Relationships are kept by love. It is difficult to enforce relationships without affections. Relationships, though defined by responsibilities aren't sustained by mere duties without passionate love. Duties and responsibilities should be offsprings of love.
Many a times, relationships start with affection but it is soon lost to mere duties as responsibilities replace affections and endearments.
When he is asked if he loves his wife, he says yes, and when he is asked why, he says, because he gives her money and takes care of her...
When she is asked if she loves her husband, she says, yes and when she is further asked why, she says because she gives him sex, takes care of the home, and the children, cooking and cleaning!
When they are asked if they talk, take walks together, if they hold hands in public and touch outside touching for sex, they wonder why those are important in marriage, the duties are enough, they only talk, go out together and take walks with friends and not with spouses.
Marital relationships often fall into the trap of duties and routines. The duties are easier to do than to forgive and to forget offenses. It's easier to give money than to sit together and talk over difficult things. It's easier to cook and wash and be preoccupied with children than to walk together down the streets holding hands.
Duties are used as palliatives for our consciences, they become alibis for us against the prodding within us, asking how good we are doing with our married partners.
They justify our anger and disaffections towards each other. We use them to highlight how irresponsibility and ungrateful the other person is and we use them to support our complaints and frustrations.
But does being up and doing with our "responsibilities" and "duties" towards the home and towards one another really bring bonding and happiness in marriage? The answer is No!
Marital relationship, just as any other relationship is sustained by pure love from the heart, affections and endearments that flow from the heart. That feeling that keeps the other person safe in the heart, carried about everywhere even when they aren't present. The feeling that creates that sense of missing one another even after a few minutes of separation. It is friendship but to another level. A commitment beyond mere duties.
Most relationships started with it but it soon fizzles away as duties and responsibilities bring in selfishness and carefulness, destroying the freedom and the friendship that would be needed to sustain the relationship and keep joy and laughter within it.
When duties and responsibilities take over from free flowing love, the relationship then is at the mercy of the forces of duties waiting for the failure of one in carrying out his or her responsibility or duty. Once that failure comes, the relationship falls apart. Meanwhile, love covers multitudes of sins. Love is ready to suffer and make sacrifices. Love when mutual can resist any storm with selflessness, generosity, accommodation and largeness of heart! Love cares less about duties and responsibilities, only seeking how to satisfy the needs of the other, not as a duty made compulsory by society but as driven by love and the good of the other person!
Have you permitted duties and responsibilities to take over the place of love in your heart? Do you rate your spouse's love for you by his or her ability to fulfil his or her responsibilities? Do you rate your love for your spouse just by the responsibilities toward him or her, while you find or give friendship and affection elsewhere? What happens when for certain reasons beyond your control you aren't able to continue with your duties and responsibilities? Will that mean you no longer love him or her, will that be the end of the relationship?
This is why we should rekindle love in our marriages and relationships. Forgive the hurts and the offences, they will always come, don't mind them. Find friendship again within your marriage and let that be the reason for carrying out what should be done. Create freedom for one another within the relationship, let the relationship be strong enough to accommodate mistakes and corrections without them hurting the system. Be the friend you should be to your spouse, don't let pride and ego stop your joy and happiness.
Why not do something unusual for your spouse to rekindle your love life this weekend? Now is the time to be innovative, and do something unusual to spark the plugs of your love life again! You deserve to have a good marriage, you'll need to stop complaining about the rough and hard palm tree, tap the wine instead and fill your gourd with pure wine of love and affection with joy... You deserve it! Go for it, don't be shy and don't be discouraged!
Have a great weekend of love!
Photo Credit: RedHeadsRule/Pixabay
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