Should Marriage Have An Expiry Date? When love dies, must people die with it?

By Desmond Nleya
There is something deeply disturbing about the stories emerging from the tragic deaths of Dr Engineer Martin Muduva and his wife, Lyliosa Chirara. Whatever the final findings of the police investigation may be, the tragedy has already forced Zimbabweans to confront an uncomfortable question: why have we allowed love, marriage, jealousy and betrayal to become matters of life and death?
The details surrounding the Muduva tragedy remain subject to investigation and many of the claims circulating on social media have not been independently established. But beneath the rumours, allegations of infidelity and reports of another relationship lies something much bigger than one marriage.
It is a crisis of how we understand love and marriage.
And perhaps, most painfully, it is a crisis of how we respond when love stops being love.
Marriage is traditionally presented to us as forever. We grow up hearing about vows, permanence, commitment, sacrifice and staying together "for better or for worse". We are taught that leaving is failure, divorce is shameful and enduring a painful marriage is somehow a demonstration of strength.
But perhaps we need to ask a difficult question: What if staying is sometimes more dangerous than leaving?
We have created a culture in which people sometimes feel that because someone is their husband or wife, they somehow possess that person's life. A spouse becomes property. A partner becomes something to be controlled. Infidelity becomes a justification for revenge. Rejection becomes humiliation. Separation becomes an insult to one's dignity.
The tragedy is that nobody owns another human being.
Marriage is a commitment, not a prison sentence.
Love is a choice, not a hostage situation.
Perhaps marriage should have an expiry date not because marriage is worthless but because society needs to recognise that human beings change.
The person you marry at 25 may not be the person you are living with at 45. People grow. Their ambitions change. Their personalities change. Their priorities change. Sometimes their love changes.
But perhaps what is more radical is expecting people to remain trapped indefinitely in relationships that have become toxic, destructive or emotionally dead.
Of course, marriage cannot simply be treated like a mobile-phone contract that expires every ten years.
Children, property, finances, families, culture and emotional commitments make relationships far more complicated.
But the idea of renewal deserves serious thought.
Perhaps couples should periodically renew their commitment rather than simply assume that the marriage will survive because a piece of paper says so.
There must be a difference between fighting for a marriage and fighting inside a marriage.
Fighting for a marriage means counselling, communication, forgiveness, compromise and genuine efforts to rebuild trust. Fighting inside a marriage means threats, violence, intimidation, revenge and destruction.
Whatever happened inside the Muduva marriage, one principle must remain absolute:
Infidelity can break a heart, but it can never justify taking a life.