The Sunday Mail
Life Issues with FGK
Marriage is an interesting union, two people of opposite sex who are not even related coming to live together, brought together by love and this time it is not agape but the “phileo” kind of love, affectionate and develops a stronger bond than friendship, which leads to enjoyment of each other’s company and even romance.
In marriage people are brought together by love and are expected to stay in love, happy, smiling and laughing all times, but these are expectations and not reality. Only in fairy tales do we find a happy ever after kind of marriage.
If one gets into marriage expecting the ideal they will be in for a big surprise and shock of their life. There are no ideals in marriage. There are no perfect couples because no human being is perfect. Therefore, there is not even one perfect marriage. Every marriage you see; the parties there in are working day in-day out to make sure the setting remains intact and it takes effort not a miracle.
In a marriage, we have two people who are coming from different back grounds and they have to learn each other. This then becomes like a school set up which then requires commitment and a conscious decision and attitude towards learning your partner, taking notes and recording reactions and the triggers there of et cetera.
The first years into marriage seem to be the most confusing stage to every couple. This is because there is a lot of excitement, pressure to perform, high expectations and ignorance of how things are run. All these attitudes mixed together and you can imagine the recipe! Most of the fights and bigger problems of the future are bred within these early moments because people will have not taken their time to learn each other but they were just being reactive to the other’s actions.
Imagine your wife, you married her when she was already 23 years old. This means she had 23 years of being a person acceptable within her family’s expectations and way of doing things. All she knows to the point of marriage is what she has accumulated while growing up within these 23 years and you were not there to contribute to the process.
This then means when you begin to get surprises from the way she acts it is not her fault. You marrying her, automatically you have volunteered to help her transform into being the kind of person you want her to be. Expecting her to know what you want as a husband all of a sudden would be so dumb, she is not a miracle worker unless if you are a miracle teacher.
Marriage then becomes a place where the husband should be able to teach his wife what he expects and the wife also should do the same and this does not happen overnight but it’s a process. Some couples even resist the time of learning therefore some marriages do not last. Even the richest people on the planet are divorcing daily and the latest being the founder of Amazon; the richest man in the world, Mr Jeff Bezos and his wife.
I have seen a certain young man who was raised by a single mother being the only child. Fortunate enough the mother had a good job and could afford to send him to a good boarding school. Most of this boy’s life had been boarding schooling and until university level. He would only be home with his mother during some of the holidays. The boy grew to be a young man but still at 31 years there are traits of a spoiled child within him.
His mother loved him the most and did almost everything for him. The problem has manifested now because he just married two years ago and he now needs to be masculine around the house but alas, he knows nothing about being a man. The wife now complains about almost everything for example he can’t even put back a light bulb let alone know if his car is due for service. At work, the same problems are being faced with his work mates. He throws litter everywhere.
There are a lot of issues surrounding his character and he does not take advise from anyone because he is not used to it so you can imagine what his wife is going through. The wife now has to gather all the facts and come to understand how his husband grew up so that she can begin to prescribe the right help for him patiently. It’s not going to be an easy task but it’s a necessary one for the marriage to survive.
He might need to take him for sports, outings with married friends as couples and also have an elderly relative or family friend hand with him often in order to influence a change in character.
There is not a manual to follow on marriage because what survives one marriage may not work for another marriage because people are different. What most people parade for you to see is not real. They marinade their pain, their failures and their problems and decorate their issues for you to see them as a perfect couple.
Marriage is about two people; and it’s only the two of you who must work it out. A lot happens in marriages that we will need to discuss in this forum for example we hear stories of people who were brought together into marriage by love, now cheat each other, physically and verbally abuse each other and cases are reported of murder within a marriage. Newspapers are full of such stories and we shall delve deeper to discuss different circumstances in marriages.
Always remember, your partner did not grow up with you. They don’t know you and you don’t know them. Learn them and accept them, one day it shall be well. Divorce is not a solution.
Quote of the Week: What survives one marriage may not work your marriage, people are different.
