By Queen Avula
June is men’s mental health month, whilst we focus on ensuring men speak out, it becomes important to highlight perhaps what goes on in marriages caused by the same men who still cannot speak out but instead abuse women emotionally.
For nearly three decades, a 45-year-old Namibian woman born in the Ohangwena Region carried a secret burden behind the walls of what many believed was a stable marriage.
Today, she has chosen to share her story, not for sympathy, but to raise awareness about the devastating impact of emotional and psychological abuse.
The woman met her husband in January 1995. Just a few months later, in May, his mother passed away. Coming from a family of eleven siblings, he suddenly found himself carrying significant responsibilities as one of the family’s providers. He was the firstborn and a breadwinner.
The couple met because their villages were literally at the border, a stone’s throw away. They were married in 2000 and later welcomed three children into their family. The children were born in the 2000s.
In the early years, she says she devoted herself to raising their children and supporting her husband in his plans. However, beneath the surface, she felt increasingly silenced. It was bad.
“There was respect in the house, but it was one sided,” she recalls. “I was not allowed to express myself freely.”
Acting in front of other people, he would insult me, belittle me, and direct me to the bedroom, strip himself naked, and tell me in Oshiwambo: “Nghiii nohala, I will shoot you with this gun.”
That practice became a norm. He locked the room and started calling his girlfriends, including married women.
I would then feel bad as the trauma crawled in slowly, get off the bed and lay a blanket on the floor. I cried like a river as I listened to his conversations. When he was done talking, he would softly say, “Get up from the floor and come back onto the bed.”
I would attempt to leave, but he would often say in Oshiwambo: “O wa lunduka,” meaning you are a conceited brat.
The next day, he would never apologise, but instead he would drink a sexual enhancer, specifically Dr. Lee, which he constantly bought at the service station, take me to bed, have sex with me like a sexually frustrated man and act as though nothing had happened.
He carried a gun. He was direct with his order. “I will kill you and kill myself.”
I would then apologise. I would return, and he nakedly presented himself and did to me as he pleased. That sexual part would only happen if he wanted to and only after he emotionally abused me.
Everything changed in 2009 when she se- cured employment. Instead of celebrating the milestone together, she says the relationship began to deteriorate rapidly.
According to her, this period marked the beginning of open infidelity, emotional neglect, and humiliation of the highest order.
To understand the intensity, humiliation is a severe and intensely painful emotional experience that strikes at the core of a person’s dignity and self respect.
It differs fundamentally from humility. While humility is a voluntary internal mindset, humiliation is typically an externally imposed action meant to degrade, embarrass, or assert power over an individual. It is thus deliberate.
Eventually, his sexual feelings for me died.
“There was no support anymore,” she says. “Relatives who could have intervened stepped away, and I was left alone.”
She describes years of emotional abuse that intensified over time. Hurtful words became common. Arguments became more frequent. She says she often found herself apologising even when she had done nothing wrong.
When her husband accepted work in the Kunene Region, she hoped distance would improve their relationship. Instead, she says it widened the gap between them.
She alleges that his relationships with other women became increasingly visible and difficult to ignore.
He got more women. He slept with many women, including married women, divorced women, as well as women who were in the process of divorcing. Because he worked in court, it was easier for him to approach women who were going through divorce by charm- ing them into sleeping with him. That was his strategy.
Year after year, I watched. I cried. I stayed.
“I felt humiliated,” she says. “The adultery was no longer hidden. It was loud and visible.”
As the years passed, the emotional toll deepened. She says there were times when there was little food in the house, challenges with electricity, and increasing financial pressure.
Meanwhile, she was left to care for the children largely on her own. His care had instantly come to a halt.
“The emotional skirmishes eventually affected the children too,” she says. “They were no longer just my battles.”
The children said to her, “Mum, you said we must be chilled, but aaaye, not us kaaa.”
Despite attending church services and revivals, she says her home life continued to deteriorate. It was perplexing.
The woman describes living in a state of constant anxiety, questioning her own sanity and worth.
“There were moments when I genuinely believed I was going to lose my mind,” she says. Yet she stayed. She was worried about what the community would say, so at first, she uttered absolutely nothing to absolutely nobody.
For years, she hoped things would improve. She hoped someone would listen. She hoped someone would intervene.
But the help she desperately needed never seemed to come.
“No one knew my story,” she says. “I suffered in silence.”
As the emotional wounds accumulated, so did feelings of isolation, confusion, and despair.
What happens to my children if I leave their biological father?
Even if I tell someone my story, it was unbelievable. Nobody would believe me because my husband never beat me. I was not physically abused.
This man is a pastor who worked in court and only targeted married women.
 In 2010, I attempted suicide.
Looking back today, she describes those years with one simple sentence: “I went through hell.”
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To be continued …
