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Love has often been described as a wonderful thing that every human being needs and yearns to find sometime in their lives.
Even the great ancient philosopher Aristotle believed so much in love, which he described as an emotion “composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies”Some people can attest that they have found love, while others hope to find it in the future. Once they fall in love, some people are lucky enough to hold on to it, while to others, it slips through their fingers. Far from being a sentimental feeling that is difficult to describe, love is the universal symbol that makes us all human. It is one thing that people make an effort to maintain against all odds.

You give your heart away; you take a leap of faith and sometimes throw all caution to the wind just to be with the person you love. But is love really worth dying for?

I have been pondering over the same question in the last few months following a series of unprecedented incidents that have taken place in Zimbabwe in the last few months.

Several men and women have in the last few months committed suicide or killed their partners following long standing dispute in relations, unions and marriages. Police has even confirmed that there has been in increase in the number of people who are taking their lives after failing to resolve problems within their unions. A month ago, a Harare woman, Brenda Chinguwo plunged to her death at Trafalgar Court in the capital in a suspected suicide case following a long-standing dispute with her live in boyfriend over an undisclosed issue.

Barely a week after Brenda’s death, a man from Mkokoba, committed suicide by throwing himself into a train after his wife told him that she was going back to her parents over a long standing domestic dispute. Though brutal and callous, dying for love is not a new phenomenon but has been experienced over the ages, with some individuals killing the whole family over a failed relationship, as bitterness and anger bites in. Many will remember the story of Oliver Tengende, a wrestler who in the 1990’s gunned down four people after a love relationship turned sour.

Tengende shot dead his wife and then proceeded to shoot his in-laws at a house in Malborough. He later drove to a church in Mufakose where he shot himself dead.

Other victims in abusive relationships or individuals who are angry over failed relationships may not be as brutal in dealing with disappointment as what Tengende did, but may choose to suffer silently — and eventually die, after succumbing to depression-related illnesses like hypertension, brain tumour and ulcers. Sadly for Zimbabwe, such people constitute a high percentage of people who would rather die for love, quietly. Rather than seek help, counselling and find alternatives ways of solving problems, they maintain their silence, bottle up their feelings and put up a smile when they are actually dying inside. With mounting pressure from friends, the extended family and the church to sustain their marriage, several individuals put up face and stage the Kanye West and Kim Kardashian kind of lifestyle, where everything is said to be rosy and flows like a script in a Hollywood movie, when in actually fact their (people) relationships have become toxic.

Beneath that façade, they will be seething with pain, anger, disappointment and hatred, and they eventually decide to end their lives or that of their partners. When the relationship gets worse, people who are toxic relationships see death as the solution.

On a closer look on why people commit suicide over failed relationships, you can’t help but blame our culture, which doesn’t value safe boundaries like it should, but strongly emphasis the importance of the preservation of the marriage institution at all costs. Society holds private and public disdain for both men and women who quit and the ones who pull out. Instead of offering moral support, community is quick to apportion blame. Sometimes a man or woman need to rely on their sixth sense and simply walk away from the emotional barnacle there are currently in, before the relationship becomes fatal on both sides. There is no point in staying in a relationship that makes you miserable, more than it makes you happy, a relationship where you know in your heart it is not right, but you still want to hold on to, hoping things will get better.

Sometimes it is not important to seek validation on decisions we make, neither do we have to be proven right, when our lives, health and future are at stake.  Love does exist and I believe it is the best thing ever to happen after the creation of man, but there is no reason to die for love, whatever the circumstances may be.