Marriage

[Eli]

[Eli]

[Eli]

5 IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW IN MARRIAGE

Marriage is a school we never graduate from...but will be given certificate at the beginning...

1.Everyone has a dark history. No one is an angel. When you get married or you want to get married stop digging into someone's past. What matters most is the present life of your partner. Old things have passed away. Forgive and forget. Focus on the present and the future.

2.Every marriage has its own challenges. Marriage is not a bed of roses. Every good marriage has gone through its own test of blazing fire. True love proves in times of challenges. Fight for your marriage. Make up your mind to stay with your spouse in times of need. Remember the vow For better for worse. In sickness and in health be there.

3.Every marriage has different levels of success. Don't compare your marriage with any one else. To avoid marriage stresses, be patient and also work hard.

4.Getting married is taking a huge risk. You can not predict what will happen in the future. Situations may change so leave room for adjustments. Husband can lose his good job or you may fail to have babies. All these require you to be prayerful otherwise you might divorce.

5.Marriage is not a contract. It needs total commitment. Love is the glue that sticks the couple together. Divorce start in the mind and the devil feeds the mind. Never ever entertain thoughts of getting a divorce. Never threaten your spouse with divorce. Choose to remain married. God hates divorce.

Thank you for reading

[Eli]

By Benjamin Zulu Global

Sometimes, the person you love is not interested in doing the inner work to heal, and the bravest thing you can do is to accept that rather than tolerate it. If a person is unable to function in a healthy relationship without their wounds blowing up, there's no point hoping that because of your love, they will miraculously experience a turnaround.

You may be confused because this person was otherwise okay before you opened the portal of love with them. They were calm and collected, and they seemed to have direction in life. There was nothing alarming with them. But the moment you declared love for them all of a sudden, they turned into something else. Insecure and unease. They can't believe you, and they can't rest. They became emotionally volatile, and stress would overcome them so easily. They would shut down and leave you babysitting their juvenile emotions.

You felt overwhelmed. But this is a person you love, and they don't seem to be intentional in their instabilities. During moments of peace, they're very sweet and even apologetic of what they term as their weaknesses. And since you want to compromise and accommodate them, you drop in the lame excuse that 'no one is perfect.'

In truth, you're staring at an unhealed person. They have unprocessed trauma that was triggered by the emotional vulnerability of the love relationship. When they're at work and other emotionally distant environments, they're okay. But their wounds were inflicted by caregivers or past lovers, and so they're only triggered by love and emotional intimacy.

You may say you will wait or that you will support them. But their interest in working through their past is passive at best. They're avoidant of the conversations, and they try to minimise the severity.

I know it's hard to quit on a person who says they're trying. And more so if you happen to understand the pains they've gone through in the past. Your empathetic nature wants to stay and help.

Unfortunately, love can not be built on charity and pity. It is like a heavy software that requires a certain minimum capacity before it can run on a computer smoothly. If a person lacks that capacity, you're wasting your time. You will just become collateral damage for their war with themselves.

They didn't hurt by choice, but healing would have to be by choice. And we can not heal from what we're not willing to feel.

Perhaps your leaving will give them the challenge they need to take their healing seriously. Only let them decide that for themselves. Whether and when to do it is up to them. Don't bother looking back. You don't have all the time in the world anyway.

[Eli]

If you discover that someone has a child when you're on a build-up to marriage, stop everything and quit. That level of dishonesty is impossible to live with. If they say that they didn't want to tell you lest you quit, or because 'they loved you too much and didn't want to lose you,' that's just a confession that they're deceiving you into being with the wrong person. They know they're the wrong person for you, and they're trying to con their way into your life.

But can't they change? What if counselling and reconciliation are organised by some respectable people like pastors or parents? Deeds don't lie, and character doesn't change that easily. Anyone telling you to go ahead and commit when such a huge red flag has started flapping in the air is your enemy. Disagree and disappear. This person will get more children or lie to you in similar ways. Do you want your whole marriage to be a scam? Then, respect the road signs of life. If you see 'Danger Ahead', that's exactly what it means. And dishonesty is such a sign.

