It is tragic to lose your first love and become set in your ways as a husband or wife. The highly emotional love and feelings that you used to have in the days of the boy-girl relationship should be maintained right into marriage. It is tragic to become rusticated and too experienced to enjoy the boyish-girlish love years after getting married.
In our case, we still enjoy kissing each other when we meet after being away from each other for a few hours. Most African couples desist from this beautiful love gesture only a few days after getting married. This is a pity and something you need to revive if you had stopped it. Other couples will only kiss in private or when they are about to have sex. We kiss anytime anywhere and in private as well as in public. We have nothing to be ashamed of; we are married.
Then there are other things that we used to do when we were boy and girl friends. We used to love to go out together and visit places of interest or beauty. We used to go out to watch movies or have meals in restaurants. When we got married and when the children came round we found it a little more taxing to continue these activities.
Our advice to couples is that you should try by all means to continue to enjoy these activities well after getting married and after the children are born. It is usually quite easy to organize a baby sitter so that the two of you can go out together again.
Couples with grown children should find it even easier to leave the children at home and go and have a nice time together. Sadly, the practice among most couples is for the husband to go out leaving the poor wife with the kids. This does not help the marriage very much. In fact, it can be quite harmful to the union.
The wife may feel she is being treated like a maid. She may even suspect that the hubby may be going out with some other woman. Indeed, some men take advantage of such a situation to seek “love” and pleasure elsewhere. The consequences for the marriage may be dire.
Spending quality time together after marriage is crucial for every couple. This may mean sitting in one room and talking about nothing or even not talking at all. We often read newspapers and share some of the funny stories contained in them.
Our children are trained to leave us alone at these times. Often they will retire to their bedrooms or go and play outside. Recently a group of married women argued that they need both quality time and in large quantities as well from their husbands.
We agree; being together for just a short time is not all that helpful to a marriage. Quality time should be meaningfully long enough to enable both of you to share what is in your heart. It should be long enough to be memorable to both of you.
It is not a waste of time. Rather, it is time well spent with your loved one. Remember this is your best friend. We normally like to spend meaningful time with friends. How much more with our best friend? Couples that do things together will also find it easier to pray together.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis