When an unpleasant marital issue trends, opinions on marriage, especially in social media, begin to fly. Currently, women are being advised to not love, lift fingers or struggle with a man, lest she ends up used.
Where such a mindset perpetuates, is that still a marriage?
Would you be okay to receive the same energy from your spouse?
The times may be tough on marriages but every marriage has a different destiny.
It’s still the sacrifices made on both sides that will build a marriage.
Therefore, it is not marriage if sacrifices are not made.
This energy may seem self-preserving but it’s short-sighted and selfish at best. It’s most unfair to carry it near a spouse who has not given you reasons to question their commitment in the marriage.
One reality to grasp is that even with the best of intentions, a marriage can be unpredictable.
Regardless of how a marriage turns out, anybody can rebuild their lives.
Stop seeing sacrifices made in marriage as setting yourself up to be used.
Once you can no longer give the best of yourself to a spouse, staying in the marriage is pointless.
When it’s obvious your marriage has broken down irretrievably, the mindset to do away with is the feeling that you have wasted your life.
It is an error to see a setting that brought forth your lovely children as “wasted years of your life”.
If it took that marriage for those children to come into your life, their presence in your life wouldn’t have been through any other means.
Please stop enabling thoughts that fuel despair in you.
Another thing I consider very important is this: As a spouse is developing themselves, give yourself a push too. It is better to tag along than to be left behind.
Because, some men are not wired to carry anybody along without feeling overwhelmed. It’s easier for them if you are self-driven or self motivated.
Part of what fuels a woman’s insecurity around a spouse is the feeling of being left behind; it’s not always about other women.
The only way to ‘contain’ an ambitious spouse is through continuous improvement of yourself.
It’s not by letting yourself become a mental wreck in the name of protecting your territory.
If you don’t know what to do with yourself or your time, distract yourself with going back to school or learning a craft or skill. At least, start by leaving the house every morning.
As marriage progresses, it’s not likely that both of you will retain the ‘outlook’ that you started with.
One of you will most likely upgrade. Don’t be the one who is not growing.
As much as you just want to scatter tables when you are hurting or when a marriage is troubled, always seek a guided intervention, through therapy, counseling or advice on the issues.
Nothing will be left of the marriage if you throw caution to the wind and advertise your dirty laundry publicly.
It’s like leaving your window open for all sorts of creatures to crawl in. You will never be able to get rid of all that crawled in eventually. That includes deep seated resentment from the other party, even when you think all is fine now.
Certain, ugly episodes, especially where hurtful actions were embarked on, are not quick to leave the mind.
The aim should always inform your approach.
Is the aim a cry for help?
To ridicule or disgrace him?
To heal the marriage?
To drive a change in a spouse?
Or to throw a public pity party?
Social Media is not a place for therapy.
If true healing, and not a pity party, on your issues is what you desire, please seek professional intervention.
Seek guided advice.
I repeat that there is nothing that will be left of the marriage that you openly launder in social media.
Credit: Chukwuneta Oby