By Francis Ewherido
Joan and John were attending different churches when they met and started dating. They were deeply in love and wanted to make the relationship permanent. But there was a snag: Joan is the “typical Catholic girl” and could “not imagine leaving the Catholic Church and …told John in very certain terms.” Love-struck John did not see any big deal in denominational differences; “after all we are all Christians.”

It was on that basis that Joan agreed to go ahead with the marriage. When Joan told her parents John had proposed to her and she had accepted, the parents raised the issue and Joan told them it had been sorted out.

During the preparations for the wedding, both families squabbled over which church the wedding should take place. John prevailed on his family and they grudgingly accepted to do it in Joan’s church and thanksgiving in John’s church. As agreed, John allowed Joan to continue going to her church after their wedding, while John continued with his church. When they started having children, John, for convenience, allowed Joan to take them to her church.

This continued until something snapped and John suddenly felt that Joan was “challenging his authority as the man of the house” and the “anomaly of my wife attending a different church from mine.” Both families were sucked into the crisis. When it became obvious that the marriage was headed for the rocks, Joan’s parents, who were scared of a divorce, prevailed on her to follow John to his church.

Joan agreed and joined John’s church, but John now had a new problem in his hands: a very unhappy wife. The reality of the cliché that you can force the horse to the brook, but you cannot force it to drink soon dawned on him. They have since reverted to the status quo and normalcy has returned.

Changing pre-marriage agreements and circumstances is one of the common reasons marriages run into problems. Unfortunately, many of us seem to be guilty of it. A friend narrated how he told his wife to stop putting on trousers (nothing to do with Deuteronomy 22:5) due to pressure from one of the groups he belonged to in his church. That was dumb and unreasonable, because the first time he met his wife, she was putting on trousers and throughout their courtship, she regularly wore trousers and he never complained. Expectedly, her reaction was rigid, like when you want to put a car going at 100km per hour in reverse gear. He beat a fast retreat. He knew the battle was not winnable and even if he won, it would be a pyrrhic victory.

Have you seen the mouth and face of a big cat after killing a porcupine? While the porcupine’s death was swift, the big cat dies a slow, painful death from the infected wounds the spikes of the porcupine inflicted on it.

That is why experienced lions and leopards walk away from porcupines no matter how hungry they are. In marriage, as in other aspects of life, it helps to know the “battles” to fight and those to walk away from.When his friend lapsed into the same hypocrisy, he quickly reminded him that he was there when the wife (then fiancée) was coming around to visit. His friend never complained about her putting on trousers. He advised his friend not to bring it up now because of pressure from some church group.

Just to satisfy the curiosity of those who are wondering why they wanted to stop their wives from wearing trousers, they belonged to groups within their churches who wanted a distinct identity and advised female members and wives of male members to refrain from wearing trousers, using lipsticks and make-ups, and sticking to their natural hair (no weave-on, attachment or wig. There was no Brazilian hair then).

Incidentally, I once discouraged my wife from using weave-on because we were told that some of them were demonic and since I could not discern which weave-on was demonic, the best option was to refrain. My wife “obeyed” but simply abandoned her hair. A female friend who saw her “looking disheveled” at a party drove straight to the house to confront me: “No be the fine girl when we follow you go marry for Warri be this?

Wetin you do am? I stated my case. “Shebi you say you be prayer ministry member? Cast away the damn demon from the weave-on and let my sister look nice…” Honestly I felt so embarrassed because she made sense. There are very few occasions when I have felt more stupid. Marriage is an unbelievable school.

So what is the way out? I strongly suggest that core issues should be sorted out during courtship, as I said in this column earlier this year: intending couples should be conscious of their core values during courtship. “Core values are principles and qualities that guide your internal conducts and determine how you relate with the external world. Core values define who you are; they go to the root of your existence. They are sacred to your being and non-negotiable. They might be ethical, religious, intellectual, social, appearance related, etc.

The question is do you share common values? If you do not, then it is not advisable to continue the courtship. But if you do, but not all, you need to check how acceptable or unacceptable what is lacking is to you or your partner?” Are you prepared to live with or without them for the rest of your life? You must decide before you exchange marital vows because once the match has started, it is not proper to shift the goal post. For those of us whose matches have already started, if we must shift the post, it should be by mutual consent, not spousal fiat.