Does Marriage Still Make Sense?

We are in the days when people love things and use people instead of loving people and using things. What does this mean? You love fashion, your dresses, gold, chains, beads, parties, cars, and so on. You use your husband to get them but you don’t care so much about him and his feelings or his challenges. Do you love things and use people instead of using things and loving people? You are in error.

You love your cars, your job, football, your house and your friends but you don’t care that much about your wife. In fact, you love your children that you used your wife to get but you don’t care about your wife, her feelings, challenges, etc. Do you love things and use people instead of using things and loving people? You are in error.

This warped orientation is posing a challenge to the marital institution. This explains why people now rely solely on the social media to shop for wives and husbands just the way they shop for some shoe, handbag or some other domestic items. Perhaps the marriages of many of our DISCIPLINED grandparents would never have lasted the way they did if they had the internet.

Today, people marry for various reasons outside the right motives for marriage either due to outright ignorance about the right values or due to mass deception.

Business partners are coming together to arrange weddings of their children to each other just to sustain their business dynasties. Someone is marrying someone just to get a travel document to leave the country. Another person is getting wedded to someone just to show competitors or contemporaries that he or she too, can get married. Some other person is getting married for the sole purpose of enjoying sexual pleasure, as if sexual intercourse is the only activity in marriage. Unknown to such people, sexual urge is a momentary feeling whereas marriage is a lifetime engagement. Even the hype of a wedding ceremony as we have it in many places, does not guarantee success of a marriage because wedding ceremony is a one-day affair, ceremony. Marriage is a lifetime covenant.

Whenever the motive of a thing is wrong, result is bound to be problematic. Marriage is a heart affair, beyond documentation and activities. I see people rush to courts to obtain divorce certificates after marriage. Divorce certificate is just a paper. This is why we also have people who though possess divorce certificates, later go back to the same partner to have sexual intercourse and even live together again. The paper called divorce certificate can never delete the emotional and spiritual connection between the couple involved. The paper lacks capacity to influence feelings. So, for those who are thinking about divorce certificate or threatening their spouses with this paper, go back and do a sober reflection about how to stop this self deceit and embrace Christ, the solid rock of every successful marriage.

Today, there are millions of marriages that are models to copy. Most of the people who are succeeding in marriage based on operation and compliance with God’s word are not public figures. They are most times, not interested in media hype or publicity. Such couples are still very many. Don’t fool yourself to believe the devil’s lie that marriage begins and ends with the negative marital reports that the mass media feasts on.

As a mass communicator, I can explain to you that oddity is a key feature of what constitutes news. You wouldn’t read any newspaper or listen to broadcast media news if all they had to give you were positive reports, especially when they are not religious publications. For instance, if the media reports that a government official commissioned a project, it might not get LIKES on the social media as much as a report that the commissioner slapped someone during the event. To make high volumes of sales, newspapers MUST report negativities. That is what gets your attention. It is natural.

Therefore, do not use media reports to judge the volume of success of marriages. The married couples that are living happily together are much more in number than the ones you hear about via the mass media. In this information age, the negative picture portrayed about marriage and what it has to offer has continued to expand, with more unmarried people, resolving never to enroll in the marital institution. This is based on formed perceptions. Many are even asking whether or not, marriage is still a good idea.

Many people allow the impact of the information age and the social media to negatively influence their psyche to the extent of truncating their marital destinies. If it is about social media deceit, don’t begin to feel you have married the wrong person because of the social media photos of happily married couples you see. Such photos hardly have images of people with frowned faces. That is how deceptive it can be. You may be happier in your relationship than those you are despising your spouse for, over their photographs.

Look!. When you aspire to become a lawyer or medical doctor, you could spend over four years in the university, preparing yourself and gathering knowledge and information to practice a profession that you could dump after some years and make a switch over to music, agriculture or some different area of endeavour. Now, you intend to enter a marital institution where you will spend the rest of your life. You are not interested in gathering information about the institution. Marriage seminars and other educative fora don’t interest you. Why then should you expect surprise when you meet avoidable challenges after getting married?

If you have a notion that all men or all women are the same, you can hardly have a happy marriage because no two individuals in this whole wide world are the same in everything.

One of the vital information required before engaging in marital relationship for instance, has to do with difference in behavioural patterns, even in areas of economics. No two individuals in this whole wide world are the same in everything.

Let us look at family economics for instance…(Buy this book)

Wrong orientation about marital relationship is a huge challenge in this age. As a guy or lady, you have a friend of same gender. You are so close, love each other so well, and you have been able to successfully maintain this relationship for years, even as wretched people. In fact, people have even forgotten that you are mere friends rather than blood brothers or sisters. The relationship has remained sweet with or without affluence. Now, you have married someone of the opposite sex that you supposedly love. Because of a minor offence, probably related to money, you are already contemplating separation or divorce. Would you say you are serious with life? Are you mentally okay?

For decades, you loved and lived with your parents and blood relatives who frequently offended you and you forgave them. In fact, as you read this write-up, you know they will still offend you tomorrow. Are you contemplating divorcing them? Is it possible to do away with them? No, of course! So, why are you so embittered that your spouse of a few years relationship offended you? You are already contemplating divorce, forgetting that you made a covenant before your creator or before the law as marriage vow.

Development of warped values is also affecting marriages. The notion that once there is plenty of money, success in marriage is guaranteed, is a wrong notion. I am still waiting for someone to prove me wrong on this stand by explaining to me why divorce rate among popular billionaire couples has continued to increase.

In the midst of growing number of divorce cases today, there are couples in our environments whose level of sweetness and love in marriage have continued to grow, with or without affluence.

The truth is that marrying someone is a journey into discovering who the person is. Before you discover someone else however, you need to discover yourself. There are many people that were ‘very good’ and happy as singles. Their problems started when they got married to someone…(Buy this book)

THIS IS MORE THAN A BOOK. There is something in it that affects you positively…(Just place an order)

Paragraphs culled from the book, MARRIAGE REALITIES. Place an order for your copy. CALL +234 8038117704