John Boakye: Will you stay for your children?
Marriage is not a place for a party or where you live happily for ever.
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This is because no matter how much you love each other, you will fight because you are two different people with different backgrounds, values and expectations who are tying to share all areas of your lives.
It is also sad to note that most of the things you fight about in your marriage have no solutions because they come from your inborn characteristics. When you have an abusive partner and you have children in the marriage, the situation becomes very complicated.
The urge to quit in an attempt to save your children is high but it could be the beginning of bad things to happen to you and your children.
Abusive marriages and children
The effect of health of marriage begins in the womb because the child in the womb feels and responds to the emotions of his or her parents. If your have a painful marriage, the unborn child develops painful emotions.
At birth, the family becomes the first natural school of the baby and he or she develops the values of his or her parents. For example, a boy who grows in an abusive home where the father is always shouting on his wife grows up doing the same.
The girl also develops emotional pain and when she grows up, falls into a cycle of bad men like her father. She loves only bad men because they create the drama her father did to activate her childhood pains and as she loves the man she tries to heal her past.
Simply put, if parents do not show love, their children cannot show true love. Abusive marriages, therefore, have serious negative effects on children.
Divorce and parents
Divorce harms both parents irrespective of who may be at fault. It creates anxiety, panic, grief and bitterness. You live in fear and anticipate failure.
Stress from divorce breaks down your immune system and predisposes you to diseases like high blood pressure and diabetics.
You have decreased social relationship because everybody pronounces you guilty even if you are the innocent party. You find that while your friends of same sex avoid you because you may be seen as a threat to their marriages, your friends of the opposite sex, who would otherwise not dare, make attempts because they find you are available and vulnerable.
Spiritually, you must appreciate God is the author of marriage and by His plan marriage is indissoluble.
Divorce is, therefore, a great sin because you break what God says must not be broken. God hates divorce and so must you.
Divorce and children
Children from divorced homes have great emotional trauma because they are deprived of the love of one of the partners. They lose their self-confidence and the ability to relate to others properly.
They tend to be poor performers and become prone to behavioural problems like sexual promiscuity, substance abuse and robbery. When a child from a divorced home marries, he or she has a 75 per cent chance that his or her marriage will collapse. Divorce, therefore, harms the partners, their children and the society. It has never been a solution but the problem.
Many leave their marriages needlessly today. About 90 per cent of partners who divorce regret and wish they had been patient enough to stay and work on their marriages.
Resolve never to be a victim of divorce. Nothing will happen to you except what you put on your mind.
Will you stay for your children?
Human nature seeks the path of least resistance. When faced with difficulties in marriage, the easiest option is to quit but once you leave it is almost over for you and your children.
If you remarry, you have a higher chance of divorce because your emotional pains spill into your new relationship.
Our parents and grandparents were very wise. When faced with challenges in the marriage they would say ‘mmofra no nti’ or because of the children and stay for the sake of the children.
Do the same; stay on and work on your marriage. If you work on your marriage, it will work. The good news is that most of the time it takes one committed partner to turn a marriage around.
Let it be you always. Your partner can only react lovingly to your loving acts. Be everything to your spouse. Never let your innocent children suffer in future for your actions and inaction.
Never make divorce an option in your marriage. No sacrifice is too much for your children. One day when you look at your children who may then have made it in life, you will be proud of the sacrifices you made for them.
Stay on and press on, if for nothing at all “mmofra no nti.”
Email jydboakye02yahoo.com. The writer is the director of Eudoo Counselling Centre, West Legon. He is also the author of Your Guide to Marriage, Love Unlimited and The journey of Love. Mob 0208181861