Repairing the family route

Anne Ruthenburg Marriage Doctor
HELLO there folks, how are you all doing. Welcome to 2016! Lol . . . Seriously this so exciting, I started my year celebrating someone’s 21st birthday and it was awesome.

It made me think how amazing friends and family are and also how important parents, guardians and adult support structures are.

Before I start the year, answering those hundreds of questions on cheating partners, divorce, abuse e.t.c., I think I will start the year repairing the marriage route.

Yes, there are so many broken homes in this city, it is upsetting.

I work for a humanitarian organisation that does a lot of research of family e.t.c., and what shocked me the most is that Mutare is sitting as one of the highest cities in Zimbabwe with single mothers. Imagine that?

This is crazy, men are having sex with anything that is female and walk away and vanish into thin air. Women are opening their legs for anything that is male that speaks sweet little nothings, then they are left with babies to take care of. No commitment, no honour, no respect nothing.

Our traditions and cultures have been shoved into the ground and many people don’t care. How is it that every second/third woman over 18 years is either a single mother, not with the baby’s daddy, has a child but is unmarried or pregnant and unmarried.

Men for goodness sake? I understand that some women are out to trap men out there, but really unless you have been raped; you can control yourself and the woman’s action.

Honestly she can’t get pregnant without you (unless the eggs are from a sperm bank), so wake-up, man-up, grow-up and start behaving like God intended you to.

Mutare cannot become a fatherless city just because the men are parking their trains in every train station with no intention of committing.

Anyway, this is not what I am talking about this week lol. This week I am reminding couples of the vows they took on the day they got married.

These vows were sealed by a covenant the night you slept together by exchanging bodily fluids. Covenants are not broken that easily, they are spiritual whether you know it or not.

The problem with many couples is that they get into lots of covenants before they your decide who to marry. And just because you have not spoken the words does not mean the covenant has not taken hold. So many of you go into marriage saying vows and committing to one person, but you are actually going into the marriage with many people within you.

Let me tell you people, vows are hard enough to follow when you were both virgins before marriage, they have to be carried out every day. But you can imagine how hard it can be when you have both had other relationships before. You have memories and feelings of other people you have in your soul. And every time your partner upsets you; your covenants with your past will start speaking.

This is serious, I am not joking. So do what you have to do to get rid of those covenants of your past, but for this week these are the basic covenants we make to each other on the wedding day.

Next week we will be going into detail with each one, so we understand what it means. I know we went through this issue last year, but many of you missed that article, So I encourage all to start cutting out these articles so that you have it at your finger tips when you need it. Cool!

So the following are basic wedding vows. Many couples these days change them slightly to suit their religion or lack of it. Whichever it is, this is roughly what is said.

Groom: I,____, take thee,_____, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.

Bride: I,_____, take thee,_____, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love human behaviour, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.

Then, as the groom places the ring on the bride’s finger, he says the following:

With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

In the Alternative Service Book (1980) two versions of the vows are included: the bride and groom must select one of the versions only. Version A:

I, ____, take you, ____, to be my wife (or husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy law, and this is my solemn vow.

Now as you can see the “thee and thou” is more from religious churches, but more modern churches simply say “I or you”. Next week I will put it into everyday language so we are on the same page.

Now for those couples getting married this year, here is your chance to get it right from the beginning.

That’s it this week from me folks. Until next week God bless!