This study examined the architecture of marital struggle through a gendered lens, focusing on patterns of disrespect, emotional withdrawal, and power dynamics in contemporary marriages in urban and peri-urban settings. Grounded in feminist theory, gender role theory, and conflict theory, the research employed a concurrent mixed-methods design involving 252 married individuals (127 husbands, 125 wives) drawn through purposive and snowball sampling. Quantitative data were collected via a structured Likert-scale questionnaire and subjected to univariate statistical analysis including means, standard deviations, frequency distributions, independent samples t-tests, chi-square tests, and Pearson correlation coefficients. Qualitative data were gathered through 20 in-depth interviews and 4 focus group discussions, and were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings revealed statistically significant gender differences across all three dimensions of marital struggle. Wives reported significantly higher experiences of disrespect, with a composite mean of 3.33 compared to 3.05 for husbands (t = -6.17, p < 0.001). Husbands demonstrated notably higher rates of emotional withdrawal, with 62.2% frequently refusing to discuss problems compared to 38.4% of wives (chisquare = 15.87, p < 0.001). Power imbalances were pronounced, with husbands dominant across financial decisionmaking (61.5%), sexual autonomy (58.7%), and household resource control (56.3%), yielding an overall power composite correlation of r = -0.47 (p < 0.001). Qualitative themes corroborated these findings, revealing deeply entrenched patriarchal norms, gendered socialisation, and structural inequalities as the root causes of marital dysfunction. The study recommended targeted gender-transformative couples counselling, policy integration of marital equality frameworks into national family law, and community-level sensitisation programmes. These findings contribute to the growing body of literature on gender and intimate partner relations and provide an empirically grounded basis for marital intervention policies.