A woman who is now separated from her husband said her mother had pushed her to marry a man 12 years her senior when she was still immature.

Mr Justice Noel Cuschieri ordered the couple’s legal separation after hearing that the husband had “treated her like an object”.

The couple got married in 1980 when  she was just 19-years-old and he was 31 after they dated for around three years. Her mother used to tell her: “My dear, get married and if the good Lord has his way, once you get married, things will change for the better”, the woman said in court. She testified how she fell into depression and became increasingly despondent as time went by. It reached a point where she would have supper at her mother’s house while he would eat at his mother’s.

Towards the end of their relationship, she found out that he had a gambling problem and racked up a lot of debt, which explained why he never had any money to give her, she said.

Her husband denied what she said about him and said they were a normal couple, adding they ran into debts when her mother gave her a grocery shop. He said problems between them started when she started working.

Mr Justice Cuschieri concluded it was clear that when the woman got married she was immature and that, had it not been for the pressure exerted on her by her mother, she would not have taken the plunge.

The judge said it looked like the husband was insensitive to her needs and towards the end of the relationship did not even want to be intimate with her. This merited that the marriage be declared null.