Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Husband and Wife (08/08/14)
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TITLE: An Ocean of Reasons | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ramona Cook
08/11/14 -
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At least half of us know the grief and the griping disappointment of the death of marriage, and the consequential despair and/or frantic hope of trying marriage again. Most of us do try again.
The stunning statistics provide this information: in America, 50% of first marriages end in divorce, 67% if second marriages, and 73% of third marriages. www.psychologytoday.com
Almost all of us get married to live together forever. We cannot imagine life without the person to whom our heart is bound. What is the damaging force with the progression of events? Why does it go wrong?
Certainly the diagnosis reveals some differences in the assessment of each individual case, but with the statistics being so high, there must be an ocean of commonalities.
Expectations of what the marriage will provide, and the needs that each one brings to the relationship, are usually not recognized, therefore, not discussed.
My personal evaluation is that for practicing Christians the Biblical teaching that "The two shall become one flesh," is misinterpreted.
I am one whom some call a Bible Thumper. I believe the Bible is inspired, and that it is what it claims itself to be, The Word of God! So, my comment should not be misconstrued to be a question of Biblical accuracy.
I believe the statement of the Scriptures, "The two shall become one flesh," is carried to the extreme in that it is thought to suggest that one of the two must lose their identity and mush into one person.
In a number of our Churches there is almost the unanimous agreement that the one to blend in is the female. The male is dominant and the female is recessive and so a problem begins.
The union of marriage is to be complementary to both parties. Even if the female, is willing to be subjected to becoming "him," and is able to attain to the requirement, she then becomes, not the person he married. She is no longer able to complete him, she becomes dull and boring. His search for his needs begins again, looking outward to other things.
Men sometimes find themselves being the one required to lose their identity, becoming no more than the mule who earns the living, then likewise they become dull and boring and she thinks her life does not provide to her those attributes for which she got married.
In either scenario, there is unilateral loss of person-hood.
This, in my view, is the root cause of waking up to the failure of a divorce.
Marriage should be viewed as a legal contract, both in the secular and in the spiritual.
Our eyes may be on the same page during the honeymoon phase, but the reality of life is that because we live our day(s) in separate places doing different things, we are not always on the same page. Add to the fact that each of us progresses into other various and natural interests of exploration. We should hope it to be true!
I married first at 18 years of age, would any partner wish me to remain at the psychological age of 18 throughout the years together?
It is the adjustments to this "living contract" that brings the problems, because we misunderstand that the contract provides for two people to guard the "one contract" by making adjustments for each other to be themselves as individual personalities.
Biologically, as to the "oneness" of a sexual relationship, husband/wife, or unmarried, the fact of seminal absorption does provide for the "one flesh" comment, as Jesus said.
There are other contributing problems as well: the long years of the psychological community advising, "If it feels good, do it," and with our natural inclinations to indulge ourselves in our appetites, we have created selfish persons, convinced that what they do is normal, and no one's business.
The years of our churches, and so our society, ignoring the Bible, considering it to be not relevant to us today, has blinded us from understanding. There is no insight, no vision, and we do not know how to treat each other in marriage, nor how to treat children as parents, nor as children, how to respect our parents.
There is An Ocean of Reasons, made of many contributories. I have mentioned but a few.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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Excellent.
God bless~