By Abdulwarees Solanke, VOICE OF NIGERIA
ABUJA
A ride in a typical overcrowded bus in Lagos is a good starting point for anybody who desires to feel the mood of the nation.
The Lagos Molue pulsates with different emotions: from the drudgery of work to the pain of disappointment, the failure of infrastructure to the neglect of the citizenry; the frustration and anger of an awful business day to the annoyance against corruption in official circles.
Also, the fear of nagging spouses and the treachery of unfaithful partners are fully expressed inside the public transport that some states of the federation are gradually doing away with.
Apart from the pedestrian political discourses and uninformed economic analyses that dominate the air inside the bus, matrimonial wounds are opened, thereby leading to the realization of marital frustrations that couples barely cope with, the matrimonial heat under many roofs, and the passionate hate many spouses nurture against their own house mates.
As I reflect just before dawn, I realise that matters of the heart can be located in certain errors that many men make, especially before marriage, but which they lack the courage to address as years roll by in matrimony. In that circumstance, peace of mind is lost, breach of trust comes to the open, and the products of the union are held hostage in a loveless home.
The purpose of marriage and family – peace and stability of the society – is therefore lost. The home is, therefore, shun of true love, common purpose, and shared happiness.
The hearts once thought to be one and same in love therefore begin the search for new bliss, ihttps://www.thegazellenews.
In the extreme, depression, the decline of suicide or murder. It is obvious in the home that was once built on love has collapsed.
Such an unfortunate development, no doubt, could not have risen if intentions were pure and the correct choices made.
In essence, marriage ought to be built on sincerity and compatibility, two conditions for love and companionship.
These are just two of the many prescriptions for the sustainability of marriage and, most importantly, for the attainment of the vision of the marital partners.
For it is in a happy and peaceful home that the couple, the husband and the wife, can pursue their dream and raise the family, oh the children, to be responsible members of the society. Most homes lack this.
Building on Yakan’s premise of a successful or happy matrimony, I isolated some five or six fundamental errors men, NOT WOMEN, commit that rob the larger society of the deserved peace.
The first of the errors most men commit is what I call error of intention. When the colour or the shape of the woman, the size of her purse, the eminence of her pedigree and the height of her education are what most men look out for in the woman they want to marry, such men already fall short on the benchmark of sincerity of intention. Most women soon find out why some men are after them. Not their hearts or ⁷their inner beauty.
This error leads to the second fatal error: the error of selection. Lost in lust, caged by desire and fired by opportunism, some men, high in the clouds of selfishness, like falcons, are deaf to the falconer’s whistle. They plunge headlong into an affair destined not to work because in the first instance, it was wrongly anchored.
But, it is always never too late to retrace steps. For men in lust, people see the smoke of future trouble and warn of dangers in the affair, advising them against their choice. The incorrigibility of some men leads them to the altar with the wrong mates as spouses. But we have heard tales of ‘no show’ on the day the Lord is supposed to make or run-away husband or wife leaving the gathering of friends and well-wishers stupefied and the family members in shame and disappointment. This could be averted.
If at all such wrong couples with troubled or absent minds patch things to bring the world together in a lavish ceremony, they may never be able to build the home on love, but on suspicion and distrust. It is either they run the home like a boxing ring or a political turf. Can happy and responsible children be raised in such a home?
Also, men make the error of assumption. When it comes to matters of the heart, some men lose their heads.
Some go for women who are beyond their control and emotion. Yet, they assume that such women would change or that ‘things would change’. Unfortunately, the leopard never changes its spots. Before marriage, some women have made up their minds on who they want to be, what company they want to belong, and how they want to be perceived in society. Men, or marriage, can’t change them.
Abdulwarees, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Diplomacy and Management and Commonwealth Broadcasting Association scholar in Public Policy at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam is Deputy Director/Head of Strategic Planning and Corporate Development Department Voice of Nigeria.
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korewarith@yahoo.com
