Yes nothing was missing. Someone said the problem of living is that 'life is so daily'. When planning your wedding, the fantasies seemed like they would last forever and if you had your honey moon in a very exotic location, I'm sure you felt like freezing the moment and you hoped that the splendour and romance would last forever only for you to get back to 'earth' and all the passion got lost in work, keeping the home and the 'dailiness' of life.
At this point, you have no appetite for long talks and mono-syllabic answers are now the norm. Man and wife just feel bored and agitated about things they can't quite figure out. These periods if not handled right can lead people chasing after solutions to problems that don't exist. For men, they can't understand why the wife's low energy level is not their fault and begin to suspect larger than life problems whilst the women simply can't understand why their man won't talk or just snaps at the slightest provocation.
The first key to managing these moments because they are certain to come in any marriage is to understand that there is nothing fundamentally wring with your marriage or relationship. Remember when you were in college,there were days when you did not feel like going to classes but you went anyway. All the 'suffering' and laboring late into the night, reading for your exams was not pleasant nor romantic buy you needed to do them to be free of the courage of perpetual carryovers and you can still recollect that overwhelming joy on he day of your graduation. The pride you felt at having persevered and overcome the system in incomparable to any other feeling in the world. Marriage and relationships could be like that, boredom may set in but you don't feel like going to work but you pick yourself up and go to work even put in an honest effort. You end up feeling better that when you left your home.
This brings me to the second point in dealing with these moments. They will come and go but you cannot afford to shirk your responsibilities in your relationship or marriage. For instance, a responsible man will not say because he is bored and does not feel like going to work, he would stay at home for a month and expect to get paid for that month. Won't work I hear you say? Sure, it won't. Thia 'solution' is just like having a fling or an affair to find some excitement. Don't buy into this trick because it will never solve the problem.
So also it is in a relationship. You both have to work at keeping the mushy texts coming and the verbal affirmations can't stop either. It might have flowed spontaneously in time past but now you can't seem to find your groove at the moment, pleae do all you can to just keep it coming. Whatever it is that makes your relationship tick, all parties must be committed to keep those roles. This is what differentiates relationships which inspire us for generations from those which end up on the wrong side of the divorce statistics. I was recently reading about a couple who had been married for 38 years and couldn't help being amazed at what they would have had to overcome to keep their love alive for that long. You would think that there is a gene that makes it possible for some to be successful relationally and maritally which was not evenly distributed by God when you look at the ease with which some manage these periods of boredom in their homes. The good news is that there is no such gene and anyone who is committed to learning, prayer, patience and a healthy dose of compromise can pull off a good or even great marriage. In school, there is no doubt we had talented students who found it easy to get excellent grades with minimal effort unlike the rest of us. However, fast forward 10 years later and you would find anyone who embraced hard work and some luck had made a good show of thier lives, whether or not they were considered geniuses. Any successful person will tell you that success takes more than talent or genetic endowments.
My message after researching successful and not so successful marriages is that anybody is capable of succeeding in this area. Even if you came from a 'broken home', you have what it takes to succeed in this area. One of my favorite persons of all time is John Davidson Rockfeller, the founder of Standard Oil (now Exxon Mobil). He grew up in a very dysfunctional and financially insecure home, however, he purposed by the help of God to succeed not only in life but especially in his family life and it was said of him that he always has lunch with his children everyday while building the largest corporation in the world at the time. He admitted that his faith in God was instrumental to this all round success and if he achieved all of these despite his very chequered family background, you and I then have what it takes to succeed too.
I must confess this is not a silver bullet to manage all the lows of marriage but knowing that these challenges are pretty common and maybe necessary for our growth should encourage us in a way to stay the course, fulfil our mandate and raise children who will be glad that Mom and Dad did not allow boredom to disrupt the home.
Stay Blessed.
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