Marriage Matters
I come from a part of the world where people marry late. While understudying some of the most successful people in life, I have realized that one of the reasons they got it right was because they got marriage right.
Marriage is a game changer. It’s a special relationship between a man and a woman that knits them together to pursue a common cause.
Marriage was designed by God as a platform through which people could get help from each other and for each other for their destinies. It is also a training ground for useful virtues such as responsibility, accountability and trust.
What should stop you from not been married at forty? Well, you may think that’s not possible. But there are many persons who at forty have still not found their footing in marriage. Many of them realize too late that they really should have settled this very important area of their lives much earlier in their lives. You may also think that’s their life, but you could also be influenced by the same factors that stopped them from marrying early.
I remember my pastor in the university fellowship I attended while as an undergraduate Mr. Pius Egbaji. He had married much later in his life and his children were still in their early teens while he was about to retire from the university. He often told us then that he regretted not marrying much earlier when he could. And he advised us to as much as we can “marry correctly and early”.
Men are especially prone to late marriage and they settle for young wives. They think it is fashionable. But it’s not! Women who are not married at forty tend to find it increasingly difficult to settle into family because often the men prefer younger women because of the risk factors involved in marrying older women especially when the family is expected to produce offspring. Women who are past forty fear menopause and giving birth increasingly become difficult.
I have often met men and sometimes women who still carry a young early twenties mentality even when they are past forty. These men still jump from one woman to another and the women jump from man to man. And they are past forty! They should at this point in their lives be raising families and taking responsibility.
Marriage help build responsibility. It also helps you get a broader picture about your life, visions and expectations. When you discover you are responsible for your spouse, and kids, you want to work extra hard and broaden your picture about life knowing that you are accountable to them.
Marriage matters! Been married is increasingly becoming a major condition to work in certain companies and to take up certain roles. Those employers may not tell you when you apply but they put that up during their screening.
People are of the opinion that they have to prepare adequately, and they give themselves too many conditions to meet and perhaps the conditions their would-be spouses have to meet. If the things stopping you from marriage are all your conditions, they’d keep hanging around you.
Of course, there are basic requirements that you should meet before you consider marriage. Once
you can meet the basic requirements, you are good. The requirements include
But some men think they should live in their personal apartments before they settle. Some decide that they must earn a certain amount of income before they consider marriage. For women, they expect their spouse to arrive in a posh car or he should work in blue chip Company. Sadly, Mr. or Miss Right does not arrive because the conditions are often too huge. This thus blinds your eyes to seeing the available marriageable persons around them.
There are fears some young persons have about marriage. They claim they don’t want to be tied down. They want to be free to roam, but they discover later in their lives that they should have been tied down.
One limiting factor men complain about is money! But is it? No. what stops most young people who have reached marriageable age is just the unwillingness to take responsibility. A man who has decided to marry will go the length to make the sacrifices that often characterizes the wedding process. The wedding isn’t an occasion only for the men alone, women also get involved, and the families of the couples too.
If you are afraid of the wedding burden, take first steps first and let the rest follow as you go. God opens doors for those who intentionally want to connect with their fiancé or fiancées in marriage.
Raising a family these days is no longer a one person ordeal. Everyone must play a role, the man and the woman. This is why when considering who your spouse should be; you should consider an understanding spouse.
It’s often not a beautiful sight seeing an old father in his sixties carrying his biological kids. You’d wonder what he was doing when he was young. There are rare situations where the couples started the marriage process early in their lives but children didn’t arrive early. It’s understood. If you are facing this challenge, God will visit with your own offspring. But you will agree that it’s a bigger challenge raising kids when you are retiring from active work.
One of the benefits of marrying early is that it allows you the benefit of making mistakes and learning from them without necessarily hitting up the polity. Marriage is a learning curve and you should grow through its ranks learning all the lessons, and seizing those lessons for your benefit. Of course you know that marriage is a lifelong affair. You are in for life.
