Marriage thoughts
Lately, as it turns to Spring, I think a lot about weddings. My own for example, my second one to the man I haven’t met yet. About what I will do differently, and how I plan to make a happy home and build a happy life with my new husband, who I know is praying for me to come into his life soon.
However I have not articulated how I feel about Marriage.
I have often said I have not got many happy experiences of marriage. My parents had a wonderful marriage on the surface with one, fatal flaw. My dad’s “Famble” vs his “Family”
I grew up in the West African tradition for the most part, until 14. I didn’t however, see very many examples of a happy, functioning marriage.
Marriage instead was the bonding of 2 people who were about to suffer deeply due to each other’s bullshit.
The woman would cry at her wedding because she has reached the pinnacle of her social status. The bride. She would struggle, suffer, put her body through numerous children who would then become her chief source of both happiness and stress and then when she was in her 50’s or 60’s she would be free to self-actualise and pray God, enjoy the fruits of her labours.
The man would cry at his wedding because he had someone to take care of him that wasn’t his mother and was obligated to have sex with him. He could relax gain weight, and wait until his 50’s where he could be a dirty old man.
Deeply unhealthy marriages is almost exclusively what I witnessed. I can name only 3 happy marriages. My parents, because they loved each other so much (a rarity in West African culture to actually love and adore your spouse.) My Aunt Helena’s marriage. One of peace and tranquillity, where man and wife are a unit, support each other and have raised a family together for 30+ years. My Aunt Margareta’s marriage, one where they seem to be 2 very separate individuals, but live peaceably in a house and have done for 30+ years. There were others, the Carltons, the Marlin’s who were on the periphery and I saw nothing actively wrong with their marriages so I assume they were good.
Everyone else, there was cheating, drunkenness, domestic violence, financial abuse and abandonment. And that is the stuff I was privy to see as a child. It needed to be fairly obvious because I was fairly oblivious to things that didn’t concern me.
The problem I saw with west African marriage is that the “best” marriages level up to the average European marriage. Man and wife, who actually love each other, living in peace and having a family.
The worst ones however… The rock bottom for west African marriages seems to be a lot lower than for Europeans. European men have a reasonable expectation that if they beat their wives they will spend the night at least in a police cell. West African men do not have that expectation.
European men have the reasonable expectation that they will have to pay for their children’s upkeep as well as contribute reasonably financially to the home. West African men don’t have that expectation. I for one, refuse to go begging a man for scraps of his money to pay for children he put inside me. That has always been my biggest fear in marriage. Being my mother and having my kids “carry last” because I couldn’t hold up the sky for them, the way that both parents should. Instead of it just being me, singlehandedly acting like Atlas with the ravens of “bills” “taxes” and “unexpected emergency’s” pecking at my liver.
Another thing West Africans universally (men and women) love is…trouble. When there is no trouble there is no excitement, that’s why so few West African marriages end in “till death do us part” with the spouse lovingly holding your hand and kissing your forehead until you slip into the afterlife. We love trouble, which is why we seek it. Same with the British. We both have adversarial politics, we both have patriarchal societies filled with misogyny and this seems to be the constant cause of trouble. We encourage dysfunctional, pig-headed behaviour.
“Hard times make hard men” No it doesn’t. It makes men with an avoidance issues. We create hard times, extreme financial difficulty, marriage breakdown due to looking at EVERY GODDAMNED FEMALE ON THE PLANET and trying to pursue her to make her your mistress. (This problem is acute in West African men I had a married Nigerian man old enough to be my father trying to make me his mistress despite me repeatedly saying NO!) Witnessing of domestic violence, and so on and so forth and wonder why our society is broken. We wonder why our marriages end up broken, the 2 people can’t get past the trauma, and the drama. We talk about generational trauma, because our parents made really dysfunctional decisions coming from a place of pain from all the stuff their parents did, some of it was selfish, some of it was also coming from a place of pain, passed onto them from their own parents.
West African’s don’t divorce. Instead, if you get too much for one another, you live separately. However the woman gets to maintain her “Mrs.” title that means so much to her. When I was going through my divorce, my parents didn’t tell anyone, to the point where my dad’s funeral 6 months after my decree absolute I had people asking after my husband, who showed up like a grim reaper to disrespect my father one last time.
Because West African’s don’t divorce, I have 3 “grandmas” who as it happened all are called Mrs Davies. Of the 3 ladies, 2 of them have husbands still living. In order to be my grandma they were in London in the 90’s and early 2000’s. However, their husbands are in Sierra Leone. I didn’t know any of this until I was about 8 for one of the Mrs Davies, and someone mentioned that “Mr Davies was coming to England.” And he expected to stay with his estranged wife. Meanwhile I’d blithely assumed he was dead if his wife was here. And had been for my entire life.
