KEEPING COMMON FRIENDS

Last weekend I had the opportunity of attending a function and I witnessed a newly wedded couple as they mingled with the crowd. The wife was obviously more conversant with the crowd and very soon the husband was left alone for a long stretch of time.

This got me thinking about how couples incorporate and manage their friends as they navigate the delicate labyrinth of the marriage institution. I remember that when I got married my wife and I had to decide on the type of friends we were to keep close to the family.

There was a particular friend I had who before I got married had always tended to take advantage of me, although I did not mind too much, but my wife felt that I was the one who was investing so much in the friendship and getting little if nothing out of it. For one reason or the other my wife was not comfortable with my friendship with this chap and over the years she has been largely vindicated because the friend has virtually disappeared into thin air. There are some friends of mine that have over the years become virtually members of our family because both my wife and I endorse their friendship.

The crust of the matter is that friends have a way of influencing our marriage one way or the other. Most third party influence in the home comes from either relatives or friends and usually friends have a disposition to compel us to do what they do.

My observation last weekend showed my the danger inherent from the way the young couple were carrying on. If the marriage is to avoid the pitfall of undue third party influence from friends, they both must have common friends.

They must seat down and decide from both sides the friends they both will be comfortable with and try and relate to such friends as a family. In other words, at the level of marriage the two of you should have more family friends than personal friends.

My wife's friend ought to be my friend to the extent that I should be comfortable with such a person. If my wife's friend makes me uncomfortable then my wife should begin to re-appraise her relationship with such a person and vice versa.

What the wife I referred to ought to have done was to bring her friends to meet her husband or take her husband around to meet her friends. To make the man seat down while gallivanting is unacceptable.

I will like to have your comments on this.

Femiimevbore@gmail.com
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THE FLIP SIDE - SECRETS IN MARRIAGE

While I am an advocate for transparency in marriage because this is what I practice in my own home, I will be naive to assume that this will work for all couples.

There are some people who just cannot take the fact that their spouse cheated on them and may become violent in handling such news.

The younger sister told me the story of a man who was the first boyfriend his wife ever had. He was the first person to ever have sex with her and so he would always boast that no other man on earth had ever had carnal knowledge of his wife. This confidence made the man believe that irrespective of whatever he did the girl would never leave him for another man. So he started to have other affairs even to the knowledge of the girl. Unknown to him, when he traveled out of his location for a while the girl met another man who had a brief affair with her and went to bed with her. When he came back, they continued and eventually got married because the affair the girl had was a fling.

Over time they both became Christians but the husband was in the habit of always boasting that he was the only one that has ever slept with her. This confession began to have an effect on her and her conscience began to prick her because what the husband was always boasting about was a lie and anytime he made the statement she felt the weight of guilt.

So one day she decided to tell him the truth that when he traveled out of town for a lengthy period she had a brief affair with someone else and that he is not the only man that has ever slept with her. This confession blew a fuse which almost led to the total collapse of their marriage but for the intervention of their Pastor who felt the girl did the right thing.

While recognizing the fact that I may not have all the answers, I strongly believe that the balance to this issue of secrets in a marriage starts from day one. Knowing that we all have different temperaments, it is important to seat down and agree on certain things before you start this journey together. It is important to agree on how the two of you will resolve conflicts; it is at this stage that your resolve all secrets by being transparent. (I strongly recommend you read the Book 4 Things Intending Couples Must Agree on Before Marriage by Dr. James Iruobe.)

If at this stage your spouse decides to back out of the marriage you have not lost anything and my take is that the person does not deserve someone like you.

If you are already marriage and in this dilemma, I counsel that you see your Pastor who will be able to handle the issue with spirituality and tact.

Finally, I recognize that some people by their nature or experience are secretive and when one is married to such a person just make up your mind that there are things you are likely to find out latter about your spouse. It is even worse when you marry someone that does not take anything serious and is likely to downplay the implications of not revealing things to you from the onset.

The "secret" is to know and understand your spouse and be willing to forgive if eventually things that you never knew about him comes to light. After all we all have out little secrets which we pray never comes to limelight.

God bless you.

Femiimevbore@gmail.com
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www.lifebuilder.ecwid.com

www.elshaddaicovenantchurch.org

SECRETS IN MARRIAGE

In our last discuss, we looked at a scenario where a man who strayed into fornication confessed to his wife and but for the grace of God found it had to receive forgiveness from his wife. He felt that if he had kept the truth to himself, he would have saved himself the trauma he went through.

I am sure many men feel the same way but I tried to establish the fact that nothing done under the sun ever remains a secret forever. the truth will eventually come out and bang - the consequences are often graver that when confession is made ab-initio.

So as not to sound gender biased, let us look at the converse situation. When a woman has a secret in her life, will it be expedient for her to confess or to keep quiet hoping the truth will not be found?

I have come to discover that women also have secrets and most times the secrets of women are better kept than men. If a woman is having an affair for example, she can be very discreet about it. It is usually the man that exposes the secret because men tend to want to show off their sexual prowess. Another secret that women tend to keep from their husbands is if they have had any children before they met their husbands especially if such children were delivered when they were in Secondary School. Because such children tend to bear their father's names it becomes easier for their true identity to be revealed.

The bottom line is that trust and fidelity should be the building blocks of every strong marriage. One should be able to trust one's spouse to be honest and open to me. It is always painful to discover something about your spouse that you ought to have known from the very beginning later in life. It tends to show that your spouse does not trust you enough to share his secrets with you.

While I concede the fact that sometimes been honest with your spouse can have a negative effect but the beauty is that you cannot be held liable for dishonesty. Your spouse can be angry that you did something you ought not to do but cannot say that you lied or kept you action a secret.

