adminbeen caught in a compromising position with someone else.
Some of the people who are splitting up would have been married for as long as 20 years and you even wonder how such people could contemplate living apart from the other person after so long.
One thing about being in a long-term relationship with someone else is that you truly begin to know who they are, you know their nasty habits, their annoying traits and you accept their demanding and less than warm families and just accept them as they are.
The good thing is they do the same for you as well.
If truth were to be told, no one is perfect and if we were to be honest with ourselves all of us would realise that we have faults and some terrible habits that the partners we have put up with because of one fact; they just happen to love us enough to be able to do that.
It has become almost normal that relationships break down. It is almost becoming normal that both men and women become dissatisfied with the choices they would have made regarding the partners they pick. For if it is not dissatisfaction, why else do we have so many married men and women who are opting to stay married while they have fun elsewhere?
Look around you today and see just how many families are breaking down. While there are circumstances such as domestic violence where one is always advised to remove themselves from the danger that faces them, is it all the problems that couples are facing that warrant leaving or transferring the affection to another?
I was listening to the senior pastor at Upper Room Ministries preach the other day and he called out to the couples in the room to keep the fire burning in their relationships if they were to work.
He said both men and women have the duty to keep the fire burning if things were to work, cautioning couples to never expect marriage to be a bed of roses, a fact that those of us in it and those who have been in it before, will testify to. It is not a bed of roses but then again is life ever a bed of roses?
There is real need to put our relationships before a microscope during these difficult times and try to find out what the issues are and work on them before throwing in the towel. Ignoring the fact that there are issues will only be to our disadvantage and that of our families.
I am taken to that joke about a pastor who asked a group of female parishioners the last time they had said ‘I love you” to their husbands. After he did not get a convincing response, he then asked them to all send a text message to their husbands saying “I love you.”
The responses that came from the husbands told it all. They ranged from “Who is this?” to “nhasi uchataura zvako kuti message ndeyani (you will confess today who this message is really meant for)”; to “What is going on today, is it our anniversary?’’
The recipients of these messages were in shock for their wives had never done anything that intimate before. They had never sent a mushy message to their sweethearts. This is a reality that many in long-term relationships live with. Husbands never tell their wives how good they look and how much they love them.
Women are better at such things but again with the daily pressures of home, work, school, motherhood and a dozen other things that people do in life, they tend to relegate such small but important gestures to birthdays and anniversaries only.
Pet names like honey, sweetie, darling, which are common when couples are dating disappear in marriage as couples deal with realities like rentals, bills, babies, difficult in-laws and health challenges, among others, that inevitably crop up. A failure to handle the finances according to marriage counsellors is also top among the chief causes of disharmony today.
Some men complain that their wives mismanage money, spend too much and hide their income while some women feel the men expect them to take on the bulk of the responsibilities when ideally men should be in charge of such issues. Money not being enough or being too much is always the issue.
Some women I spoke to said they have had enough of men who do not share their pay slips with them, saying such actions cannot be tolerated in a marriage.
The men however also speak of women who no longer have time for their husbands. Drunk with the power of making it the corporate world, these women spend hours clinching deals, travelling, studying, neglecting the man who still just wants his wife.
Both men and women also speak of fires that have just completely died out in the bedroom. Yes, some people are leaving because nothing is going on in that important room. The complaints are so many. But they cannot be ignored. Not if we want to salvage something out of this. Something has to give. At such times we need to go back to the Word and see what is has for us.
No one said it would be easy. But is anything in life ever easy? Unlike a degree and diploma, marriage is the only institution where you get the certificate before you go through the actual experience.
Surely there is need for people to work and work hard at it so that if there is still a chance, things can be worked out.
Just think, your husband is the only man who decides to give you his name out of millions of others out there.
So at which point does he lose his appeal?
And men, just think, your wife is the only woman crazy enough to put you out of your misery and make you whole by leaving her name, clan, family to become one with you. Why not think of the very reason that made you fall in love with that person initially each time you feel you have had enough?
Maybe that way, one or two relationships can still be saved.
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Online Reporter