I was listening to Charlie from mother in law, his baby mama told his daughter who was dying of cancer that she would not be the first to die! A 17 year old. Explain to me what a woman has to go through to become this callous! What is this men have put her through that her 17 year old daughter who’s dying of cancer can’t even move her heart. These men will find you with an open and tender heart and by the time they’re through with you, if you won’t be in maximum security jail, you’ll have become the ice queen, men can bring out the worst in even the most angelic of women! No woman is immune from the corrupting ,toxic and destructive nature of the patriarchy. Your best bet is to build a buffer to protect you as a woman from the patriarchy.
I’ve got an ice box where my heart used to be! Who sang that song ?
Commentary below
𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐲 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤; 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐖𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 The 𝐀𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 by Decentering Men*
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So the Betty Broderick case is trending on social media. It was my first time hearing about this homicide case, and as I followed her story, I had a visceral reaction because I immediately recognized the architecture of her suffering. Patriarchy is global. The accents change, the churches and legal systems vary, but the script is familiar — especially to those of us who have lived in or loved within Nigerian patriarchy.
Betty’s case is often summarized as: a scorned wife who snapped.
But that summary is dishonest. It erases the slow psychological murder of a woman’s identity. It ignores the architecture of patriarchy that turned her love into a prison of psychological warfare. Women do not break in a vacuum. They break under systems.
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Betty Built a Man — and Patriarchy Rewarded Her with Erasure
Betty married young. She supported her husband, Dan, through medical school and law school. She worked multiple jobs, gave birth repeatedly, raised their children, cooked, cleaned, encouraged, and believed in a shared future — because she was trained to believe that supporting a man was the highest form of female achievement. She believed loyalty guaranteed safety. She believed sacrifice produced stability.
Until the man she built decided she had expired.
He replaced her with a younger woman, Linda. He mocked her, calling her old, boring, unattractive. He gaslit her reality, made her feel irrational, then partnered with his mistress to humiliate her — sending her weight loss magazine subscriptions, beauty regimens, reminders that her worth was fading. It wasn’t simply infidelity; it was orchestrated degradation. Does this sound familiar?
Society applauded Betty when she was the silent, obedient, self-sacrificing wife. But when she snapped after years of betrayal and emotional starvation, suddenly morality appeared. Suddenly she was “crazy,” “violent,” “dangerous.” Nobody asked why she finally broke. Nobody asked what social, emotional, and financial suffocation does to the human psyche.
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Nigerian Women Don’t Need a Documentary — They Live This Story
Now let’s consider the Nigerian context. Nigerian women do not need a documentary to understand Betty. They live it. Every. Single. Day—married women.
Every Nigerian man I have ever been with starts by explaining how their father hurt their mother — cheating, financial neglect, emotional cruelty. They speak with righteous anger. They lead by swearing to be different without much prompting on a woman’s part.
Until marriage enters the chat.
Until bride price exchanges hands.
Until children arrive and her exit closes.
Suddenly the same men who swore they despised their fathers begin to mirror them. Their tone changes. Their loyalty shifts. Their pride inflates. They become “real men.” They resent their fathers… until they become them. Their empathy for their mothers evaporates because power has arrived.
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Traditional Wifehood Is a Trap Dressed As Honor and Benevolence
Traditional wifehood becomes a trap disguised as honor. A man convinces a woman to stop working, “rest,” stay home “for the children,” and trust him. But once she is financially dependent, he says:
“Don’t tell me what to do with my money.”
So she builds him while losing herself. And when he begins to cheat, he does not do it quietly. It becomes sport. It becomes humiliation as performance. And the side chick assists — not satisfied to collect the bag quietly, but determined to dethrone the wife, mock her looks, her age, her worth. Male worship convinces these women that replacing another woman is victory.
Until they become the replaced.
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The Lawyer Who Snapped — Nigerian Betty
Remember the case of the Nigerian female lawyer whose husband left his first wife for her — then cheated on her too? She believed she had “won” him. Then she learned betrayal has no loyalty, and she snapped. Nigerians wagged their fingers, calling her violent. But where was that moral compass when he was emotionally torturing her and the wife before her? When society tells women to endure shame silently, it should not feign shock when a woman chokes on it and spits fire.
