PROTECTING YOUR SEX LIFE

Your sex life is a major aspect of your marriage. Realizing the importance of your sex life therefore, it is important that spouses ensure that this aspect of the marriage is protected and preserved for the continued beauty of the relationship.

This series will consider areas to protect your sex life from; reasons to protect your sex life and how to protect your sex life. 

A couple's life revolves around various things; work and business, children, friends and family, hobbies, social activities - these draw some level of attention from married couple. Each spouse owes the marriage a responsibility of ensuring that their sex life is protected from these things.

Work or Business: Either work or business usually becomes everyone's source of revenue. Time and strength are therefore invested in work or business activities on a daily basis. Realizing that the quest to improve family finance overtime tends to result in giving more attention to these, it is necessary that each spouse guards against sacrificing their sex life on the altar of their work or business.

The Children: Your children become an integral part of your life and marriage immediately they are conceived. Attention to them begins from pregnancy to birth and continues through their adulthood.

INVEST IN THE PARENTING OF YOUR CHILDREN

Parenting is all the thoughts, actions and activities involved in promoting and supporting the spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual development of a child, from infancy to adulthood. It is usually easier to believe that what is required in parenting is providing financial support for the children. Therefore as parents engage themselves with work and businesses, they strive to ensure that funds are available to engage domestic helps and nannies, pay school fees, pay for private lessons, among other things.

While these things are good in themselves, this articles looks beyond providing funds for a child's upbringing. It focuses on how parents need to be more directly involved in the children upbringing. The article recognizes that the task of providing for the family puts pressure on the parents to work and raise funds, yet the task of having a healthy marriage and family life also puts a responsibility on the couple to ensure proper parenting of their children.

Establish a family vision: At the inception of a marriage, it is important that a couple defines the kind of family they want to have. That vision is the future they see for their family. It should be an off shoot of your individual purpose. Vision would help decide on the number of children to have, the kind of school or schooling they would attend, as well as parents’ level of involvement in their upbringing.

Establish family core values:  Values are the things most important to you. So establishing family core values would require choosing those characters and interests that are most important for you as a family. One’s values determine the kind of friends they keep, it determines the kind of places they visit, their fashion. For example, my family core values are: Spirituality, Love, Integrity, Excellence, Accountability, Diligence and Discipline. These help in maintaining focus towards the family vision.

HOW TO INVEST IN YOUR SPOUSE'S EMOTIONAL NEEDS

A Clinical psychologist and author, Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. defines an emotional need as a craving that, when satisfied, leaves you with a feeling of happiness and contentment, and, when unsatisfied, leaves you with a feeling of unhappiness and frustration. 

The above definition shows emotional needs to be strong desires; therefore meeting those needs or not doing so could make or mar a long term relationship like marriage. Investing in spouse's emotional needs deals with doing all a spouse can to meet the other's need and viewing such as an investment in the marriage.

Some people have argued that one's spouse may not be in a position to meet all their emotional needs. However as the principal companion, each spouse ought to know and make adequate investment in the marriage on a daily basis by meeting their spouse's emotional needs.

Know your Spouse's Emotional Needs: The first step to investing is proper knowledge. You cannot meet a need you know nothing about. Use every opportunity to find out what your spouse's specific emotional needs are, including asking them directly.

HOW TO INVEST IN YOUR SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING FOR YOUR MARRIAGE

Man is a spirit, which has a soul and lives in a body. Therefore the real being is expected to live a more spirit-based life. The intention is to ensure that we are connected to the source of our existence and be able to live in line with the real purpose for which we were created.

The implication is that ensuring the well-being of the spirit in a man determines how the person is able to manage issues around their life and their immediate environment per time. The state of one's spiritual well-being plays a role in the person's capacity to manage situations and stand in times of challenges.

There is no better place to ensure a sound spiritual well-being than in a marriage relationship. The marriage institution was created by God. It takes walking with Him to keep it in line with God's original intention. Here are some ways individuals in marriage can ensure their spiritual well-being in order to maintain harmony in their marriage.

Fellowship with God: Referencing the events at the Garden of Eden after the creation, God and Man had fellowship regularly, in fact on daily basis. Today such fellowship is maintained to keep the spirit well and sensitive to spiritual signals and to ensure strength.

HOW TO INVEST IN YOUR CHARACTER FOR YOUR MARRIAGE

When people plan to get married, they are often carried away by the other person's charisma, beauty, qualification, talents, intelligence, and financial net-worth. Such that sometimes they tend to forget that the person they would eventually live with is different from the person they see on the platform. 

If Nelson is a CEO of an organization and wishes to get married to Josephine, who is a businesswoman; Josephine needs to remember that eventually she would be married to Nelson, not the CEO. Also Nelson needs realize he would live in the house with Josephine and not the Businesswoman.

Everyone's character is the real person they are, especially when no one else is watching. It therefore becomes expedient that each spouse invests in their character to ensure that it is not a source of disharmony in the home.

Personal Evaluation: Regular evaluation of yourself alone helps you identify areas of your character that require improvement.

INVEST IN YOUR MARRIAGE

Investments are usually made to enable us prepare for future opportunities. When investments are thoughtfully made, there is profitable return. However when investments are made without proper advice, the tendency for losses exist. 

Investing in your marriage deals with taking conscious steps to do what is required for the continued harmony and progress of the family. Every marriage begins with expectations, however it is the nature of our actions (investments) before and during the marriage that determine how much of our expectations are met. 

There are things to consider in investing.

FOUR AREAS OF DIFFERENCES EVERY COUPLE MUST MANAGE

In the previous article on the subject of understanding your spouse; I mentioned that this is essential for an enduring harmony in the marriage. 

In this article, we look at some reasons married couples should understand each other.

You are different from your spouse. There are differences between every two individuals, including two identical twins. Understanding each other therefore becomes necessary if couples must navigate through these differences and achieve harmony.

Gender difference: The fact that one person is male and the other is female creates the basic identifiable difference between a man and his wife. Difference in gender means that physiologically and emotionally the two people are different. Couples ought to be mindful and respect this in their relationship. This difference remains for life, irrespective of attempts to change gender in our world today.

Difference in upbringing: This is in terms of the home environment the person was raised as well as the values by which they were raised. Some people were raised in higher level of affluence than others. Some people saw their parents relate in certain manner and that had constructed their views about marriage. Each spouse ought to be mindful of this in relating with the other.

Difference in personal values: As people grow they develop personal values that guide their actions in life. Therefore every individual has their peculiar values.