Messy marriages and shattered homes (ii)
In many cases some couples still live in their past and give scant preference to building their new homes. Usually, money is a big factor on crumbling of marriages. Who brings what to the table? Who funds what? But when a wife is the bread winner what should be the attitude? When the husband and […]
In many cases some couples still live in their past and give scant preference to building their new homes. Usually, money is a big factor on crumbling of marriages. Who brings what to the table? Who funds what? But when a wife is the bread winner what should be the attitude? When the husband and wife earn equal pay, Should they be competitors or joint planners? Surfacing of an ex, rumour of another wife in the offing or bringing home of the product of a past fling can also cause frictions at home.
These are some of the issues that lead to troubled marriages and crumbling homes. So, the hearts once thought to be one and same in love therefore begin the search for new bliss, in most instances, elsewhere, and not in the home that they swore to build together. The house creaks; the marriage lapses into a mess or is in shambles with arguments, abuses and assault over even a trifling thing as where to press the toothpaste tube. Divorce is in the air. In the worst or extreme case, depression or disorientation sets in for either of the couple, leading to suicide or murder, is obvious in the home that was once thought to be built on love.
Such an unfortunate development, no doubt, could not have risen if intentions of the couple were pure and the correct choices made. In essence, marriage ought to be built on sincerity and compatibility, two conditions for love and companionship. These are just two of the many prescriptions for the sustainability of marriage and most importantly for the attainment of the vision of the marital partners. For it is in a happy and peaceful home that the couple, the husband and the wife, can pursue their purpose or dream in life and raise the family, oh the children, to be responsible members of the society. Most homes lack these.
Building on a premise of a successful or happy matrimony, I isolated some five or six fundamental errors men and women commit that rob the larger society of the deserved peace through peace in the family. The first of the errors most partners commit is what I call error of intention. When the colour or the shape of a person, the size of his or her purse, the eminence of his or her pedigree and the height of education or the loftiness of office and career are what most suitors look out for in the partners they want to marry, such couple already fall short on the benchmark of sincerity or purity of intention. In marriage, your intention must always be correct. You are marrying not just for the sake of the flesh or satisfying carnal desire but to fulfil a religious obligation of serving Allah.
Most couples soon find out why some suitors are after them. Not their character or faith, not their hearts or inner beauty but for certain ephemerals that lack assurance of permanence, things that naturally won’t last, things they have little control over their sustainability. This error leads to the second fatal error: the error of selection. Lost in lust, caged by desire and fired by opportunism, some men or women, high in the clouds of selfishness, like falcons, are deaf to the falconer’s whistle. They plunge headlong into a marriage destined not to work, because in the first instance, it was wrongly anchored.
But it is always never too late to retrace steps. For people lost in lust, many discerning minds always see the smoke of future trouble and warn of dangers in the affairs ahead, advising them against their choice. However, the incorrigibility of some lovers lead them to the altar with the wrong mates as spouses. We have heard tales of ‘no show’ of either the bride or the groom on the day the Lord is supposed to have made. There are also stories of husband or wife abandoning the gathering of friends and well-wishers who have come to celebrate their ‘holy’ matrimony, leaving them stupefied and disappointment. This could be averted if the intention and choice were pure and right.
Also, spouses make the error of assumption. When it comes to matters of the heart, some people lose their heads. Some go for mates that are far beyond their control, level, experience and emotion. Yet, they assume that they would change or that ‘things would change’. Unfortunately, the leopard never changes its spots. Before marriage, most individuals have been cast as iron on who they want to be, what company they want to belong, and how they want to be perceived in the society. They are already dried bonga fish that cannot be bent again. Marriage, can’t change them. As Fati Yakan postulates, choice of partner must be correct.
If at all such wrong or mismatched couples with troubled or absent minds patch things to bring the world together in a lavish ceremony, they may never be able to build the home on true love, but on suspicion and distrust. It is either they run the home like a cat and mouse game or boxing ring regularly engaged in bouts. Now, many homes are actually battlefields of bleeding hearts and hurtful feelings where sharp tongues, deadly daggers and broken bottles, heavy pestles and searing acid are the arsenals in the loveless marriages. Can happy and responsible children be raised in such a home?
A more fundamental error is the lack of moderation in many marital affairs. In a case were the husband at the early stage of marriage yields to every superfluous demand of the wife just because the intoxicant of love is still strong, sooner or later, certain reality will set in tat will demand scaling down expenses or priorities. Tis is were complaints starts that the husband is no longer responsible demand this trend is a disturbing one indeed. We must wage a jihad for peace at home and love in the world.
We need a generation of marriage counsellors that will tutor young men and women before delving into marriage, nikkah in Islam. Talaq or divorce is odious in the sight of Allah. But if divorce is most odious, what of murder of a wife or husband? What of suicide at home? What of arson and property destruction? What of child neglect or abandonment and so many despicable conducts including infidelity and disrespect that characterize so many flawed marriages that are actually sending wrong messages about the value and virtue of matrimony in our society?
Marriage is a serious affair. It is a divine obligation. It is not a single man decision. It is not a retail shop transaction where you pick something on the shelf and on finding out it has some defects, you return it to the stall for money back or pick just another item. It is a life-long decision which each party needs the guidance of Allah and the valuable counsel of experienced parents, mentors or elders. You also need the company of sincere friends who know you more than you think you know yourself, who love you not because of what they want to benefit from you but who would not shy from telling you the truth anytime. I have been benefitted by such counsels in almost the past 25 years that I have been married at bare 27 years of age. And I can confidently say, praise be to Allah for keeping my home.
Abdul –Warees, an Assistant Director of Strategic Planning & Corporate Development at Voice of Nigeria, Ikoyi Lagos writes via [email protected]