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      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?

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