By Pastor Okokon Ating

Last week I explained one of the secrets which stand as part of the challenges against the peace in ma-rriages. In continuation, we shall see other points which are:

EDUCATIONAL ISSUE

At the beginning of court-ship, it is easy for the would-be couple not to care if the person he\she intends to marry is educated or not and to what level? To some careless mind, the idea of “love is blind” can blind-fold them into accepting liability in the name of marriage, without taking time to search for the educational level or back-ground of each other.

It was good in the time past when a man could farm and have menial job to take care of his wife and child-ren without minding the educational background of the partner, but now, in our civilized society, coupled with the economic hard-ship, people would want to have a family with dual source of income.

Wedding rings worn during marriage

Those who have hurriedly entered into such covenant of marriage will quickly live to regret in the course of their staying together as husband and wife. I am not saying that uneducated people cannot marry su-ccessfully. No! But when one is higher than the other educationally, there is bound to be “resources control” in such a home and inequality can easily set in.

It is more frustrating when the female is more educat-ed than the man who is the head of the home, inferior-ity will be the order of the day in such home. This may be as a result of unrevealed truth about their education-al background before ma-rriage. There is always room for improvement and achievement, only if the truth is revealed from the beginning.

If a newly married couple wants to stay peacefully throughout the period of their marriage, let each speak the truth to each other from the beginning. If this is done and the couples go ahead to marry each other, there would be no cause for alarm in the future for them.

Hiding educational qualifi-cation or level from each other may breed fracas in the nearest future. Every home today wants both partners to be the source in which wealth flows into the family.

Apart from the idea of work-ing so as to bring money for the upkeep of the new fa-mily, another fact may be that in the future, after the couple might have started bearing children and the first love seems to fade away, the man in particular may now think that the same woman is not fit to be his wife because she is not educated. If he has found a new love with an educated woman elsewhere, regret sets in and at last abandon-ment of the first wife becomes imminent. Another point is:

HEALTH MATTERS

One of the secrets that can also stand against the newly married couple is unreveal-ed illness, impotency or infertility, if this is not properly handled, it may result to a broken home. Other sicknesses sometimes discovered later in marria-ge are commonly found among women.

It is called frigidity. This is sometimes as a result of past awful experiences in sexual intercourse as a result of rape. Once a woman is raped and an injury is sustained, even when it is healed, that woman can be left with a frightening memory about sex which may cause frigidity for life. If this is discovered by the new partner, perhaps by the husband, the solution is clinical attention or coun-seling from a sex psycholog-ist who will counsel them on how to enjoy intercourse without pain or fear.

Another sickness is that of a woman who had experien-ced a circumcision of her private body. Such a woman is hardly responsive to sex stimuli. She is not quickly satisfied during the inter-course. She may not have the urge for sex.

I was lucky to be with a sex psychologist one day and heard his client complain-ed about his wife finding it difficult to respond positive-ly to him during intercour-se. The psychologist asked the man if he had inquired from the wife whether she had been circumcised when she was young. The man said, yes, the psychologist advised the man that he should exercise patience with his wife while he en-courages her on a daily basis, by making her to realize what he, the hus-band wants from her.

But the client insists on marrying a woman who will respond and satisfy him during intercourse.

There is another case of a woman I met in Kaduna; she reported to me that she will leave her matrimonial home to find her satisfact-ion elsewhere. When I inquired from her, she told me that the husband is sick; the husband doesn’t spend much time with her on bed sexually. If the husband had confided in his wife, they would have joined heads to find a solution.

Health matters are very tough or difficult to reveal, only those who have the fear of GOD can openly tell their spouse about their health issues.