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Quiet Men Can Be the Most Dangerous
And then there are quiet men — the silent ones. The ones who never raise their voice but weaponize calmness as psychological strangulation. Emotional withdrawal. Coldness. Silent punishment. The quiet abuser is often the most dangerous. When wives report them, society laughs: “Your husband? That quiet man? Impossible.”
Gentleness is not goodness.
Silence is not innocence.
A quiet man can kill a woman’s spirit without ever raising a hand.
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Working Women Are Not Safe Either — Double Exploitation
Meanwhile, women who work and co-provide are not safe either. Instead they are exploited twice: outside the home for salary, inside the home for unpaid labor. Their income becomes “family money” while his remains “his money.” Childbirth interrupts their career, alters their earning power, risks their life. Yet men still ask, “What do you bring to the table?” as if women are not the table, the foundation, the roof, and sometimes the contractor who laid the bricks.
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Why Women Snap
This is why women snap. Not because they are irrational, but because they have been pushed into a psychological corner. When the husband mocks her, the side chick joins, the church judges her, her family shames her, and she has no money, no community, no dignity left — rage becomes the only voice left available. The woman becomes the villain long before she reacts, so she learns she has nothing left to lose.
People love to ask, “Why didn’t she just leave?”
Leave and go where? Leave and feed the children how? Leave to whose house? Leave to what income? Leaving without money is not leaving — it is relocating into suffering. Nigeria has no real shelters, no social welfare, no legal protection for women, no stigma-free divorce pathways. Religion tells her to pray. Family tells her to endure. Society tells her she has failed if she walks.
Women do not “stay.”
Women are contained.
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Children Are Not a Reward for Erased Womanhood
And children? Society lies and tells women that children are their reward. Mothers are told that sacrifice is noble, that motherhood is fulfillment. But children grow. Children move on. Children live their own lives. Children are not pension plans, nor repayment for erasure. Nnu Ego in The Joys of Motherhood died for her children and was forgotten. A woman who abandons herself for her children teaches her daughters to be martyrs and her sons to be kings.
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Why Women Must Center Themselves
We must be honest:
When women center men, they disappear.
When women center children at their own expense, they erode.
When women center marriage, they become sacrifices.
Men center themselves.
Religion centers men.
Society centers men.
Marriages center men.
So a woman must center herself. Not as rebellion but as survival. As sanity. As the bare minimum.
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Before You Become a Stay-At-Home Wife — Secure Your Life
Before becoming a stay-at-home wife, a woman must secure:
• Prenup: an enforceable legal safety net
• Salary: compensation for running the home and raising children
• Separate savings: private, untouchable
• Assets: in her name
• Skills: continuously developed
• Employment history: maintained through volunteering or part-time work
• Freedom fund: because love without options is captivity
• A career clause: guaranteeing her return to work
• Psychological independence: because dependency kills identity
Do not rely on promises. Promises do not pay rent, fight court battles, or rebuild self-worth.
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Patriarchy Rewards Sacrifice With Oblivion
Women snap when they have been erased layer by layer and then told they are dramatic for noticing the disappearance. They snap when pain becomes identity, when humiliation becomes a community sport, when even other women — mammies and pick-mes — join the abuse in hopes patriarchy will spare them.
Patriarchy does not reward loyalty.
It consumes it, buries it, forgets it.
If Betty had centered herself, she would have been the one with power. But she was raised to build a man, not a life. And the world chewed her bones when the man she built decided she was obsolete.
A woman who loses herself trying to keep a man loses twice — him, and herself.
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Final Warning: Love Yourself More Than the Institution
The most powerful act a woman can commit in a patriarchal world is to choose yourself. Not in bitterness. In clarity. In self-preservation. In knowledge. In defiance of a system that feeds on her sacrifice.
Center yourself.
Protect yourself.
Prepare yourself.
Build yourself.
Guard your mind, your money, your identity.
Love deeply if you wish — but never surrender yourself as collateral.
Never again.
