Patriarchal cultures are still widespread in many countries across the world. These are usually traditional societies. Classical patriarchy is characterized by inequalities between men and women. Men take dominant positions in the family, while women are in submissive positions. Despite such inequality, both men and women fulfill their family roles, which are different, with reasonable contributions from both sides. The man provides resources, makes the rules, and takes control of family issues. The woman remains at home, does her family work, and nurtures the children.

The patriarchal system in some communities in Nicaragua, a Central American country, is different. This is known as “absentee patriarchy.” Men frequently have more than one wife and children with other women. And such situations are culturally accepted. “Absentee patriarchy” means that a man is physically absent from the family but still tries to control much of the woman’s life.

What about Nicaraguan love? How do love relationships look for women and men?

A Controversial Love Relationship

Women frequently accept unequal roles and exchange unequal responsibilities. They accept their husbands’ infidelity in the hope that this self-sacrifice will bring them fulfillment of their emotional longings. The woman’s motivation to maintain the relationship has been more emotional than financial. They strive to establish and maintain a relationship with their husband, even when they are subjected to emotional or physical abuse at his hands.

Women tolerate and accept many things from men. A man can abandon her and leave her for another woman at any time. It is culturally appropriate. So, the woman strives to keep the man, despite anything. However, in many cases, the reality is still difficult: they need to share their husband with another woman.

Women need to accept the circumstances when their men live simultaneously with other women and move back and forth. They usually call their feelings associated with such love “amor compartido“, meaning “divided love” or “traición“, meaning “treason” (Hagene, 2010).

This “sharing” occurs against the woman’s will and is painful but inevitable. Many women are torn between subordinating themselves to this unavoidable practice. They attempt to free themselves from this dependency. However, this would imply losing the man.

The Divided Love of Nicaraguan women

Women frequently choose to subordinate themselves to men in the hope of gaining emotional fulfillment in the realm of love. However, they meet this challenge in their marital lives in different ways.

Many of the women’s stories reveal how they need to tolerate maltreatment and violence (Hagene, 2010). They experience being beaten by their husbands, yet they prefer this adversity, not wanting to be abandoned.

Infidelity by a husband is another challenge that many women encounter. However, they explain their feelings in certain ways because they perceive love differently. Anyway, Nicaraguan women consider public infidelity in front of neighbors to be hurtful.

Secret infidelity practices appear to be compatible with the companionate perception of love. However, it would not be called romantic love.

Some women consider the infidelity of their husbands to be a problem only if he is not discreet. They are afraid that people will learn about it and tell others about it. The publicity surrounding infidelity is upsetting.

Discrete infidelity is more acceptable. So, women like it when their husbands go to other towns and have their affairs there, away from prying eyes.

Here are some stories from women who have lived through such love relationships:

A woman seemed to adapt to her husband’s infidelity, even though it hurt her. She had started living with her husband when she was 18 years old. They soon had children, and she worked double shift in a shop to maintain them all while he was studying agronomy. ‘To me it was happiness to be with my children and my husband’, she remembered. ‘My husband was not a saint, but if he was with me for a while, I was happy. Then he would go with other women, and I suffered, but when he came back, I was happy again’. She accepted her husband’s womanizing until he went too far. Her story highlights how this was a highly ambiguous experience. She felt liberated, but at the same time she experienced a sensation of loss.

(Hagene, 2010, p. 34).

Such “liberation” also implies a “loss” because she does not want him to go. However, she cannot take such “sharing” anymore (Hagene, 2010).

According to these stories, some men are very nice, amiable, tender, and loving when they conquer a girl and marry her. Relationship challenges begin later—in some cases, years later.

Husbands may begin with mere womanizing and then progress to engaging in parallel relationships. As we see, women in companionate love are frequently tolerant of such covert extramarital affairs. Even when such a relationship transforms into a kind of polygyny, women still accept their partners’ private infidelity.

Divided Love Despite Anything

Thus, many Nicaraguan women live their marital lives in a state of tension between agency and subordination. They do income-generating work, take on domestic work, and fulfill their child-rearing responsibilities and conjugal duties. Despite having little economic dependency, women accept such unequal exchanges with men for emotional reasons. Women grant their husbands status and services in exchange for very little, but often need to face their violence and infidelity (Hagene, 2010).