Selflessness: The Key To Successful Marriage

The marriage bond is the highest relationship man and woman can ever experience; and its integrity, security and success can only be guaranteed when the couple is truly love each other and pursue selfless ideals.

It is a common fact that every husband (or man) wants to lead; he wants to be praised, obeyed and respected. But can a husband get all these by just seeking it? 

In marriage, we grow love and receive authority/submission when we care, give and serve our spouse. And doing this gives you greater joy and marital fulfillment in return. 

We need to learn how to give our partners what we know they need. Rather than push them away, give them what they want.

Successful marriages are built on love and selflessness; and it is achievable. The simple way to do this is to firstly accept that God loves you and wants you to enjoy your marriage. God has placed His love inside of you, because without having love, you cannot give love.

Secondly, allow sincere love to genuinely flow through you to your spouse and children. If you do away with selfish desires and become open to your husband or wife, you would not only please your beloved, your home will become sweeter.

Living a life of compromise which leads to fulfillment and sweetness in marriage comes by choice. Put your spouse first and watch your marriage transform. 

Three things you must note include:

Your character and what you give out determines who you are.

Marriage runs smoother on the wheels of compromise. 

You must shed every garment of ego, pride and selfishness.

Someone once said that love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots. This is love and compromise at work. 

My Wife Is Too Stubborn…

Your spouse may be stubborn, lazy, rude, aggressive, and uncompromising. She may  perhaps be contrary to your expectations. Do you just send her away? 

Indeed it is your responsibility to build you spouse to become what you desire. It takes compromise, tolerance and patience.

Before you label your partner as a misfit, you need to ask yourself these questions: 

What value have I contributed or added to my wife since we got married? 

How have I assisted her to fulfill her dreams? 

What changes or adjustments have I personally made to make my marriage better? 

What habits do I need to drop to grow my marriage?

As a wife, in spite of your background or the circumstances surrounding the consummation of your marriage, don't condemn your partner. 

Be submissive to your husband.

Honour him. 

Be interested in his business, values, beliefs and spirituality.

Fellowship with him and go to church with him. 

Serve and honour his God. 

Remember that you are not only a wife to him; you are a mother to him, his friend and lover.

Let him know you trust him. 

Don't criticize or question his authority in public. 

Don't insult him.

Don't discourage him or disparage his achievements. 

Praise his efforts (even if they are little). 

Note that, you are his greatest encourager as well as his worst critic. If other people kill his ego and self-esteem, don't help them to bury him.   

How To Build Your Marriage Through Compromise - Give and Take

Building and enjoying a successful marriage is perhaps the most fulfilling thing we could ever achieve. If your marriage is not right, it consumes you and you can become bitter, impatient, frustrated and dissatisfied.

Marriage makes many couples find a new purpose and meaning to life. This is why successful homes are fertile grounds to grow stable children and good springboards to lunch successful career in diverse fields.  

Having a successful marriage involves:

- Compromise

- Giving and expecting no reward in return

- It is a setting where forbearance thrives. 

You must realize that your spouse becomes charming, sweet and special to you if you love and nurture him/her. But if you wait for spouse to be perfect before you truly love him or her, then your marriage would be unsettled.

Don't expect to enjoy your marriage if your sole philosophy is “as you lay your bed, so you lie on it!” Your partner can ruffle things. But you just have to tag along. 

Marriage is an alliance between a man who like to sleep with the lamp on and a woman who likes it off. Perhaps the lamp would be half on and half off!

It is indeed easy to love and be kind to people who love us and are kind to us. However, if someone is a little terse or critical, we become resentful and as critical and unkind as they are. 

But this would not work in marriage. If your partner is pulling the other way, you can turn the situation around by just a little compromise, which is an act of love.

Allowing your spouse to have his or her way is not weakness. Rather, it is love. Marriage is place to give preference to your partners.

- Praise your wife or compliment her new hair style even if you had a bad day at the office. 

- Compliment her cooking even if she forced the wrong meal on you. 

- And, Madam, tell your husband that he is doing great even if times are hard and you wish to scream at him.

