Chioma Omeruah, better known as Chigul, has spoken about the pain that followed the end of her marriage, saying the collapse left her ashamed, broken and unsure of where she stood with God.
Speaking on the Transparent Show, the comedian looked back on a union she tried to save. Making a marriage work is not one person’s job, she said. Both people have to put something in. They came in carrying wounds of their own, and those wounds made it hard to hold the relationship together. They were both broken, and broken pieces cannot mend other broken pieces. They only saw that clearly later.
In the years around the split and the divorce that followed, she had become someone who pleased everyone else and gave up too much of herself to meet other people’s standards. She tried to hold the home up alone. One person cannot build a home, she said.
The failure hit her self-esteem. As the marriage came apart she felt shame and called herself a failure. That is why she could not step into another relationship, even a casual one. After they separated she still told people she was married. The divorce itself took six years to finish. At that time she hated herself. She did not know God the way she does now and decided that because God hates divorce, He must hate her too. She thought a failed marriage meant she was going to hell.
She is at ease with being single now and has spent a long stretch putting her self-worth back together and knowing herself better.
Asked how she looks at dating at 50, she said younger men come after her but she is not interested in a large age gap the other way. She wants someone older, a papa. She once tried someone fourteen years younger. They were growing close and she thought he was mature until he started acting his age. She would consider a 40-year-old man only if his family also agreed, and he would have to accept that she is not ready to have children. She is 50. If he is 40 and from abroad, she said, they could give it a trial.
