly breaking you. You can have plenty of money and no peace of mind. You can have a title that commands respect in the boardroom and spend your nights crying, worrying or wondering how much longer you can continue.

This is particularly important for women because society has traditionally given them a dangerous message about difficult marriages.

Endure. You already have children. Where will you go? Who will marry you with children? You have a job. You have a house.

You have it better than most women.

Think about the children. No marriage is perfect. What will people say?

And so a woman can find herself trapped between two frightening choices: remain in a marriage that is psychologically destroying her, or leave and face the judgement of the very society that told her to stay.

What is particularly cruel is the hypocrisy.

When a troubled woman eventually collapses, people will say, “She should have just left.”

But those same people are pressuring another woman in almost identical circumstances that leaving is selfish.

“Your children need their father. Don’t break your home. Marriage requires sacrifice. Stay and pray. Things will change.”

And sometimes, even religious institutions unintentionally reinforce the trap by making separation or divorce seem like a greater moral failure than the psychological destruction taking place inside the marriage.

Many churches will directly prohibit divorce or keep a victim of chronic marital stress in an endless loop of reconciliations.

There are circumstances where reconciliation is possible and should absolutely be pursued. Marriage is difficult, and not every conflict is a reason to walk away.

But there is a point at which “keep trying” becomes irresponsible advice.

If every reconciliation produces another cycle of conflict, humiliation, fear, resentment and emotional exhaustion, perhaps the question should no longer be, “How do we save this marriage at all costs?”

Perhaps it should be, “How do we save these people?”

That distinction matters.

We have become very good at protecting institutions and very bad at protecting human beings.

We tell people to preserve the family while forgetting that a family is made up of human beings. If the people inside it are psychologically collapsing, what exactly are we preserving?

And then there is another uncomfortable question: why do highly educated, successful professionals sometimes fail to seek help when they are under enormous psychological pressure?

Why can someone confidently manage millions of shillings, hundreds of employees and complicated professional responsibilities, yet feel ashamed to tell a counsellor, therapist, pastor or trusted friend, “I am not coping”?

Part of the answer is that we still associate asking for help with weakness. We think therapy is for people who have completely lost control.

We think discussing marital problems with outsiders is exposing the family.

We fear the embarrassment of admitting that our supposedly successful lives are not as successful privately as they appear publicly.

So people suffer in silence.

And psychological overwhelm is one of the things we consistently underestimate.

A person does not have to be poor to be desperate. They do not have to be unemployed. They do not have to be homeless. They do not have to look broken.

Sometimes the person who looks strongest is simply the person who has become exceptionally good at hiding how much pain they are carrying.

This is why we must stop treating marital problems as a private inconvenience that people should simply endure indefinitely.

If a marriage has become irreparably destructive and every reasonable attempt at resolution has failed, there is nothing heroic about going down with the ship.

Leaving is painful. Divorce is painful. Separation can be financially and emotionally complicated. Children may suffer. There will be loneliness, gossip and uncertainty.

But sometimes the painful decision is the decision that saves your life.

What about the children?

Children do not remain children forever.

For a season, you may have to co-parent. There may be distance. There may be awkwardness. There may even be periods when you feel that you have lost your relationship with them.

But children grow. They become adults. They begin to understand things their younger selves could not understand.

And your relationship with them can be rebuilt.

Bottom line? You have to be alive and well for all that to happen. If you risk your life and your mental health blindly just to stick with them, you'll collapse and lose all chances of growing with them.

You are not required to die inside a marriage simply because you have children.

Seek help before you reach the edge.

Talk to someone. Get counselling. Get therapy. Separate if you must. Leave if you must.

Start again if you must.

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