As 2019 fades: To Sad Spouses and Frustrated Families, By Abdulwarees Solanke

As Year 2019 is fading out for 2020 to be ushered in soon, I veer from the hard talks of politics and the polity, public policy, administration and management today to troubling matters of the heart.

This is borne by my concerns and fears for spouses and families in frustration.

Due to economic challenges or incapacitation, not a few couples are really sad and mad at each other with hearts wrenched and homes in shambles, even tottering to collapse.

For them, the festive season is neither merry nor do they have any expectation of happiness in the New Year.

A colleague who sees me as a sort of mentor is also rising to be a mentor to other younger ones.

In her early forties, my fan has done quite well in marital life too. Happily married with beautiful children, she has been able to successfully juggle career, family responsibilities, charity and missionary works and also garnered a string of degrees.

She’s even got some investment while she is now being invited to counsel troubled couples and youngsters.

Each time she had a talk to give, she consults as she initially did not see herself qualified to be a counselor.

 It is the context and circumstances around her that forced the burden of mentoring others on her because at her age, they see her as a success in all areas that challenged them, and qualified her to offer respite or succor in circumstances that crashed their marriages.

Recently, she came for another consultation on what to tell a group which tasked her to speak to their spinsters and divorcees, though still young but under pressure to start all over again.

 I fetched out the sketch of my thoughts on categories of lovers and spouses and why some marriages last while others crashed even at infancy.

 I told her that there are two categories of wives and husbands, those to be and those in marriage.

Their upbringing I explained, shapes their outlook or worldview which they take into marriage, define their expectations of their partners and how they relate to each other.

On this account in my explanation, I clarified to her that spouses can either be supportive or distractive.

 I define the supportive type as those who give you the space and peace to be all that you want to be.

They are those who understand you and your emotions and so could get you close to your maker and mentors; Prayer warriors they are for you.

There are others who will connect you with your family and true friends, very comfortable in their midst too as they are indeed family builder and homemakers.

There are also those who connect you to your purpose and vision in life as they assist you to discover your talent and are also always patient with you to arrive or achieve a breakthrough no matter how long. They are visionaries in your life.

 There are spouses who assist you in building your career and fortune. Always content, even sacrificing for you to reach your peak. They act as your sponsors.

 On the other hand, there are those who distract you from all the above in their demands, preference or pressures on you.

Often they are silent destroyers, visible imposers, extremely demanding, always discontented and usually possessive, giving you no peace to think on your own or thrive at all except you dance to their tunes. They are the ones who disconnect you from your foundational family and good old friends. In fact, these are hostage takers as you lose your friends, even your personality in marriage to such.

They can be suspicious of  you, yet they could also be disloyal.

Often too, they’re your exploiters, even competitors who can wreck you or render you wretched, no matter what height or wealth you attain, or the creative potentials waiting to unleash in you.

Many of such are abusive, vindictive, so they are hot and fire eaters at home, stressing and depressing you to the point of lunacy, suicide or homicides.

But they could also be passive over time in marriage, wasteful and uncaring, even abandoning home to find comfort in bottles and ganja, getting alcoholic and becoming late office keepers on night crawlers.

 In their exhibition of withdrawal, escape and avoidance syndrome, they pull-down the home driving others to conclude that marriage is a meaningless contract, what Yoruba conveniently call Oja okunkun.

So, many are phobic to contract marriage and more are desperate to quit what God encourages for the stabilization of the society and perpetuation of mankind. Otherwise without marriage, man would not be different from beasts in procreation.

No matter what background you or your spouse comes from, you can get the better or best in marriage or of your partner if you take your marriage as a project that you must succeed at.

That is why there is a discipline called project management.

Many are successful at managing projects entrusted to them in their careers or fields but are very woeful in the project they decidedly gave themselves, matrimony, by not preparing adequately for it, and failing to constantly measure their performance, not monitoring or evaluating themselves but always looking at the fault of others or using wrong yardstick to measure theirs.

 Usually this is as a result of predicating their marriage on faulty and exploitative premises. When they now get into marriage, their expectations become a mirage and trouble sets in.

So I advised my student to tell her audience, “let them be sincere in their considerations and choice, realistic in their expectations of their marital mates, willing to sacrifice for one another, to be patient, and value each other, committed to harmonizing their differences and achieve a common value with which to raise their family.

Here, a question begs for answer: Do the soaps, dramas and sitcoms or films and videos, soft sells and novels, even  radio and television discussions and audience sows from  wick youngsters  of today, even discussions  derive guidance provide these?

It is lamentable that many of the reality shows on which many pattern their marital lives are really home wreckers.

Do a background check of many of those featured as superstars, protagonists, victims and villains and you are not unlikely to find out that most are maladjusted from childhood, only replicating their woeful experiences to guide others on the tube and the celluloid.