She sat before the counselor with tears in her eyes. ‘But, why did you do it’?
The counselor asked. With her heart filled with regret, grief, and pain, she answered.
‘I never intended to cheat on my husband. I have always loved and desired to have a happy, loving marriage and home. Infidelity, adultery, and unfaithfulness are like taboo to me.’
The counselor wanted her to check into the inner recesses of her heart and try to see how she got to that point. Sincerity and soul search are also a part of the healing process and therapy.
It is also important to know that, until certain steps and boundaries are set in marriage, we may find ourselves on unsafe grounds.
Eventually, Mrs Ojo was able to come up with something.
‘I think it happened because deep down in my heart, I was looking for how my deepest needs as a woman will be met. I met Bode and in a short while, he was meeting my needs and quenching my longings. He was a friend. He listened, cared, and was sensitive. I fell for it only to realize, it’s always better to stick to my marriage, make things work, and stop looking outside my marriage for a quick fix.
The counselor tried to balance things for Mrs Ojo.
Can You Quench My Longings?
Here are his submissions.
1. Just as you have deep needs, so does your husband. It will be selfish of you to focus on only your own needs. Marriage is for mutual benefit.
2. Never assume or conclude your husband cannot meet your needs. He definitely can learn.
3. Communication is very essential in marriage. Talk about your needs, and be sincere. Let your husband know. Marriage is for bliss, not for blisters or an endurance journey
4. Never look outside your marriage for fulfillment, satisfaction, affection, affirmation, compliments, appreciation, or happiness.
Can You Quench My Longings?
5. You, as much as your husband need to learn how to meet each other’s needs. Marriage is an unending school where learning is continuously necessary.
6. The temptation to cheat on your spouse must be fought with all your might. Cheating is senseless and in the end full of regrets.
7. Repentance and restoration are very important after infidelity so as to put an end to it.
Wendy is frustrated. She has been involved in several relationships that never worked and she is beginning to think she is cursed. All her friends are married and she seemed to be the only one left. The more desperate she became, the more relationships and marriage were evading her. She has prayed, fasted, and cried, and she doesn’t know what to do again.
On the other hand, George had so many girls he sleeps with regularly, and he feels that is being a man. Sadly he is misinformed and confused. He fails to realize that he has been sucked into a cycle of sexual perversion with damning consequences and only God can save him if he is genuinely repentant. The more he did that, the more he frustrates and truncates the plan of God for him in this area.
John and Comfort are married but are not enjoying their marriage one bit. They got married without knowing the purpose of marriage, hence abuse set it. They are both well-read and educated, but unfortunately, you are not taught how to run a marriage in school. You are left with deliberate tutoring through self-development or through mentors.
So now, the question is “How do you know the purpose of a relationship/marriage is being abused?
Uncovering Relationship Anomalies
1. When you start a relationship experimentally
You see, a relationship or marriage as the case may be is not supposed to be an experiment. It is something you initiate deliberately and purposefully. It is an institution created by God, and as such it should be held sacred.
When God began the marriage institution, He had something in mind. He was not performing an experiment but he was deliberately packaging a purposeful institution. So, the moment you do anything experimentally, you have moved away from the original intention, hence the consequences.
In experimental relationships, you say “Let‘s see whether this will work out.” Before it begins, you already perfected the exit strategy. I really don‘t think this is what God wants from us.
2. When you are involved in sexual sins
During friendship or courtship, it is the mind that should be aligned, not the body.
When the body comes together in a sexual relationship before marriage, the light of God’s word is tampered with because of violation and confusion enters the soul!
One common statement you will hear from people who are compromised is “I am confused!”
They know it is wrong, and yet they are held in the embrace of sin because an illegal bonding has been formed. It takes God and guts to break such.
On the other hand, when married couples make love, it strengthens them more. It is for this reason that the scripture says a couple should not deny each other!
Uncovering Relationship Anomalies
3. When you objectify your lover
Objectification of people is relationship abuse. The purpose of that lady in your life is not to satisfy your rush of adrenaline. Reducing a lady that God created in His image to a mere sexual object for pleasure is gross abuse.
When the lady sees the husband as her ATM, it is also abuse. He is not in your life to buy weekly recharge cards while you are giving sex. This is an abuse of what God intended.
4. When you start a relationship while still bitter and hurting
I have said it over and over again, you don’t begin a relationship immediately after getting off one because you want to prove a point or you want to get back at your ex. At that point, your reasoning is impaired and your definition of love has been warped by the recent experience.
It is always good to take a break for about six months and allow yourself to heal. Wisdom says you should find out what went wrong with the first one before you dabble into another. If you have had several relationships broken over and over again, it is not about a curse anywhere, it is just that you lack wisdom and you are abusing the purpose of a relationship.
You don’t enter a relationship because you want the person to fill some emptiness in your soul. Only Jesus Christ can fill your emptiness with His Spirit! If you haul a job meant for God on a guy or a lady, you will end up frustrating that person! After a broken relationship, take your time. Ask questions. Why did it go wrong?
Don’t jump into the next available arms just to deal with hurts and wounds. When you do that, you will get hurt the more, because you have not followed the right process. Never ever try to give sex in order to get attention or love. It will never work that way. Young ladies, drum that into your head and carry yourselves with some dignity!
In today’s devotional, I delve into the captivating yet dark territory of toxic relationships. I will shed light on a destructive pattern often disguised as affection. By understanding the signs and consequences, we empower ourselves and others to break free from such harmful bonds.