Handling Incompatibility Marriage

A popular adage says, “Love is blind”. Yes, this might be true. Love may be blind; but (marital) life isn't! The setting marriage is a place for reality. It comes with complexities and it is filled with tales of the unexpected.  

Note that automatic and inevitable stages of change emerge within the marriage union because when two people come from extremely different backgrounds, there are bound to be compulsory re-adjustments of values, character, and expectations. The ability and willingness to make these adjustments even as the couple remains sweet and loving will determine the success of the marriage.

When couples get married, they necessarily come from two entirely different families. And even though we seek to marry partners we are compatible with, it is very unlikely that you find someone with no differences at all.

Some people get married to those whose stardom, opulence, affluence and or beauty infatuated, yet they do not share the same beliefs and values.  Some are forced to wrongly spouses to cement or sustain family ties, even when the couple not compatible. 

So how would such marriages work; how would they resolve their differences? 

If you perhaps suddenly realize that your spouse is not who (or what) you bargained for, do you just run away or give up? Or do you just fold your arms and conclude that whatever will be, will be? No! 

According to John Fischer, “The success of marriage comes not in finding 'the right' person, but in the ability of both partners to adjust to the real person they inevitably realize they married!” This is very crucial.

  

As married person, you must realize that when you focus on your spouse's weaknesses, you would end up weakening your marriage relationship. You must be determined to blend your differences rather than forcing your partner to become like you.

It is important to note that men and women think differently. Women are usually moved by feelings or intuition while men focus on depths of issues. There is therefore bound to be differences in the way husbands and wives act or react to things.

No matter how bad your beginning may be or how incompatible you are, you can turn things around and become successful lovers. Indeed, “What counts in making a marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility” 

Understanding, compromise and acceptance will help you overcome your differences. This can be achieved firstly through communication and sharing information with your spouse. 

What is it that makes your partner tick? 

What loving thing can you do to make your partner react and relate with you positively? 

What are the things your partner will responds to? These could involve:

Spending time together

Helping at home and other personal tasks 

Giving each other gifts

And verbal appreciation  

Another strong way to handle incompatibility is that you must realize that, loving your partner is a choice. You have to develop the will to love your partner and communicate this to them.

Communication enhances change. It opens a person up for correction, education and direction. It enables you to carry your spouse along and get her (or him) to believe in your values and goals. Communicating with your partner will enable you to candidly and honestly resolve issues, which will definitely emerge. 

As a couple, you need to patiently take time to identify such issues or problems, and resolve them promptly.

How Can I Submit To My Husband When I Am Richer And Older?

The marriage institution is founded on love and it is built and sustained by love. And the greatest catalyst or fertilizer of love in the union is submissiveness. Submission is a precursor to marital love. 

Submissiveness draws a wife closer to her husband and helps her to win his love and respect.

A man naturally likes to have dominion, to win. He is an aggrandizer. He is possessive. He enjoys being pampered, flattered and praised. He wants to hear “You are my hero, my king!” And the best place he can find this is from his wife. 

Men truly love and crave for the company of their wives. She naturally reminds him of the comfort of his mother's breast as a child. This is why a man is usually protective of his mother, whose warm embrace protected and comforted him as a child.

As a wife, you can lock your husband in that same embrace and take the place of his mother in his heart, by obeying him, submitting to him, and pampering him. This way, he would do anything for you.

As a woman, when you submit to your husband, you do not lose your personality or position in the plans of God for your marriage. 

A lady once asked, “Can I marry Tom? He is younger. I'm richer. But love him” The simple answer was “Yes”. 

But she must be ready to submit to him; call him master, my oga, my king; wash his clothes; cook his meal and wake up earlier than everybody else to fix things at home! 

Can you as and older and richer woman do all these and more for a younger guy?

You must realize that, as a woman, if you have all the riches and beauty in this world and yet you are not submissive to your husband, you are the poorest, most distasteful and ugliest woman a man can ever have.

If it is true that love is the foundation of marriage, it is equally true that submissiveness is the oil that will keep the lamp of love burning.