To be honest and straightforward is the best position one should always take no matter what. If you spouse fails to forgive you for been honest just remember that if you confess you misdeeds to God, he will forgive you and then you try to forgive yourself and move on.

God bless you!

Femiimevbore@gmail.com
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www.lifebuilder.ecwid.com

www.elshaddaicovenantchurch.org

KEEPING SECRETS

Last time I tried to establish the argument for transparency and honesty and I believe I may have stirred the honest nest in the minds of traditionalists who believe their wives do not need to know everything. After all what you do not know will not hurt you they claim.

Let us for a moment argue some of the demerits of being open to your wife. There is the story of a man who had an affair with a colleague in the office and as a good Christian ought to do confessed to his wife and sought forgiveness. What happened was that he had worked rather late that day and found that he was alone in this big office with an unmarried female staff who also had to work late. They got talking and one thing led to another and before you could stay Jack Robinson, they found themselves on the floor of the office. The man was so guilty of what he inadvertently did that he immediately confided in his wife.
Unfortunately for him the wife was so distraught by his act of infidelity and for many months could not bring herself to forgive him. At the end of it the man regretted confiding in his wife.

Now you may be tempted on the surface to say the man should have kept his mouth shut and secretly repented but we forget that there is always a third party to every act of infidelity - the other woman or man.

What you may call a mistake may be something completely different for the other person. I have know people who took a mere hug to mean something very romantic and interpreted one's honest gesture quite differently. Now if you happen to make quite an impression on the other person, you may be in for a battle in your hands.

Many times we can never envisage the outcomes of our misdeeds. I am sure if King David had known that his adulterous act with Bathsheba will bring so much untold problems for him, he would have decided that it was not worth all the trouble he went through. For those of us who may not be so conversant with all that transpired later in the life of David, it was this act of indiscretion on his part that led to his son Absalom revolting against him and sleeping with his father's concubines in public. He did his own in private, but he was to reap the shame in public.

While I am not looking at Infidelity just now, the point I am trying to make is that every act has consequences so of them completely beyond our control and therefore unless we have our spouses on the same page with us it may be difficult to face the consequences of our actions.

It was the support of Hilary Clinton that helped her Husband former President Bill Clinton, wade through the Lewinsky episode aside from the fact that he had a sugar coated tongue.

The price you pay for honesty is far less costly in the long run to the price you will have to pay when the truth finally surfaces since nothing can be hidden for ever.

More on this next time. Stay blessed.

Femiimevbore@gmail.com
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www.elshaddaicovenantchurch.org

KEEPING SECRETS

Greetings friends! It is nice to be back on the block after me brief hiatus. It is interesting that during my leave period a couple of issues came to fore that I believe will be worth tackling in this forum.

However, there was a Radio Program I listened to that brought up an interesting topic for discussion and this caught my attention and got my thinking.

The topic was whether it is right for a husband to disclose every thing to his wife. The background to this discussion was that there was a man who had lost his job for sometime but his three friends had been sustaining him. He leaves home every day as if going to work but it had reached the stage where he had to pay his rent and the children's school fees and felt that it was time to let the wife know his predicament.

While this may appear to be an extreme hypothetical case, the fact is that many men do not tell their wives a lot of things about themselves for many reasons. Some wives do not know anything about their husband's businesses or income; some have no idea what investments their husband has or the extent of properties owned. Issues that happen in the office are also kept secrets and so when there is a sudden change in any of these situations the woman is at sea and does not know what to do.

In the western societies it is easy for men to be thoroughly transparent with their wives but in the African societies with all its cultural gamuts it is not so easy for a man to be thoroughly transparent. We have a proverb in Africa that says "it is not all a man sees in the bush while hunting he tells his wife".

The question that come readily to mind is why would men be secretive? Or rather is it right for a man to disclose everything about himself to his wife?

For the non Christian I may not be able to help you much but for the Christian let us explore what the Bible tends to teach us.

Genesis 2:24
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.(NIV)

Genesis 2:16-17
And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."(NIV)

Genesis 3:1-3
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, `You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, `You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"(NIV)

The first thing to see here is that God intends that there be no division between a man and his wife. They are to be one flesh - no secrets, no dark sides, no hidden agenda. This is God's prescription for marriage.

The second thing I want you to observe is that when God gave the first commandment to Adam, there is no record that he communicated the instruction to his wife Eve. It will appear to me that the man, as it is wont with all men, either summarized God instruction or exaggerated what God said. In any case he failed to communicate what God said exactly to her and this caused the downfall of man.

When we hide things from our wives, we invariably create a situation where in our absence, the woman is handicapped and may be not be able to handle issues sufficiently to the benefit of the family. I have come ot realize that there is really nothing hidden under the some. It will only take some time but the truth will come out and what you did not want you wife to know will be there in the open.

Even if it is something you are not entirely proud of, it is wise for you to let your wife in on what is happening. There is the story of a woman who delivered her husband from the firing squad during the coup that attempted to oust the regime of General Babaginda led by Simeon Okar. This soldier had heard about the coup and reported to his immediate boss who he did not know was sympathetic to the plot. As usual he told his wife what was happening and when eventually he was implicated as one of the plotters of the coup, she was able to exonerate her husband.

For whatever disadvantage one may adduce to being open and transparent with our spouses, the advantage clearly outweighs the disadvantage.

To keep secrets from your wife is to say in subtle terms that you do not trust her enough to know everything about yourself. When a man usually is in trouble, it is not only him that bears the brunt, the wife and children though innocent automatically become casualties.

How many woman have been unable to trace their husbands property or investments when they suddenly die?

If you really love your wife as a Christian, there should be no secrets whatsoever between you.

God bless you.

Femiimevbore@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/officialecc?ref=hl
www.lifebuilder.ecwid.com

www.elshaddaicovenantchurch.org