Love, marriage and divorce is the title of an album that was released about five years ago by magical R&B superstars Babyface and Toni Braxton.

This is the kind of music my old soul adores. But you will love it because it explores the all-too-familiar theme of heartbreak.

A lot of it is about the dissolution of a marriage, so it is heavy. It's lives breaking into a shattered state of rebuilding that is never going to resemble anything from before.

I've never been married, but I do know heartbreak and that's no joke.

The weird thing that is as unsettling as it is freeing is witnessing how many marriages around me are in a state of collapse.

People should be free if it is what they want, so I'm happy for them but it still does not take away from the sorry mess that unfolds, the hearts shattering to smithereens over something we've created.

We owe it to ourselves to be honest with what we've done to love, unions and the expectations placed on others.

Most marriages fall apart because a third party was introduced. When you ask people what the No 1 thing they would not forgive in a marriage, infidelity comes up a lot.

People, usually men, start affairs until they meet a woman they cannot contain into just a side chick. Everything about her overwhelms them. They can't bear the thought of it being over and there being a hole where she used to exist. Even worse, they shudder at the thought of her going off, meeting another man and making him feel everything they have come to regard as theirs.

Men know this feeling because they have allowed themselves the freedom to explore. They know that there is nothing such as loving just one person for the rest of your life.

They know that monogamy requires a deep and daily sacrifice. You sacrifice the opportunity of having your senses and heart awakened in new and different ways, of enjoying different parts of you being loved and held by different people. You sacrifice this for the familiarity.

Being loved by one person is not foolproof that you will not fall in love with someone else while at the height of being loved by another.

Constructs like marriage mean that you agree to give up pursuing the feelings that come after your marriage, especially if you are a woman.

Marriage is a legal contract, not a gift from God. If anyone wants to argue, please be advised I won't be showing up for that debate.

We've made love and marriage synonymous and that is really a big part of where we went wrong. Marriage is concerned with owning, with sacrifice, and that is how we continue to hurt and break each other's hearts.

Because of the transactional nature of marriage, which has always favoured men, women end up as the sacrificial lambs holding up this farce.

We are in 2019 now. More women are saying "no more". Women are saying it's no longer just my heart on the line. Women are saying we will love, we will marry but we will divorce if the need arises.