A Happy Home: A Fairytale or Reality

 A Happy Home: A Fairytale or Reality

Every week there is a wedding. Every week people start relationships and every week people get engaged. When a guy asks a girl out on a date and the girl agrees, one or both parties are hopeful. When a guy asks his girlfriend to marry him and she says ‘Yes’, the couple expect that it will be the beginning of a great life. They begin to plan for their wedding but often, they know more about the perfect wedding than about having a good home. Many couples are more concerned about how they will look on their wedding day than about anything else. They care more about social media and how they will be perceived than about what is really going on in their home.

On their wedding day, couples pledge their love and commitment, and take vows expecting that this will be for life. Unfortunately, statistics show that the average length of marriages is now 8 years. That means that after 8 years, many marriages head for divorce. There are even marriages that head for divorce early - sometimes after the fifth year and I have even seen cases of marriages heading to divorce after the first year!!!

Is it that these couples did not love each other in the beginning? No. In the beginning, they were very much in love but once life began to happen, their fairytale idea of marriage crumbled, their relationships fell apart and their marriages ended in divorce. This was the case for some marriages during the pandemic of 2020. Listen, marriage does not run on love alone. Love can wane, people can gain weight and become less physically attractive (especially women after childbirth). Some partners can lose their jobs especially in the unstable economies we are now witnessing around the world. This in turn can lead to financial challenges which can destroy a home. Marriages can also suffer because of health challenges. 

Listen, there is no small list of things that can threaten an otherwise happy marriage so how can a couple keep their relationship vibrant and alive. How can they ensure that financial hardships, health challenges, third parties interference or other unforeseen challenges do not end their marriage. What can they do to protect their fairytale when reality sets in?

I will let you in on a secret. There is no perfect marriage. Remember my story of Mr. Perfect last week? There is no such man but you can make your partner your own version of a Mr. or Mrs. Perfect. Whenever you see a happily married couple, what you are seeing is a couple that are working hard to keep their home. What you are seeing is a couple who have decided nothing will distract or mess up their home. You are looking at a couple that have decided divorce is not an option. What you are seeing is a couple that COMMUNICATE. They will seek outside help like counselling if need be, but their minds are made up. They will make their marriage work.

Marriage is HARK WORK and do not let anybody tell you otherwise. You have to work hard to keep the peace, walk in love and protect your home. You have to work hard at communication and respect. You have to stop looking for faults in your partner and look for things that you appreciate in them instead. You have to make time for them and their interests, and you have to encourage them and be there for them when they are going through a rough patch. 

Focusing on yourself alone means you do not care about the other person's needs or aspirations. However you should. You should practise loving your partner unconditionally just like God loves you. Many women look for a ready-made man and many men do the same. Men want a woman who will be the icing on their cake, while women look for a ready-made home they can just walk into and settle. They want a ready-made man or woman but do not want to have to do any work or grow with that person. They want to live on Easy Street and if things begin to get hard, they pack up and leave. 

Such people also have friends who think the way they do. Friends who encourage them to take no nonsense from anyone. Friends who add fuel to fire when things are not going as planned in the home. Friends who encourage them to leave their marriages if things get tough. Those kind of friends are the wrong friends and with them in your life, you do not need enemies! 

Divorce has now become a very easy option for many. They talk about it matter of factly like it is no big deal saying things like, ”if it doesn't work, I'm out” or “I am not here to suffer so…”. Once their fairytale home crumbles, they cannot handle the real life and so they walk out on their marriage. 

Listen, the commitment you make before God and many witnesses during a wedding is for life; not until you get tired. It is a lifelong commitment and marriage is like wine. It gets better with age. 

If you are married, determine to work at your marriage and cut off friends who encourage you to call it quits. Seek professional help (marriage counselling), if issues cannot be resolved between the two of you but commit to make things work. Like I always say, Marriage is God's idea so it must be good.

You can have a happy marriage but it will take a lot of work. It may not be a fairytale marriage but through hard work, it will be real and will be the closest to a fairytale that you can get. There will be no imaginary or magical figures but you will be happy, content and be married for life.