Love in Marriage

It is no news that divorce rates are constantly on the rise in recent times all around the world, people are increasingly finding it more difficult to stick to a single partner in the long run. There has been many hypotheses as to the causative factors for this perceived inability to stick to one partner in the long run and in this post I will be talking about what I find to be the most probable causes for it. I will be listing these below:

·         Wrong Definition of Love

·         Too much familiarity

·         Equality instead of Equity

Wrong Definition of Love: it is generally portrayed in our generation that love is an emotional connection between two people that causes them to swoon, desire to be with each other, do anything for each other, among other things. It is portrayed that love can overcome any circumstances and survive any misfortune if the emotional connection is strong enough. We have this dreamy belief that you will just find love or fall in love by an act of providence. Truth be told some of these believed and perceived characteristics are true about love, for love can actually surmount any obstacle, overcome almost every circumstance or misfortune and would do anything for the other spouse but love is not a dreamy feeling or emotion it doesn’t happen by an act of providence, you don’t fall in love.

Starting form the last (you don’t fall in love), form ancient times we have examples of love relationships that meet every standard we believe love should and some that even go beyond them, but rarely in any of them do we find a people who “fell in love by an act of providence” mostly we find people who built up their love relationship over time these people mostly decided to come together after weighing their options and deciding this person is whom I would like to spend the rest of my life with ( these people built their love practically).

Looking even only at examples from the past you will find that love is expressed in a decision (a continuous decision) to give your very self for the partner not in the emotions, yes there will e emotions at times the emotions will rise but like the waves of the sea there will be times when they fall also but the decision to stay will remain if it was decided from the beginning to stay no matter what.

The difference with our generation is that we base our marriages on the emotion called love and not the decision called love thus we opt out when the waves of emotion have fallen and refuse to rise again as fast as we expect them to rise.

Too much familiarity: in ancient marriages there are particular acts that help reduce familiarity between spouses these acts were core to the institution of marriage, one of them is the lordship of the husband; no matter the civilization you go to you will find that the husband is lord over his wife (they are not equal) they have different responsibilities. The husband is head and he is to be submitted to, we find that this simple singular act of submission reduces the power tussle in the family drastically and any wife (notice how it is wife not female) who goes against it faces the wrath of the civil marriage institution putting it quite simply this law states that “dear wife what you have is a boss a loving caring boss who probably will always consider your opinion but still retains the right to the final decision” so the wife in choosing to love her husband also chooses to submit to him.

The blur in authority is one of the major reasons for broken marriages in our generation, quite frankly even in friendship we set boundaries cos if there are no boundaries, we very soon will end up stepping on each other’s toes or ruffling each other’s feathers. Before you start saying the man and his wife are supposed to be one which I agree to, you don’t need to be in my hair to be one with me! We just need to be one in body(sex); soul (thinking and mindset); and Spirit. The spouse doesn’t have to be in my hair all day long moreover only jobless people or people who work together spend all day together.

Too much familiarity also occurs where there are no set or defined systems in place in the marriage for instance how do we determine what percentage of family funds go in to feeding or how often we change our wardrobes? These things as trivial as they seem might lead to serious problems down the line when one partner feels the other is recklessly spending the family funds or even their own personal funds.

Equality instead of Equity: lets establish one fact Husband is higher than wife in the family and marriage institution. If you don’t agree with me just stop reading at this point. In every civilization and religion that is well documented to us we find this to be very true the husband is head to even the wife, he is master, owner, lord, king and whatever name clearly shows his job and duty.

Some may argue in favor of equality but in truth God never made us equal as pertains to sameness he made us different and specific so that we can compliment one another (husband the wife and wife the husband). Wives please stop trying to do your husbands job instead find ways to do your job better.

In the end if you want to have love in your marriage then like our fathers of old you must nurture and grow your love and let it be based on reality not some emotional Hollywood movie.

Thanks for patiently staying to the end. See you soon.