In our society today, couples who know what it takes to enjoy their marriage are sweet and enjoyable for those couples who know what it takes to enjoy their marriages to the fullest are enjoying sweet and exciting marriages.
For other couples, they are busy destroying their own marriages with their own hands. Marriages thrive when there are harmonies and strong love between couples. However, if you take a survey of what causes marriage failures, you will observe that selfishness is ranked number one.
This is because there is no marriage that can withstand selfishness. There are some marriages that started with genuine, love for each other, but once selfishness comes in, love for each other becomes poisoned, gets soured and such marriage soon collapses.
In reality, it is only couples who have learned to fulfill the Biblical injunction of what was said in Genesis 2:24-25 that can enjoy their marriages better. That verse said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. It is only when couples deal ruthlessly with selfishness that they can become one flesh indeed. It is couples who are strongly committed to each other and to their marriages that can become one flesh indeed, while others will ever be far from becoming one flesh because of their selfishness.
In a marriage in which any of the couples are selfish, the other party will be enduring the marriage instead of enjoying it. And when both spouses are selfish, their marriage will never survive, which is the reason couples must deal ruthlessly with selfishness if they expect their marriages to ever survive.
The word “selfishness” means to care for only oneself; getting as much as you want, but giving little or nothing in return. Selfish people make poor marriage partners and church members because they believe the world revolves around them, and they must have their way all the time
Selfishness is one silent attitude that had crashed and is crashing marriages every day. Quite often, you see couples who are going for divorce cite the reason for their divorce “as a result of irreconcilable differences”. What else will make couples have irreconcilable differences if not selfishness?
Selfish couples are never committed to their marriage, and it is the level of our commitment to our marriage that proves whether we are selfish in our marriage relationship or not. Selfishness doesn’t allow couples to get committed to each other and their marriages.
Marriages also thrive better when couples learn to acknowledge or accept when they are at fault or wrong, but selfish couples never accept that they are wrong or at fault. Selfish couples, instead of accepting the blame when they are at fault and taking corrections, never accept that they are at fault but are quick to pass the blame on their spouse.
Selfish couples fail to realize what local slang said that marriage is like two dogs playing, each dog falls for the other and that’s making their play enjoyable. When you see selfish couples, they never accept to fall for each other but insist on having their way all the time.
Moreover, marriage thrives when couples learn to live a life of sacrifice, a life of giving and take, but selfish couples, they are not ready and willing to sacrifice but always seek to receive all the time. They always insist on issues that favor them, not minding how the issue affects their spouse.
Greater numbers of couples are in marriage relationships solely for the reasons of what they are getting or what they hope to get from that relationship. And not what they are ready and willing to give out or what their spouses will receive.
Selfish couples, when they feel that they are not getting enough of what they want or desire for a marriage relationship, they call such marriage relationship a quit by divorce.
So I wish to ask you that had gone for divorce or are contemplating going for a divorce, are you sure that it is not selfishness that is pushing you?. I am sure that if couples could rethink, and deal ruthlessness with and selfishness, their marriages would be salvaged.
As said earlier, it is because couples are not committed to each other and their marriages that they don’t bother with their marriage and the feeling of their spouses. In other words, if couples going to divorce could sit down, and accept that their actions are selfish, their marriages would be salvaged.
The easiest way to deal with selfishness is for couples to accept to go a little to the left and a little to the right. In such a way, each couple will come out with a winner and a loser.
Men who are selfish, any time they had an urge for $ex, will insist on having their way, even if their wife doesn’t have the urge at all. Having $ex with their spouses at that period is painful for their wives, but they are not bothered so long as they get satisfied $exually.
In the same vein, it is selfishness on the part of the women that they deliberately deny $ex to their husbands simply because their husbands refused to do their bidding. Quite often, selfish women use $exual satisfaction for their husbands as a weapon to force their husbands to do their bidding.
Also, frequently, it is selfishness that causes couples to betray their spouse by getting involved in extramarital affairs or infidelity. Couples, who are selfish, easily cheat on their spouses, as they don’t bother about the feelings of their spouses.
One thing with selfishness is that some couples are quick to point accusing fingers at their spouses for being the selfish ones simply because their spouses refused to do their bidding.
Such selfish couples refuse to accept the facts that they are selfish themselves because their actions clearly show evidence of selfishness. My dear, if your actions are analyzed, won’t they prove that you are selfish?
Couples accepting that they are selfish is the starting point to dealing with selfishness. So we should sincerely carry out self-analysis of our actions and identify actions that are selfish and learn to amend our ways.
If we sincerely do that, our marriages would surely take a U-turn for the better, and we will start enjoying our marriages to the fullest instead of manifesting selfishness.
Don’t see your marriage to that man/woman as a mistake, rather you are the mistake, and your actions are the mistake because of your selfishness. So couples should deal ruthlessly with selfishness, which is the cankerworm destroying our marriages. Shalom
