There is a word in Filipino that does not translate cleanly into English. Hiya. It means shame, roughly, but it is bigger than that. It is the awareness of how you are seen by others, the weight of the community’s gaze on every choice you make. It is the reason you smile at the family gathering even when you are falling apart. It is the reason you do not leave, even when leaving is the only sane thing left to do.
I found out my husband had been cheating on me for two years. I have not been able to divorce him. In the Philippines — the only country in the world other than Vatican City where divorce is illegal — I cannot.
Who we were
We were what people here call a good match. Same province originally, though we met in Manila when we were both in our late twenties. He was an engineer. I was a teacher. Catholic, both of us, in the way that most Filipinos are Catholic — meaning the Church was not a choice but a fact of life. We married at twenty-nine. Our families were overjoyed.
The impossibility of leaving
In the Philippines, there is no divorce. What exists is legal annulment — a process that declares the marriage void on specific legal grounds, none of which include straightforward infidelity. It requires proof of psychological incapacity, and it requires money. The average cost is the equivalent of a year’s salary for many families. And it takes years.
What my family said
I told my mother. She listened. She was quiet for a long time. And then she said: you have to think about what this does to the family. She did not mean to be cruel. She was saying what the hiya says, what the Church says, what the community says. That a marriage is not just two people. I understand that. I have lived inside it my whole life. But I am also the person who has to live inside this marriage. Those two things are in conflict, and I have not yet found a way to resolve them.
How I am surviving
We still live in the same house. We sleep in different rooms. We perform, for the children and for the family around us, a version of a marriage that does not exist. What has helped: a therapist I found online who works with Filipino women in similar situations. The specific relief of being able to say the true thing to someone who does not know my mother or my pastor or my neighbours.
What I want other women to know
If you are in a country or a community where leaving is not straightforward — where the legal system or the family structure or the financial reality makes it impossible right now — I want you to know that you are not alone in that. Not being able to leave does not mean not being able to heal. It does not mean not being able to reclaim something of yourself, even inside a situation you cannot yet exit. I am doing that. It is slow. But it is something. That is what I want you to know.
— Submitted anonymously. Edited for BeyondBetrayal.net.