So I have spoken extensively about what I see as wrong in the marriage world, which can be summed up as abuse, begging for scraps for your children, and generational trauma. However, I haven’t talked about what I DO want and what I will do differently.
What I do want.
Yay! Happy times now the vitriol is over! What I want most in life is summed up in 2 quotes, the first one being. “If you didn’t come from a happy home, make sure a happy home comes from you”
Exactly that, no more no less. I have often spoken about the fact that I lost my childhood at 14 and I will never get those years back. I was a late bloomer socially and that was a cruel thing to rob me of. Put simply I want to give my children the gift of childhood, the gift of safety I never had. The gift of a loving home with 2 parents who love one another and are committed to one another through marriage. As we know through studies that married parents give their children the best chances of success. I want to give my husband the best version of myself, to have him push me to be better, to have myself want to show up for him and choose him over the other 7 Billion + people in the world because love isn’t enough, but Love + Hard work= success in every field. And I expect him to wake up choosing me every day too. Showing me his best self every day. I want us to compliment each other, so where I am weak, he is strong and where he is weak, I am strong and together our marriage is the bedrock in which our children are raised. We have a safe, happy, peaceful place to call home every night and we have a companion to grow old joyfully together. I want to encourage him, be his cheerleader as well as critical friend, my lover, my love and someone I feel deep love and connection to. Someone who I am faithful to and is faithful to me. My definition of fidelity is emotional, spiritual and physical. So it doesn’t just mean no adultery, it means no secrets (other than surprise birthdays) complete openness and trust, so when I go to bed at night “I sleep with both eyes closed.” I want someone who will be holding my hand and kissing my forehead as I labour his children as well as when I slip into the afterlife.
The second quote is from 1 Corinthians vs 4-7 & vs 13.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Verses 1-13 were read at my first marriage. My second I plan to cut the fat, only verses 4-7 and 13. So lets deconstruct. Because this part is going to mix in with “what I plan to do differently”
“Love is Patient.” -Patient does not mean a fool. I swerved between being impatient and being foolish in my first marriage. In my second marriage I plan to be patient. For me this means being present in the moment, not being stressed all the time and able to listen to my husbands needs, truly listen and respond to keep him happy.
“Love is Kind”- I was kind in my first marriage, but I neither acknowledged nor got acknowledgement for it. I don’t need acknowledgement, but my version of this part of the verse is that I am gentle in my marriage, not constantly pulling my man up for ALL his shortcomings, letting some of them go (see patient) and sitting in my best self and able to give grace.
“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” Finally, something for him to do!!! I hate arrogance, pride and envy, it was a great source of bitterness in my first marriage, my ex was bitter about everyone’s successes, and it started to rub off on me. I don’t want ego, comparison with others and envy in my marriage. I have seen it destroy not just marriages, but people. I promise to hold up my own side of the deal by being genuinely happy for other people for every promotion, new house, marriage, new baby and lottery win!
“It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” This is a “marriage killer”. Anger management issues. My ex had serious anger management issues, coming from a place of pain and it meant that I lived in fear of his temper. It was very upsetting. I’d cry, and I don’t cry easily. My ex also used to seek to tear me down every opportunity he’d get. So my future husband will always seek to honour me, lift me up and be gentle and patient with me, as I will with him.
But another one is that “it does not keep a record of wrongs” something else unfortunately I have to lay at my ex’s door. As it turns out when we were having marriage difficulties he’d kept a record of every bad thing I’d done in 5 years of marriage (there were many) and it ran all the way to me saying I was “too tired for sex” at 2am of my wedding night. Yep. That was a bitter blow. “Why are you cheating with every Sarah, Jane and Jennifer?? Because 5 years ago you rejected me for sex” So for me, something of critical importance is that my forgiveness is total, and final. Once it has been granted. I have moved on and I will not discuss your wrong ever again, nor will I Lord it over you or hold it over your head like the sword of Damocles waiting to drop. And I expect the same grown up behaviour from my husband.
“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth”- For me this is about trauma bonding- I had a bond with my ex that came from traumas, it came from a bad place. Something dark in me was fed by the dark in him. Until I was able to let that self-pitying go I was never going to grow. Hence This verse for me means that I need to let go of the darkness inside myself, not cling to it, and embrace the truth, embrace the good parts of myself and work on that. Also, work on the good parts of my husband in the joyful hope that he will in turn, work on the good parts of me.
