Skip to main content
      I had a discussion recently with some colleagues about marriage. We talked about the challenges facing marriages these days.
      They shared some stories about couples who appeared happy and exemplary in public but had many secret tearing them apart in private.
      Our discussion also moved from people who have been married for decades struggling to put up with one another to why it seems some marriages crash faster than a pack of cards today.
      One of them claimed that marriage are failing these days because of civilization and the inability of couples to endure and tolerate each other like our parents and grandparents did.
      I disagreed with him. Many of our parents and grandparents had terrible marriages. Many homes were filled with violence and abuse. Many women stayed in terrible marriage because they didn't have a choice.
      Some of our mothers were not financially empowered so they had no choice but to continue putting up with blows, kicks and verbal abuses. They were also concerned about what society would say about them if they left their violent marriages.
      Many of them put up with so much humiliation that in some cases, it took their children to get them to safety. I know many children who couldn't wait to grow up so that they could protect their mothers from their father's blows and beatings. Is that what people call successful marriages?
      Marriages those days were more like master-servant relationship. Those days, women were seen but not heard. They were treated like possessions and couldn't even tell their husband what was bothering them.
      Women worshipped their husband like gods. They dare not question them even if they are making bad decisions that are impacting the family negatively. They must agree and do everything their husbands wanted even if it's killing them.
     These scenarios are not my own definition of happy marriages. The duration of a marriage doesn't mean it is successful. The length of a marriage doesn't determine the happiness and fulfillment of the couples involved.
      This idea that spending donkey years with a man or woman you are not happy with means you have a successful marriage is crap. Many women endured their marriages. They were not truly happy.
      Many of them will tell you that they stayed in such marriages because of their children. If you ask them if they wanted to marry their husbands in the next life, they will say "God forbid"  yet some people claim they had happy marriages.
      But these sad stories don't mean that some people didn't have good marriages. There are men and women who had enviable marriage, such couples who stood by each other when life's challenge threatened to tear them apart.
      They weather the storms together. They loved one another and didn't allow anyone or anything to tear them apart. They didn't abuse or hurt one another. They knew they were a team and stuck to one another for life.
      So the question remains, what is wrong with marriages these days? Why do people get married just to divorce? Why does it look like men and women can't tolerate each other? Why does it look like marriage vows doesn't mean anything again?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Natural soil

 Natural soils are influenced by rainfall and temperature,heavy rain causes the soil to become leached. High temperatures increase the rate of decomposition of organic matter in the soil, thereby lowering its humus content. Thus, climatic conditions tend to produce poor soils in the tropics and rich soils in the temperate regions. Besides climate and vegetation, the parent rock material also contributes to the quality of the soil. For example volcanic rocks tend to produce fertile soils.    Laterite, a red soil which is a product of leaching, is commonly found in the tropics. It is composed mainly of iron and aluminium compounds,and poor in humus and essential plant nutrients, such as phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium. The black and brown soil of the temperate grasslands are the world's richest soils, with a high mineral and humus content. The light coloured desert soils tend to be very rich in minerals but have a low humus content.    Mainly the soils ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

READING AND UNDERSTANDING

All reading is geared to understanding. There would be no point in reading if we did not understand what we are reading. However there are many different obstacles in the way of easy understanding of a passage. It is your task as a reader to actively seek to break down the barriers to understanding.    One block to understanding is caused by references in the passage to things that are outside it. Pronoun are the first examples of words that refer to people and objects. Sometimes, it is easy to follow the reference at other times, it is more difficult. Look at the opening sentence of the passage you've just read that begins this way  "She was waiting for us:small, dowdy, dirty..."  Who was waiting? Who was the person waiting for? (Perhaps you would also like to know why she was waiting.)Answers to these questions will surely help you to understand and thus follow the reference. The first thing to do is to ask questions like the ones we have just asked and to read t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Experiencing grief

Grief is a natural response to loss. It’s the emotional suffering you feel when something or someone you love is taken away. The more significant the loss, the more intense your grief will be. Grieving is a highly individual experience; there’s no right or wrong way to grieve. How you grieve depends on many factors, including your personality and coping style, your life experience, your faith, and how significant the loss was to you. Inevitably, the grieving process takes time. Healing happens gradually; it can’t be forced or hurried—and there is no “normal” timetable for grieving . Some people start to feel better in weeks or months. For others, the grieving process is measured in years. Whatever your grief experience, it’s important to be patient with yourself and allow the process to naturally unfold. Emotional symptoms of grief Shock and disbelief. Right after a loss, it can be hard to accept what happened. You may feel numb, have trouble believing that the loss really happen...
Post a Comment
Read more