Several of my childhood friends saw their families broken. They had a common reaction to their parents’ separation: sadness, but also relief. For children, the toxicity in a broken marriage turns the home into hell in a very small place.
One of them, while grieving over their broken family, wished her parents would find happiness again, whether through reconciliation or with new partners.
It was easy for her father to find new women. Yes, plural; years later, when he and his estranged wife were back to being on civil terms, he told her he had slept with dozens of women. His chronic philandering led to the separation.
The mother found another man, but he was married, and she couldn’t remarry anyway. They often rode a motorbike together to the shrine of St. Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of the impossible, beside Malacañang, to plead for relief in their situation.
It never came; one day the guy died of a heart attack. The heartbroken mother no longer found another love; she feared being ostracized for promiscuity. She busied herself working for her children’s education. There was no financial support from her estranged husband, who died when she was in her 60s.
Such stories aren’t rare in this country.
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At least the mother was never physically abused by her husband. I know women even from my supposedly gender-liberated generation who endure regular beatings by their husbands. These are financially independent women, educated and with solid upbringing. Their social status, however, makes them too embarrassed to admit being battered women and prevents them from seeking help and protection from the state.
Some years ago, one of them often went to work with visible bruises. She endured the beatings for the sake of their son, and because her religion taught her that there’s a special place in heaven for those who endure suffering; that when someone slaps you on the cheek, you can offer the other cheek.
Despite all the tough laws protecting women and their children from domestic violence, many women in this country continue to suffer from physical, psychological and other forms of abuse at the hands of men. The problem cuts across income groups, although there must be higher prevalence among women who are unaware of their rights and the protection provided by law.
It would take one severe beating, never reported to the police, before that battered woman finally decided she’d had enough, and walked away from her marriage. The husband, who had some clout in society, held on to their son, but the woman figured the boy was approaching his teens and would soon be able to meet with her at will.
Last I heard, both the woman and the husband had found new partners, but no new marriage.
I know other estranged couples who found new loves and married overseas. It didn’t matter if the marriages are recognized as legally valid in our country. They just wanted to exchange marriage vows with their new loves.
Obviously it isn’t as simple when extensive conjugal assets are involved. Wrangling over the separation of conjugal property can make legal separation and annulment cases in our country drag on for decades.
These are among the folks who are supporting absolute divorce, which the House of Representatives finally passed on third and final reading before the sine die adjournment.
Now comes the bigger hurdle: the Senate, where the divorce bill will be subjected to a conscience vote.
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Hypocrisy has always been one of the issues raised by women’s groups against opponents of divorce in this country. Presidents and other public officials openly acknowledge having mistresses – the more, the greater the macho image.
These days, stories are being revived in “Marites” circles about a wife beater among the divorce opponents, another who doesn’t even share the bedroom with his trophy wife, and still another who allegedly covered up his prominent father’s dalliance with a young secretary by entering into a marriage of convenience with the secretary.
Rodrigo Duterte often spiced up his public speeches by asking the audience if there was any man among them who could honestly say he never had an extramarital affair. The question always drew laughter from the audience. If a female public official asked the same question of the women in the audience, it would draw public opprobrium instead of laughter.
There are warnings that pro-divorce politicians stand to lose votes in 2025. The politicians may want to remember that Noynoy Aquino openly supported the equally contentious Reproductive Health bill, and he won the presidency by a landslide. The RH law was enacted under his watch in 2012, and he maintained his high survey ratings until the end of his term, despite dips due to controversies unrelated to the RH law.
If there is a Catholic vote in this country, the Protestant Fidel Ramos, womanizer Joseph Estrada and the God-cussing Duterte who campaigned on a platform of killing people would never have won the presidency.
A non-commissioned survey conducted from March 21 to 25 this year by reputable pollster Social Weather Stations Inc. showed 50 percent of Filipinos favoring the legalization of divorce, 31 percent against and 17 percent undecided.
Certain senators say the grounds for divorce provided under the House measure are too broad, making it too easy to get divorced. But isn’t that the idea, to facilitate the dissolution of an irreparably broken marriage? Do opponents want divorce proceedings to crawl along like the cases in regular courts, which can take two decades before final adjudication? By that time, because of all the hassle (and the cost), the estranged husband and wife might be ready to just murder each other, or commit suicide.
The difficulty of getting out of a marriage that has become irretrievably broken has to be among the reasons why younger folks are increasingly opting to eschew marriage and just live together.
More and more women no longer depend on men for financial support or to define their existence, so there is less pressure to get married.
Alimony, child support and conjugal assets are no longer major concerns for such women, unless perhaps the guy has the assets of Bill Gates or the taipans.
Surely living together with no need for marriage is not what opponents of absolute divorce have in mind.