Jane: I wish I were a man!

Tony: Why?

Jane: Men have unique opportunities that women do not have especially as it concerns the choice of marriage.

Tony: Why do you say so?

Jane: Marriage is one of the areas that women folk are at a great disadvantage. We only wait for Mr. X to come and ask for our hand in marriage before we make our choice. We cannot go about seeking those who appeal to us and go after them. Even when we admire a man, the society has made it that we cannot make the advancement. We must swallow our feelings and pray he comes around. But for men, once they see the person they like, they go ahead to make their moves.

Nkechi: The more I reflect on the recent marriages around, the less enthusiastic I become about getting married. If not because of societal approach, I would rather stay single.

Ngozi: What is actually the problem? Why all these drama of falling in love, marriage and divorce?

Jane: It is nothing other than wrong choices. Once you are able to get the right man or woman, your marriage would be heaven on earth.

Tony: My dear sister, success in marriage is not so much as a result of finding the right person but being the right person.

Jane: I don’t seem to understand you.

Tony: Many of us have the wrong conception that God has ordained for each of us a particular individual for marriage. In other words, we can only be happy in our marriage when we are engaged to this “Missing Rib”.

Ngozi: Are you suggesting that we should all go out to the streets, choose anyone for marriage and try to be the “right person” for him or her?

Tony: Far be it! I only wish to stress that success in marriage is not so much a matter of marrying the person you love but loving the person you married!

Chioma: In my own opinion, I would rather say that the major cause of failure in marriages today is that we expect more from marriage than it can offer.

Jane: How?

Chioma: We see marriage as the only normal lifestyle and that it would solve all our problems. Thus many people set into marriage to escape family difficulties, loneliness, disappointments, etc. For many others, anything called marriage is better than any form of single life. This group makes the most terrible mistake in courtship. They put up with too much and hang on for too long even when they realize that the relationship is not yielding the best for them. Their view of life is “Grow up, get Married. If you don’t, something is wrong”.

Emeka: I appreciate your evaluation of the situation. But I must not fail to warn that the major cause of failure in marriages today is that couples do not prepare adequately for marriage. The trend has been “Fall in love, marry and hope for a happy marriage”. You would agree with me that if our youth can spend the same amount of time, money and energy they spend in preparing for their wedding in preparing for a successful marriage, there must be a better result. It is not a news that very many of the couples give various excuses not to attend marriage courses, yet they find time to go for shopping, dating and so on!

Nkechi: Whenever the idea of preparing for marriage is brought up, I become confused. In what ways do we really prepare for marriage? I for one, am confused on how and what to do during courtship.

Emeka: This is a question every youth ought to reflect upon and get resolved before going into marriage. Unfortunately, only very few do that. My dear, the best way to prepare for marriage is to know what causes failures in marriage and avoid them. Similarly you should know how to build a happy union.

Ngozi: What are those things that give rise to failure in marriage?

Emeka: Majority of those who go into marriages today have little or no adequate understanding of love in relations to sex, romance and marriage. Similarly, very many of them fail to understand, appreciate and accept gender roles and differences. Other hitches include: Poor communication, unhealthy expectations from marriage and inability to settle arguments and make decisions. If you evaluate the various family crises, they usually stem from one or more of these facts.

Ngozi: We have made much noise about this thing called love. For me, it has lost its values and meaning. The rate we fall and rise from love these days are embarrassing. You may ask yourself: How many of these newlywed did not speak of undying love for each other, yet it takes only few days for the so called Rome and Juliet to become cat and dog.

Emeka: Love remains a necessary ingredient for the sustenance of every relationship and building of a happy marriage. But what
this love means is a big question. Hence Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night “What is Love?” Besides, love alone is not enough to give marriage a good footing. Other elements must be there.

Tony: This reminds me of a seminar I attended few weeks ago. I was fortunate enough to be part of a program organized for married couples on building a happy family. I was there to report the proceedings of the seminar. It was a shock to me when one of the paper presenters asked the participants to define love. For over two hundred couples present, none of them was able to define the term “Love”, yet they claimed to love each other so tenderly. The highpoint of the activity came when he separated the men from the women and told the men to write out what they could do for their wives as prove of their love for them. It would be hard to believe that what he men wrote as their best ways of proving their love for their wives were far from what the women expected from the men. While the men were talking about things like buying flowers for their wives, providing adequately for their family and avoiding arguments; the women were like saying, “what we need from them is a little embrace and a token of “I love you” words before they leave for work, a call from the office to know how the day is going, a tone of admiration and appreciation of our cooking and so on. The same was applicable when the women were told to carry out the same exercise.

Emeka: That was why I spoke of understanding and appreciating gender roles and differences. But before we go into that, I wish that we make a little clarification of this thing called love. The first question we need to ask ourselves is: How would you know that someone loves you?

Jane: I am not prepared for your semantics this time. Even though I do not know how to explain or define love, all I know is that once I see someone that loves me, I would know.

Emeka: What are those things you recognize in certain individuals that make you count them among your loving ones?

Jane: The person should be caring, ready to sacrifice for me and be able to make me happy.

Emeka: Therefore, anyone who reprimands you or allows you to suffer some pain so that you can learn from your mistakes does not pass your test for love?

Jane: I told you I’m not prepared for your semantics today. I still maintain that as much as I cannot define love, my heart would continue to search for my “Missing Rib”. Once I find it, I would know for we shall be ‘connected’.

Ngozi: This question is making more meaning to me. I am beginning to see the difficulty with differentiating between passing emotion and true love.

Tony: One thing I have realized about love is that it is a paradox. First of all, it involves two persons becoming one yet remaining two individuals. Secondly, it is a strange mixture of opposites: freedom and restriction, change and stability, dependence and independence. This is why it is difficult to define the term, love.

Ngozi: This still boils down to the question: How do we discover someone that loves us?

Emeka: The mistake we make is to think that love is something in the other fellow and all we need to do is to discover it and dig it out. But far be it. Love is cultivated, nurtured and harvested.

Ngozi: When then do we talk of love at first sight?

Emeka: There is nothing like love at first sight. We should know the difference between love, romance and passion. Though passion and romance are ingredients of love, they are not love per se. besides any love devoid of them is not truly love.

Ngozi: What then is love and how is it related to these two?

Emeka: Love has various elements and stages of development. The elements are passion, intimacy and commitment. But I shall not dwell on this now. I shall concern myself here with the various stages of its development.

Ngozi: We are all ears!

Emeka: The first stage is romance. At this time, the couple seems to forget that they are unique and separated individuals with specific identities...

continue reading at http://nnamdiezema.com/2013/04/09/common-mistakes-singles-make-in-relationship-dating-and-choice-of-marriage/

Nice one.thanks alot.

May God bless you

It was just like mainframe film as i was reading it

Excellent. Thanks for sharing.

nice write up. wish i had all the time to read it all

NaijaHotGuy: nice write up. wish i had all the time to read it all

beta get time to read it nw.its worth it

Damn! wonderful writeup.
So so on point , it worth the time spent in reading

Good one. We all should know dat Marriage is for good.