When Fikun*, 24, got married, she thought she was stepping into the kind of peaceful, loving marriage she grew up watching her parents enjoy. Less than nine months later, she began divorce proceedings.

In this week’s Marriage Diaries, she shares how pressure to make life easier for her widowed mother influenced her decision to marry early, how she discovered her husband’s substance addiction after the wedding, and how the experience turned her from a confident young woman into a shadow of herself.

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I thought my marriage would look like my parents’

I always imagined that my marriage would be a reflection of my parents’. My dad is late now, but my parents had what I considered a wonderful marriage. I know no marriage is 100% perfect, but the picture they showed us was beautiful and peaceful. It was the kind of marriage you wanted to aspire to.

As we grew older, I started to realise that they had their difficult moments too. But one thing I could never take away was how deeply my dad loved my mum. He loved her with his whole heart, and she loved him too. So naturally, I grew up believing I would also have that kind of marriage where everything was peaceful and smooth, and both partners were committed to sticking it out even when things weren’t perfect.

My experience has been nothing like what I grew up watching. It didn’t even take years before I started regretting my decision. I knew I had made the wrong decision about a month into the marriage. Thankfully, I’m already in the process of leaving, so I guess that’s something.

I wasn’t ready for marriage when I said “I do”

I had doubts from the beginning, especially when the relationship started moving towards marriage. Everything felt rushed, and I had so many concerns that everyone around me kept telling me to overlook.

My husband is about 10 years older than me, so after he proposed, his family intensified the pressure for us to get married. I had communicated that I wasn’t ready, but everyone kept saying there was no point wasting time and that we should just go ahead.

But there was also something happening at home that influenced me. I’m the first child, and my mum is a widow. I wanted to make life easier for her. I had just finished school and was working, but I still felt that getting married would mean she had one less person to worry about. I would also be able to support her by caring for my younger siblings.

So despite all my concerns, the reality at home made me feel like I needed to find the courage to push ahead with the marriage.

I found out about my husband’s addiction days after our wedding

I had such a positive image of marriage from my parents, so I never imagined that a marriage could have serious problems right from the beginning.

My marriage lasted less than three months, but I started having issues within the first week. A few days after our wedding, I discovered that my husband had a substance addiction problem.

He had gone to extreme lengths to hide that part of himself from me, and his family had also known about it. They knew what was wrong with him, and I believe that was one of the reasons they were pushing for the marriage.

I spent days blaming myself and wondering how I could have missed the signs. But looking back, if both he and his family had gone to such lengths to hide it, I don’t think there was any way I could have known.

It’s not like I didn’t notice a few things. I did. But whenever I raised them, family and friends would tell me they were non-issues. They’d say nobody was perfect and that everyone had their shortcomings. I believed them.

Then I got married, and everything changed.

He would get high and drunk and sometimes chase me out of the house in the middle of the night. I was dealing with all of this without telling my parents or anyone else because I didn’t even know how to explain what was happening.

Eventually, I realised I couldn’t figure it out on my own, so I involved my parents. There were several back-and-forths between both families, and he was eventually sent to rehab. He spent three months there before we reunited.

Unfortunately, he got worse after that. He became aggressive, and there were also several moments of sexual abuse. He never laid hands on me, but there were things I experienced that I never imagined I would have to deal with in a marriage.

One of the hardest parts was that my mum didn’t understand what I was going through. She had never experienced this version of marriage. I realised that no matter how much older someone is, there are some things you simply cannot understand until you have experienced them yourself.

I became a shadow of the person I used to be

Marriage definitely changed how I saw myself. I used to be a very confident person, but I became a shadow of myself.

My husband was a completely different person whenever he got high or drunk. He wouldn’t provide, he would insult and degrade me, and I had to be extremely careful around him. It became safer for me to tread carefully than to say what I was actually thinking.

I was scared of going home, so I started taking extra shifts at the hospital where I worked as a nurse. I would rather stay at work than go back to the house and deal with whatever version of him I was going to meet. About three months into the marriage, I told him I couldn’t continue, and I left.

His family was still determined to make the marriage work, which was when they sent him to rehab. It barely helped because he came back worse. There were moments when he became himself again, and he’d beg and plead and apologise for his actions. But there was only so much one person could take.

However, it wasn’t only the failed marriage or my husband. 

At some point, my mum also started blaming me for entering the marriage. She’s a staunch Christian who doesn’t believe in divorce, so hearing her imply that I had somehow brought this situation upon myself made things even harder.

I became depressed. I stayed indoors a lot, especially after moving back into my mum’s house. I was also struggling with the shame of returning home after everyone already knew I was married.

Eventually, I opened up to a friend. He listened without judging me and always had something to say about how I could navigate what I was going through. He kept reminding me that I would pick up the pieces of my life again.

I think that’s slowly happening. It’s been about two months since I left and started divorce proceedings, but I’m still healing. I’m learning to forgive myself and move forward.

I should have been selfish and chosen myself first

If I could go back, I would tell my younger self to calm down and only get married when I was truly ready.

I got married for the wrong reasons. I got married because I wanted to make life easier for my mother and not because I was genuinely ready to commit to that phase of my life.

So I’d advise my younger self to be more selfish. I’d tell her to marry for herself, not because she feels responsible for solving someone else’s problems.

However, I don’t think this is the end of the road for me. I’m still very young. I’m 24, and I have my whole life ahead of me. 

I believe that as long as there’s life, there’s hope. 

Love is never enough

Love does a lot of the work of sustaining a marriage, but it can never be enough.

Whenever my husband comes to apologise after hurting me, I remind him that if you truly love someone, there are certain things you wouldn’t do to them, even when you’re angry or struggling with your own weaknesses. He’ll soon become my ex once our divorce is finalised, but I still believe that.

So, while love isn’t enough to hold a marriage together, I believe it shapes many of the things that make one work. It should shape how you treat your partner, how much you respect them and how willing you are to protect their peace.

 *Names have been changed to protect the identity of the subjects.

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