The forties is a period of consolidation and expansion and not necessarily a time to create. Trying to create a marriage union and a family after you are past forty can be a difficult ordeal. It takes so much work, resources and time commitment. Raising children too requires so much physical, spiritual and mental inputs; you want to be flying in your forties.
The advantage you have starting your marriage early is that you can convert your energy and youth into impacting your children as you grow with them.
Marriage is a training ground for the development of good individual virtues. The challenges will help you to grow stronger, goal oriented and visionary giving you a different perspective to how you had always seen life. These virtues you are developing will be the ingredients for the beautiful life you want to live when you are past forty and into your latter years of life.
Your twenties or thirties are building years. Your childhood and teenage years were learning years, right into your early twenties. You learnt the things you need to help you build your life in your later twenties and thirties. In your forties, you should begin to reap from those building efforts. Now, you should build family and vision.
Marriage is about partnership and your spouse arrives as that free partner. If you have tried a business venture before now and you tried to partner with a person, you might have realized how difficult it was. I’ve tried it and it didn’t work the way I would have wanted it. But your spouse is around you to give you that extra hand, mind, skill, talent or capacity.
For those who think marriage is all about children, they’ve gotten it wrong. Yes, children are important but beyond having children, you have someone who is willing to connect to your dreams while you in turn play similar role. In everyone is something that can be beneficial to every other person. Your spouse carries something for you.
The beautiful thing about marriage is that it mars your intended direction as a single person. Single life is selfish life. You think about yourself, yourself and yourself alone. But marriage gets you thinking about “us”.
It’s beautiful and fulfilling taking a stroll with your spouse and kids and you are still young.
Marriage helps find an emptying point for that youthful rage that normally starts from the late teens and that characterizes the twenties and thirties. It’s a channel to help push into usefulness that youthful energy. This is important.
As we get on towards forty, we want to build on our experiences. The challenges in marriage are a perfect training ground to arch on to build relationship, self-control and resource management thus making you a more mature person.
Every culture respects the marriage union. A man who is past forty and keeping several sexual partners is often considered irresponsible by society. To be on the good side of society, you’ve got to say “I do” early enough.
Marriage is a stage that defines your outlook and how people look at you. It helps you develop a different perspective about life, makes you conservative and mature in how you relate and deal with them. The change is often immediate.
Respect is a good virtue that arrives with and to someone who has gotten married. As a matter of fact, a person at twenty five who is married is given a respectable place in society than a person who is older but who is not married.
Who celebrates a single person at forty anyway? Well, the last time I checked, an unmarried forty year old is often looked at with disdain even by family members.
Before you turn forty, settle this life defining stage.
Marriage arrives with blessings. When you get married God opens doors. I’ve seen people who were struggling to make ends meet but who got their big break the moment they got into the marriage union.
Any person who finds a spouse finds a good gift and obtains favour from God. This is an important part of the marriage mix.
If you think you have achieved so much as a single, you really have achieved nothing compared to the possibilities of being married. Two of you shall become one and you shall have a good reward for your labour. This better reward for your labour is what you should be aiming at.
You will certainly go through bad times, everyone does. But you can assure yourself of a succor in your spouse and for the encouragement and propulsion to pushing through life.
Marriage carries an endless stream of possibilities, but this will also depend on you marrying right. Don’t rush into marriage because everyone is, but marry because it is the right thing to do. Marry because you have that person whose destiny you want to help fulfill. Marry because you are willing to take responsibility for your spouse and for the offspring that will result from the union.
So if you have been having that marriage phobia, you can kick that out of your door. Many persons may have negative marriage experiences but those experiences don’t define the marriage union. They are only the result of faulty decisions made and they are a minority. There are many marriages out there that are succeeding and yours will succeed too.
Please if you aren’t married yet, and you are reading this book, and you think it’s time to make that decision, it really is time. By all means, be sure you have settled the marriage act before you turn forty.