For married couples who think they are in such, nobody is asking you to leave as a first resort, but to do all in your strength to seek counsel and intervention, so that you will not continue to suffer unnecessarily.
A lot of people are in toxic relationships or even marriages without knowing.
As a result of low self-esteem, they keep coping with it, thinking that if they let go, nobody else will find them.
What is one major pattern of a toxic relationship? Let’s look at it.
Pattern Of A Toxic Relationship
Emotional Manipulation:
A common sign of a toxic relationship is emotional manipulation.
Your partner is always right while you are always wrong! Through logical explanations, anger, guilt-tripping, gaslighting, stonewalling, your partner maintains control and holds you by the jugular!
This is not only toxic but abusive as well.
As singles contemplating marriage and already in this kind of situation, your best bet is to run!
Run, run, run! There is fire on the mountain.
This is where self-esteem comes in because most singles will not run because of what they think they are getting in terms of monetary tips!
To subject yourself to such horror because of some paltry sums is not only a sign of profound low self-esteem, but also a sign that you don’t love yourself and don’t know exactly what you are looking for.
The reason you need to run is that God is doing everything possible to show you who you are dealing with.
Don’t ever delude yourself saying the person will change later. Marriage changes nobody! And what you are even seeing now is just a rehearsal of what eventually awaits.
Pattern Of A Toxic Relationship
As I said, married couples should seek intervention through therapy, separation or divorce is not usually the first resort because that is another clime that comes with its puzzles and contradictions with lasting negative consequences for the parties and especially the children!
Meditation:Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark?2 Corinthians 6:14 (MSG)
God literarily wrote our love story while we were on campus! U can tell you truthfully I never prayed concerning who to get married to! Not once! In fact, I would say God interrupted me with marital vibes while I was just serving Him! That love story is not concluded yet, we are just in Chapter 23 now!
Nobody can tell me otherwise! God writes love stories! The whole scripture is the story of God’s love towards humanity!
How can you become one of the main characters in the many love stories that God spins and weaves every day? Follow me and let me take you on a journey to the land of divine romance orchestrated by God Himself!
When God Writes Your Love Story
1. The Factor of Mercy
Turn my way, look kindly on me, as you always do to those who personally love you.
God must have mercy on you! That is the beginning of the love story! God will usually have mercy on those who love Him, pursue Him and serve Him! I told you I was busy serving God when He came to me and pointed out my wife to me! God can have mercy on your relationship or marriage!
2. The Factor of His Word
Steady my steps with your Word of promise so nothing malign gets the better of me.
You must journey in His word daily to understand His plan for your life. Know this and know peace! Encourage your fiancee or spouse to be a student of the word!
When God Writes Your Love Story
3. The Factor of Rescue
Rescue me from the grip of bad men and women so I can live life your way.
God is interested in frustrating the intentions of bad lovers who are pretending to access your life and live your heart broken! God will deliver you from those who are froward and are not ready for any commitments!
4. The Factor of Favour
Smile on me, your servant; teach me the right way to live.
When God smiles on you, things become easy! Single or married, always pray that God should smile on you! Never do things that will cut you off from His favour as singles or married!
5. The Factor of Obedience
I cry rivers of tears because nobody’s living by your book!
Tears came because nobody is living by the book! Relationships will break, and hearts will be shattered when God’s word is despised and when His injunctions are disregarded! An example is cohabiting, evidenced by premarital sex! It all ends in tears! Another example is infidelity! Rivers of tears await!
May that not be your portion in Jesus’ name! Good Morning!
Foolishness is not something you want to court in any way.
Being married to a foolish person is a decision to afflict oneself for a long time.
It is therefore in order to prayerfully approach marriage. How do you even know a person is foolish?
We have all made some foolish decisions in the past, or some foolish mistakes, but to habitually live foolishly is no virtue at all.
The Foolish Lover
Let’s look at a few ways you can know a foolish lover
Resistance to wisdom and discipline
Pro 1:7 (AMPC) The reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord is the beginning and the principal and choice part of knowledge [its starting point and its essence]; but fools despise skillful and godly Wisdom, instruction, and discipline. [Psa 111:10]
A foolish lover will have no regard for the pursuit of wisdom.
A foolish lover takes no instruction from anyone.
A foolish lover thinks they know it all.
A foolish lover feels insulted when their spouse in advising or correcting them
A foolish lover has nobody correcting them. Not even their parents.
A foolish lover hates discipline with a passion. They are submitted to know one, and they take instructions from know one.
Marrying a fool is like entering one chance!
Your only resort would be to continue to pray!
The Foolish Lover
How do you recognize a fool?
Pro 15:2 KJV The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.
A fool has mouth diarrhea. When they open their mouth, foolishness will emerge.
Take a look at The Message Translation:
Pro 15:2 (MSG) Knowledge flows like spring water from the wise; fools are leaky faucets, dripping nonsense.
Wow!
Fools are leaky faucets, annoyingly dripping nonsense.
Imagine living, surrounded by nonsense?
It is the reason you want to “shine” your eyes before making a marital decision, and not just because of some hot legs or some bum!
What if you are already married and you feel…
Rule No 1; Never call your spouse foolish!
Rather prayerfully approach how you can turn things around. Read a book together, discuss sermons after church, lovingly bring up the issue of mentorship…and so on.
