By Jonah Nyoni
IN the last two months, I have written about marriage and relationships. The responses I got both locally and from outside Zimbabwe, were shocking as most of them were coming from people with marital problems. That raised more questions for me: Can marriages survive in this generation? Are some people not meant to marry? Is a perfect match made in heaven, or it is the people in this institution who should work hard on building their own marriages?
The readers’ responses prompted me to carry out a survey, which will be published soon as a research paper or a book. Over 100 married people have responded to this survey to date. From the responses received so far, it has shown that only 11% said their communication in marriage is excellent, 41% said their communication is good, 28% said their communication is average and 20% said their communication with their spouse is poor.
On conflict resolution, 22,8% said they can’t resolve the conflicts amicably and many people (37,4 %) take more than two days to resolve a conflict. In handling finances, 52,5% said money does cause conflict in their marriages.
On emotional intelligence, most people (54,5 %) agreed that emotions play a role in their marriage. And the preliminary findings show that most people are aware of their emotions, even though they might not be able to control them in most cases.
The stunning statistics were based on sexual matters. Less that 50 % of the 105 responses shows that they are fully satisfied with their sex life or they are able to reach orgasm all the times. 27,6% of the responses reach orgasm most of the times (but not all the times). 20,4% of the people reach orgasm on few occasions and 8,2% don’t reach orgasm at all. These statistics are frightening, but something can be done to heal and build the marriage institute.
Family structures
Most of the things we carry in our lives we leant from our family, through the socialisation process. If the family could teach their children and members before they are married, that could make a great difference.
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This is both through intentionally taught and through tacit skills. Those that are married should show a good model of marriage to their children, relatives and society as a whole.
Church structures
The church plays a critical role in building and shaping behaviour through its ethos imbedded in the Bible. The Bible says: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word.” (Ephesians 5: 22- 26, NIV).
Learning agility
Marriage is a place of learning; learning yourself and the person you are married to. The society needs must take a big stand in teaching the next generation on how to build good marriages.
For those in marriage, they should not wait until their marriage is on the rocks.
They should find counsellors, buy marriage books, and attend seminars. Emotional intelligence, communication, and conflict resolution are skills that should be learnt by everyone who wants to marry or in marriage. Thank you for all the responses and keep an ear about the forthcoming publication on marriage.
- Jonah Nyoni is an author, speaker, and leadership trainer. Follow Jonah on Twitter @jonahnyoni. WhatsApp: +263 772 581 918