[Eli]

There can not be a relationship where there is no respect, whether it's on the basis of blood or love. You can not continue giving people acces into your life just because they're relatives if they continue coming at you with dishonour. This is not sustainable, and it will break you. This is one reason that in many families, the good-hearted ones die first while the toxic people who stressed them to death live on.

You see, disrespect hurts. You suffer when you allow people to cross your boundaries a time and again. If you don't stand up for yourself and put a stop to it, they will make your life chaotic and unbearable. Their violations of you will only get worse with time. Unless you unlearn the principle that blood is not thicker than respect, you will be the ultimate loser.

You can love your folks all you want and try to maintain an image of a united family. But if you're only forcing a unity that's not there, and in the process you entertain disrespectful and toxic people, be sure that their venom will consume you.

[Eli]

Sometimes you may try to love a person, but then you unknowingly start triggering the love they never got. They start fighting against you for caring about them and being genuinely interested in making them happy. Suddenly, they start testing your love. They set traps and pranks for you. They suspect you. They pretend to break up with you, but they keep coming back. They contact their ex. They investigate you among your friends. They question your loyalty. They overthink minor things.

In truth, they're not fighting you. They're fighting the fear of opening their heart. They frustrate you until you're forced to leave, and then they still say 'I knew it. You're just fake like all the others.'

Abandonment is more familiar to them, and they keep making it happen although subconsciously.

I'm sorry, but they have to heal first. And that's a personal journey for them. Your love for them can't do it. Only their love for themselves will.

[Eli]

Disappointment means feeling a loss for something you never had. Your expectation of it made you include it in your plans, and you became emotionally attached to it before it was yet a reality. So when it failed to come through, you felt a loss and rebuff.

You can not avoid expectations altogether, or else you won't go after anything in life. But you can not invest expectations on everyone either, or else you will be heartbroken every day. The solution is to always investigate before investing. And then leaving a room for error in the form of a contingency plan.

Let's take that again. In life generally, it's wise to always investigate before investing whether you're investing expectations or feelings or money. If you don't do this, you'll be unable to withstand the loss that will result after disappointment happens.

When I was growing up, there was a lady who used to do odd jobs in the local market like vending vegetables, cleaning houses, and digging in the farms. But something about her was not adding up. She looked learned and sophisticated. She had a very polished diction and mannerisms of someone who had known a better life. Her lingual was so fine that you almost felt uncomfortable giving her menial jobs.

One day, she narrated her story to a group of young people in a meeting I was attending. She said that she had gone to a very prestigious national school, totally on merit. She was an A student. But when she got to form three, an intern teacher was posted to her school. One weekend, a man from her home area who had been hitting on her came to the school, and she thought he had come to see her. They had been talking during holidays and she had become fond of him. But to her surprise, he had come to visit the interning teacher. He didn't even as much as greet her.

During the holidays, she looked for the interning teacher to ask her to leave her man alone. The teacher took the matter to the principal, who politely asked the student to stay away from love matters and focus on her studies. But she couldn't just give up her love like that. She decided to launch a cold war against the teacher, aided by a gang of friends. They spread nasty rumors about her after investigating her past and pulling out unverified stories from her college life. They made funny noises during her lessons to frustrate her. Investigations were done after the teacher complained to the administration again, and the student was found guilty alongside her accomplices.

When a disciplinary sitting was convened with her parents in attendance, she was unapologetic and even rude, and so she was expelled. She enrolled in a local day school, and with all the shocking changes and shame, her performance was abysmal. Other events conspired against her in that her family finances collapsed, and she ended up never going any further with her studies. She tried pursuing her boyfriend, but he was indifferent. He left for good after she had conceived with him. He married the teacher, and they were still together two decades later.

On her part, she had struggled to manage the disappointment, but she never quite recovered. She married another hustler from the village, and she was caught up in the grinding life.

What she never did in her teenage naivety was to investigate the amount of risk she was undertaking before investing her life in it. As a result, the loss overwhelmed her.

Always check before you jump. Is the person you're banking on as committed to come come through as you are to count on them?

[Eli]