Welcome to this week’s edition of our style by ABBA Pep talk⠀
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Today we will be talking about compatibility for marriage.⠀
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If your marriage is going to succeed, you’ll need more than human love. Love, at least the way we understand it, is never going to be enough. Butterflies in the tummy and emotional excitement is certainly not sufficient if your marriage will thrive. ⠀
For your marriage to succeed, you and your partner must be compatible on a whole lot of levels beyond physical attraction and today, we’ll be looking at the different aspects of compatibility needed for a marriage to be successful⠀
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1. Spiritual compatibility- If you’re a Christian, you know very well that you can’t marry an unbeliever and this isn’t even about discrimination, It’s about being within the family because if you get married to someone who doesn’t understand your values, your marriage will be very rocky and probably won’t succeed. When you marry within your family, both of you understand what is truly important, your values and outlook are similar and thus, decision making becomes easier. So, it’s always better to marry someone within your spiritual family.
2. Emotional Compatibility – Every one has a history that affects and/alters them in some way, positively or negatively. So we are basically a combination of nature and nurture. We can have a certain nature but our childhood experiences shape us emotionally and mentally and for some, that shaping can be good or bad. For example, someone who was raised up in a broken home could see life differently from someone who was raised up by both parents, with love and care. The two perspectives to life for these two people will definitely be different and it isn’t that they cannot get married but there has to be enough communication between them if the marriage will work. Both of them have to be open about their fears and habits, especially their coping habits so the other person understands what is going on at any point in time. There will have to be alot of patience and forgiving, extremes, assumptions and exaggerations, so both parties must determine if they are willing to do the work. Emotional compatibility means that you understand the person to an extent and are able to work with them and stand by them through their life journey.⠀
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3. Mental Compatibility: Both of you have to be able to communicate on a certain level in a way that makes sense to both of you. If you love politics, communicating with a partner whose only interest is shopping will definitely cause a lot of friction. This is why men marry women who stop developing themselves and when the man gets to a particular stage and start to interact with more people in his field, the wife feels left out. As a man or woman, it is necessary you make sure that you’re mentally compatible with your partner so that at every phase of your life both of you are on the same page no matter what career path you’re on. You should be able to contribute intelligibly to your spouse’s conversation. One of the ways to do this well is to be interested in fields that interest your partner. You have to sow the seeds first and reap the rewards.
4. Financial compatibility: This is more of a mindset thing than having the wealth physically. For both partners, your outlook on wealth should be somewhat familiar and best case scenarios occur when one partner staffs the weakness of the other partner, with their strength. So If you’re a spender for example, it is best to marry a saver. If you marry a fellow spender, you’ll be in trouble. If you’re a saver and you marry someone exactly like you, giving would be a big problem in your home. Financial compatibility is about understanding your financial outlook to see how much both of you can work together to achieve financial goals, whether independent or together. And also strengthening your weakness. Money is very very important so this must never be taken for granted.⠀
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5. Futuristic Compatibility: Both of you need to have an idea of what your future would look like – your goals, career path etc and discuss it so you don’t have unpleasant surprises in the middle of the ‘marriage’ road. Questions like, what is the future looking like? How many kids do we want? Where are we going to live’ been asked? What are our future ambitions and what sacrifices does it require of us? These questions need to be asked and more, so everyone has an idea before commitments are made. Of course, we can only know in part but as far as we know, talk about it. The beautiful thing about discussing futuristic compatibility before marriage is that it’s easier when one’s mind is receptive and open. When you get married and bring in new ideas the person might feel trapped with having to agree with your decisions because they are married to you. More like it wasn’t part of the agreement. It’s always best to present all the cards before marriage to avoid problems and for your partners to feel they’re making the decision out of their own volition not because they’re already married to you.
6. