Today’s marriages don’t have many selling points. Rather, many marriages are discouraging to the unmarried. Many spouses are enduring, instead of enjoying the marriage. It’s a situation that calls for serious concern.
A lot of abusive acts go on in the marriage, especially both emotional and physical abuse. When you get to hear what many spouses, both male and female endure, you start wondering if getting married is worth the effort. Little wonder many marriages are at various levels of disintegration: silent home treatment, malice, infidelity, physical abuse, and separation; all engendering divorce.
This got me thinking, and I decided to examine it for the purpose of securing our marriages against an abuse, either emotional or physical. I have come to realize that the leading cause of abusive acts, emotional or physical, is unfulfilled expectations. A lot of married couples are not getting the expected satisfaction from the marriage setting, thus leading to frustration. The expectations center around the reasons for getting into the marriage: financial security, companionship, sexual pleasure, and children, among others. These differ from person to person, depending on individual personality.
How to secure your marriage against abuse
- Never raise the bar of expectations too high in the marriage. Understand that the best of human is still human. Make allowance for disappointment so that you don’t get frustrated, if it happens. Believe for the best, yet prepare for the worst. It’s a working relationship therapy. You put the whole of your effort into it, but have it as a plan B that disappointment is possible, and must be handled carefully. It’s hard to believe, but it is the truth.
- Conflict resolution must be of topmost priority. Don’t let conflicts fester. Nip it in the bud as quickly as it comes. Conflicts are bound to happen in marriage because two persons from two different backgrounds are coming together to live as one, under one roof. Thus, you must not only be proactive, but intentional, towards conflict resolution. Let it be one of your pre marital agreements that the sun must not go down on your wrath. Festering conflicts breed emotional and physical abuses.
- Don’t provoke your spouse into abusive acts. These can happen in the following ways: what you say, do and insinuate. All these provoke husbands and wives to get physical in the marriage. Like someone said recently, women are sharp-tongued, and can use it to provoke their husbands, to high heavens of physical abuse. For the husbands, don’t provoke your wives by irresponsible behaviour towards family wellbeing and upkeep. It may bring out the worst of behaviour from them. When a husband abandons his financial and emotional responsibility, it becomes difficult for the wife not to use her tongue negatively. Let us help each other to stay peaceful in the marriage.
- Don’t threaten your spouse. It sends signal of insecurity in the marriage. He or she will become or feel unsecured in the marriage, thus starts getting into emotional depression and becoming touchy on issues. This is often the point at which physical abuse becomes inevitable. You may be wrongly provoked at this point.
- Be sensitive to the emotional state of your spouse. Occurrences of loss of jobs, business failure, sudden surge of work load, health challenges etc, should attract concern and sympathetic understanding and support from the spouse. It’s not in such circumstances that a spouse becomes unreasonable in making demands on the distressed partner.
- Consider the spiral effects of your conflicts on others. This is a part of the consequences therapy. Children, in-laws, friends, businesses, all suffer when a marriage is in crisis. So, don’t be selfish in your marital decisions. Put others into consideration before you rock the boat in your marriage. Don’t just consider your losses in taking decisions; count the losses of others who are in relationships with you and your spouse.
When we put all these into consideration, the incident of abuses in the marriage setting will be in the lowest ebb, if not totally eliminated, becoming the exception, rather than the rule.
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