“Celebrities appear on television and tell us that if your husband is abusing you, you should call the police and they don’t think about what the crazy husband will do to us if the police leave” – this is how the letter that we received from one of the regions of Kakheti begins. Eka wrote us her hard life in a few pages, we tried to publish a relatively small version due to the size of the letter.
Eka: I got married at the age of 18, to tell you the truth, I didn’t really want to, but I couldn’t continue my studies and I chose to start a family instead of staying at home. My future wife was three years older than me. from the neighboring village. We got to know each other with the help of relatives and soon I got married. From this point of view, I can’t understand how I got married to a complete stranger, but I probably didn’t fully understand the family burden.
Hell broke out on the wedding night. Even touching him made me dizzy and my husband hated me, but he didn’t show much love himself. We have been together for ten years, I had two children and I could not understand anything from my wife. He is a kind of person, he hardly talks to me. He works in a wood shop and has been gone all day. Returning home in the evening, he was never interested in what I was doing that day, if he only plays with the children, eats and sleeps. He doesn’t let me go anywhere. I rarely visit my parents. If I say something, he swears and I am silent for fear that he will hit me. He did not give me a single GEL. If we want to buy something at home, products, baby clothes, even diapers, he buys everything himself. I take Lilo to the market once a year and she even pays for her underwear and clothes herself.
My husband and I live separately. I have one daughter who is married and lives with her parents. My daughter-in-law rarely comes to me, she says, “I wonder how you can stand this man.” Everyone wonders how two brothers are so different.
I have one sister, she got married in Tbilisi and I asked my parents, maybe I should move in with you, I can’t stand this man anymore, but my father told me to leave, but I’m old and if your crazy husband falls on me, I can’t handle it. He doesn’t beat me, he doesn’t work and keeps it himself, what more do you want in this poor country, but to tell you the truth, he doesn’t beat me because I have turned into his servant. If I go back on my word and do not obey, I will also find myself next to those poor women who have become victims of their husbands.
I shouldn’t have been taught to call the police, men should be given some courses that you can’t treat your wife like that. I don’t even know how to find out. I am very reluctant to write this, but we rarely even have sex, we have been husband and wife for ten years, and I have never heard from my husband that I love you, and I have never even seen him naked… He has done nothing to make me fall in love, nor does he love me. I don’t complain to myself anymore, my children are growing up with me, what kind of mentality should they grow up in the hands of such a father…”
