Idah Alisha: I regret getting married at 21
Actress Idah Alisha admits she regrets getting married at an early age.
Alisha, who also is a model but is best known for her appearances on the Mother in Law series, has, in an interview with Lyn Ngugi on YouTube, also opened up on the reasons she believe her marriage failed to hold the test of time.
She explained that getting married at a young age proved a contributing factor to the challenges the couple faced.
“I was 21. I was out of my mind if you ask me. If I’m being true to myself, I remember there was a voice at the back of my mind telling me I shouldn’t take that step. I knew him for a year before we got married,” the model explains.
“I didn’t date much. In my head, I was convinced the person I would date I would end up getting married to. So when I started dating the man I ended up marrying, I thought I was ready for marriage,”
She adds that her church and friends put a lot of pressure on her at the time and she felt compelled to take that step with her now ex partner.
“I went through a lot of pressure from the church where most of my friends who were older than me, around 27, were getting married and I was constantly asked when I would also settle down. The guy was 28 at the time and I was 21. Such a big difference,”
The actress says at the age of 21 she barely knew much as she was just starting out in life and career.
“I think we had trauma bonding because he would tell me how his dad was abusive, and I related with him where my dad was the same.”
She explains being raised in a violent household can have negative effects on people.
“One thing about raising a child in a violent home is they may end up becoming an abuser or a victim. If we don’t get the necessary therapy we end up becoming either one of the two,”
“There’s this African lie that if a man doesn’t hit you then he doesn’t love you. You never really know when you are in a relationship with a narcissist.
“It starts with them dictating your dressing style, to choosing the people you hang around with and you are in love at the time you don’t want to do anything to upset this man. So I changed the way I dressed and cut off my friends because to me that was submitting,”
“We would have petty arguments about other women and his whereabouts and this one time he slapped me. That was the first time he got physical. Instead of blaming him, I started accusing myself of pushing him to that extent,”
“It got to a point he would strangle me, threaten to beat me some more and even spit on me. It got so bad but I would not tell anybody,”
“One day I had had enough and I ran away from our home. I never looked back. I left everything I owned and returned to my mother’s house.”