MARRIAGE AND THE WHAT PEOPLE WILL SAY INHIBITING FACTOR - ALBINUS CHIEDU

A major puncturing factor to the joy of many marriages today is the four-word phrase: “What people will say?” Because of this phrase, certain things that you ought to do to boost your marriage, strengthen bonding in your marital rela­tionship and increase your joy, are deliberately not done. 

You find a lady to marry. She is the love of your life. You love each other. Because of her occupational status, she has a car, house and some other assets that you do not have. You now feel that ‘if I marry her, people will say it is because of her wealth’. Now, you leave her and eventually marry someone that is wired for another man. Then, you begin to endure marriage instead of enjoying it. 

There are marriages where elements of romance are missing just because one or both parties are afraid of what people will say. “What will people say if I drive my wife in a car to a destination, alight quickly from the driver’s seat and rush to open the door for my wife like her employed driver? What will they say if I am taking a walk with my spouse and I hold him or her in a romantic manner? What will they say if I am the one cuddling my baby or bathing the child in public while my wife looks on? Will they not call me ‘woman wrapper?’ 

You have a wife who is an accountant by profession and prudent with spending, in contrast to you, a wasteful and careless spender. You know that if you hand over the family financial management to her, your family finance will improve and fami­ly business will grow. But you are finding it difficult to do that. Now, there has been financial and economic stagnation since you both officially became a couple. How will God’s plan for this marriage manifest? Ex­cept you call the bluff of what people will say. You are even accusing witches for your situ­ation instead of facing reality. 

You have a fiancée and you both have remained in pre-marital status for years, sim­ply because of what people will say if you do not throw a lavish wedding ceremony like so and so person. What will they say if you guys simply walk up to your clergyman or court registry with your family representative(s) as witness(es), take the marital vow and move forward with your life? They will say you did a poor man’s wedding. Right? 

You have money to buy a car but you have deliberately delayed purchasing one for your family. Why? Your wife can drive but be­cause of your job schedule and other factors  you have not been able to learn how to drive. ‘What will people say if I buy a car and my wife is the one always on the steer­ing during outings? 

You are presiding over a public meeting and your wife is among discussants. During discussions, she suggests an idea which happens to be superior to an idea that you earli­er tabled. Because the suggestion came from your wife, you jettison the suggestion. ‘What will people say if I implement what my wife has suggested? Won’t they say she is the one that dictates what I do?’ 

Maybe your wife is yet to conceive, years after marriage despite her good character as a person. You are considering going for an­other wife because of what people will say. Maybe also, you have had just one child for a long time and you are considering another woman for the purpose of having anoth­er child so that they will not say that you are infertile. You now want to break your mar­riage covenant and suffer implications be­cause of ‘people’. 

I don’t know what you may be passing through right now in your marriage and you are feeling so unhappy because of what people are saying already or what people will say, especially when that saying is not true. First, I want you to know that no matter what you do in life, people will always say something negative or positive about you. 

Secondly, if you run your marriage based on what people say or do not say, your marriage will lose its peculiar identity. Every marriage has a special element that makes it unique. So, you are expected by God to seek and strive to make your marriage work by putting in deliberate efforts to attract pos­itive ingredients that other marriages may not have. 

Thirdly, what people say about your marriage is totally irrelevant as long as you are living joyfully with your spouse and chil­dren in a godly way. It is what God says about your marriage that matters because God is the founder of the marital institution. As long as you run this institution based on the manual of the inventor, your problems will go at the rate at which they come. 

“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). 

“Submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. There­fore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. 

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it. That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church” (Ephesians 5:21-29 KJV).