MARRIAGE MATTERS NEWSLETTERS
Monday 22nd July 2024.
Dear friend,
DONT BRING OUT THE ‘BEAST’ IN YOUR SPOUSE.
Recently, a couple quarrelled, and as we were trying to settle the conflict and the woman was proving stubborn, the husband said; “you are a beast”. The woman nodded in agreement and told the husband that he was the one that turned her into a ‘beast’. I thought about the response of the woman and felt that we need to talk to ourselves against bringing out the ‘beast’ in our spouse.
There is a level of ‘beast’ in every human being including your spouse that sufficient provocation may bring out. The scriptures in Col. 3:21 says;
‘Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.’
If God cautioned fathers not to provoke their children, it means that something unexpected may happen from children to their parents when the level of provocation is sufficiently high. You may now imagine the implication of provoking an adult such as your spouse.
However gentle or spiritually matured your spouse is, sufficient provocation may make him or her to do something that will make you to wonder who actually did it. Two of the most recurrent issues in marital conflicts are physical abuse and adultery. Let us look at how excessive provocation or incitement may actually make either to happen.
PHYSICAL ABUSE.
A lot of verbal and physical abuse takes place in marriages. A good number of them are unreported. It is those that are reported that attract appropriate sanctions. In those sanctions however, we focus on the spouse that abused while not really looking at what led to it.
There is a way that you may continue to provoke your spouse that will make abuse inevitable. If the scripture above says that you should not provoke your children to anger, can you imagine provoking your husband or wife to anger! If we can all be mindful of the fact that anyone who is sufficiently provoked may do some unexpected things, then the way we react to abuse may become different.
A woman was fond of preventing the husband from going out anytime she was offended. She would either lock the door or stay at the door to prevent the husband from going out. One day the husband in annoyance told her that he would beat her up. She responded that if the husband did not beat her, then he must be a bastard. The husband then actually beat her up because according to him, he is not a bastard! Behind a lot of acts of physical abuse by husbands lie excessive verbal and emotional abuse from wives which goes unnoticed.
ADULTERY.
I remember a woman that came to me for counseling several years ago after talking to teachers in a school. She reported that her husband was in extramarital relationship with a widow, and was unrepentant about it. In response to my questions while trying to identify the underlying causes, she opened up to me that when she reached the age of forty five, she felt that she has had enough of sex with her husband. So, she started denying him of sex on the grounds of being ill. For several months, she just did not allow the husband to touch her. Several months later, she discovered that her husband was going out with the widow who was younger than her. When she confronted her husband, he confirmed it. When he was asked the reason why he did it, the husband told the wife that since she was ‘ill’, he didn’t want want to kill her! According to the woman, she told her husband immediately that she was no longer ill, and as from then stopped denying him of sex (you may start wondering about what healed her). However, despite the fact that she made herself available, the husband continued in that extramarital relationship. There are a lot of wives that motivated their husbands into unintended adulterous relationships.
Though there are a good percentage of adulterous men that will still go out even when there is no problem at home, you should make sure that you are not the one that motivated him to do so.
Don’t forget that if your husband, were to be in other religions, he would be entitled to several wives. Being a Christian restricts him to you. It may not be morally right for you to keep denying him of sex just because you feel that probably as a child of God, he would not go out to satisfy himself by going into extramarital affairs. When you sufficiently deny him, you may motivate him to relatively easily fall for temptation.
COSTLY ASSUMPTIONS.
It may be costly for you to assume that your spouse is so gentle that he or she would not violently react to a particular way in which you have been provoking him or her. It may also be a costly assumption for you to assume that because of being a worker in church for instance that he or she will not go out if you continue with sex denials at home.
To make for more peaceful marriages, we must recognize that while spouses reacting poorly to situations are responsible for their poor choices, those who provoked such responses are also jointly responsible.
Greater healing would take place if provokers are humble enough to recognize and accept their negative roles in marital conflicts. You should be unselfish enough to put yourself in your spouse’s shoes when you are doing things in a way that may nudge your partner to react in an unexpected way.
Yours In Strengthening Homes,
Mike Oluniyi.
