Steem4nigeria Accelerator Contest Week 45: Marriage and its Environs

Marriage is a union or coming together of a man and a woman to become husband and wife. Through this union, the husband and the wife start staying together, raising children and doing other things together until death separates them.

Source
What do you think makes a marriage successful
Several factors could make a marriage successful among which are:

1. love: When there is real love between the couple, it helps in making the marriage successful.
2. When the couple understand that marriage is about going through life together and serving each other.
3. When couples stay committed to one another.
4. When couples forgive one another.
5. When there is an understanding between the couples
6. When the couples learn to spend time together.
7. When there is a free flow of communication.
8. When couples appreciate one other verbally and with gifts.
9. When couples learn to admit their wrongs and say I am sorry.
10. When couples learn to affirm their love always by saying "I love you".
11. SEX: Never denied each other sex.
12. Couples should be concerned about the whereabouts of their spouses.

How can couples improve communication in their marriage?

Source

For couples to Improve communication in their marriage, these must be noted:

1. Couples must deliberately create an enabling environment for discussion
2. Active listeners: Couples must pay attention to each other even if one is not interested in what the Other party is discussing. This will encourage the spouse to talk more.
3. Spouses should ask questions where necessary and be ready to answer when questions are asked.
4. Couples should strive to understand what their partner is saying and should be careful with their tone of communication.

Discuss the importance of trust in a marriage

Source
Trust simply means belief. It is very important to have trust in marriage because a good relationship is built on trust.
Marriage can be full of challenges and blessings as well. These challenges could be sickness, loss of job, social or moral challenges etc.

The questions that may follow here are:

• Can I count on you for finances, household decisions, etc.?
• Would you be there for me when I go through hard times such as the loss of a job, sickness and health?
• Will you be faithful to me regardless of my social and economic status?
• Do you do what you say you will do when I am around and when I am not around?

When the answers to these questions are positive, it builds the relationship and makes the marriage successful in the long run.

How do couples navigate conflicts in a healthy way?

Source
Because we are human, the tendency to have conflict is there. Our relationship in marriage may go sour sometimes and how we handle it matters a lot.
Therefore, for a couple to handle conflict healthily, they must sit down together and listen to one another. After hearing from one another, the party that is at fault should say I am sorry and the other party should also forgive. With these, there should not be a need for third-party involvement.
Another thing to note here is that there must not be a shifting of blame otherwise it may worsen the situation.

Do you consider the distance between spouses and cultural differences a problem in marriage? Why?

I agree that distance between spouses is a problem in marriage the reasons are:

1. Spouses may not be able to get sexual satisfaction as expected thereby leading to infidelity.
2. Training of children may rely on one party and that may get the other spouse exhausted.
3. There may not be effectiveness in communication since the couples are not staying together and that may bring about a lack of trust.

But for cultural differences, I don't think it is a problem. From a practical point of view, my wife is a native of TAROK from Plateau State and I am BAJJU from Kaduna State but we flow naturally. We had a courtship for some time which enabled us to study one another including our culture and that has settled any problem that may come concerning culture.

Conclusion
Marriage is an institution where the couples jointly make it to be successful or get destroyed. I hope I have done justice to this topic.
I invite these friends of mine to participate:
@vickyson
@mianawais
@alli001

THANK YOU FOR READING