“It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” This is talking about the WORK side of marriage. Marriage, don’t let anyone fool you, is work, and if you are not working on your marriage, you are working on your divorce, believe me. You can’t leave it untended to for a single day. A whole day without a kind text? Or a compliment or a thoughtful gesture? You’re simply padding the list for your spouse under “unreasonable behaviour.”
I will protect my husband (and children) from the cruelties of this world, I will trust my husband to act in my best interest and I will also trust myself to act in his best interest. I will hope for the best side of my husband to come out each day, the side that I fell in love with on day one, minute one and I will hope to show him the woman he fell in love with every day for the rest of his life. We will both persevere through good times and in bad to choose each other, choose to fight for our marriage.
That is an important choice because my first marriage died because I chose not to fight for it. I chose to appear to fight for it. In truth I did not want the man. He had an extremely low bar and he still failed. He disappointed and disgusted me, so I chose to let him wither on the vine. Cruel, but true. The reason that I chose that was because I never really wanted him in the first place. I very literally “settled down” “down” meaning he and I didn’t have the same class, not economic, but panache. We were ill suited, and I was tired of the inconvenience of him. For my second marriage, I will be marrying someone I love and am in love with, and that is what is going to give me that fighting spirit to fight for the man I love, to persevere for him and to stick with him all the days of our lives.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love”. Honestly, when I die, put those words on my tomb. Faith, hope and Love. The greatest of which is love. I love those words because it’s true. Leading on from verse 7. You need to have faith in the hard times that better days are coming, you need to have hope in the Lord to bring you those better days. I believe you need to have Love for both your husband and God because when those better days do come, and the sun does shine, those are the 2 people you want on your team to be able to enjoy the good times. Love gets you everywhere, because it provides the motivation and the discipline to build those better days even if you can’t see where the better days are coming from. Knowing that by holding your husband’s hand you can build a future and take on the world. At the very least, knowing that by holding your husband’s hand everything else will be okay because you have someone you love and trust completely that completeness gives you strength. Only when you have the man that you feel that with have you found your soulmate. And when you feel that, then begin taking on the world.
What I will do differently.
I love 1 Corinthians 4-7 and 13 and I will not marry without those words being said. But now I need to talk of my own actions.
My second marriage I look for more grace, courage, and maturity. I was very headstrong and principled in my first marriage. I plan to be a little less headstrong, keep my principals but give my husband-to-be more grace. More acceptance and ultimately less stress.
On a practical note how I plan to do this is by not being “every woman.” I plan to be myself. Cooking and cleaning are not my strong point. When I cook I have 2 modes, cooking for pleasure, and cooking for survival. I plan to mainly cook for pleasure. Whereas my first marriage I cooked for survival. This is because I plan to live and love my future marriage. Meanwhile I merely “Catherine Parr’d (survived) my first one. The next marriage is meant to be a pleasurable experience.
Speaking of pleasure, I expect. No. Demand. My pleasure. I deserve it. I had an attitude of suffrage from my first marriage, that sexual abuse was the price I paid for being a “Mrs.” Well no longer. God gives you what you ask for, I ask for love pleasure, joy stability (financial, physical and emotional) and peace. I expect all of them. I plan to also work for those things, in how I treat my new husband both inside and outside the bedroom. I expect to be attracted to my husband and I plan to let him know of my attraction, each and every day.
Everything from my tone, to demeanour to my expectations of him and boundaries that I will set and reinforce from the very beginning will say that I want love, peace, pleasure, stability(financial, physical and emotional) and joy. Its not wrong to want those things, so I plan to state the obvious.
I now have the expectation that marriage is work, you need to work on the marriage and relationship every day. I also have an expectation that my life will not magically be fixed by becoming “Mrs Smith” nor do I put too much emphasis on the social status. Hence why I have rejected Black men. There is little choice but to acknowledge the social status and the many strings that go with it. Instead, I have come to peace with the fact that marriage will bring about many joys, (i.e. being part of the development of another person,) but also many trials.( i.e. being part of the development of another person.) So it will be a different kind of hard to the one I’m used to now. No longer do I have the “white saviour, come save me” predicament. I’m 30, with my own house, money and car. “Come impress me” more like. Either add to my joy, or leave. I can do better.
All in all I plan to come at my second marriage with more maturity, more peace, fewer expectations and 100% more love. Not to see my new husband as something that needs to be fixed, but a person that has flaws and strengths and needs to be embraced for who they are. I need to be happy that if the man doesn’t change one bit after the wedding day, that I am still happy to be with him rather than banking that when I’ve “ironed out all his faults” he’ll be easier to live with.
Those are my marriage thoughts.
Grace and Courage
Annetta Mother-Smith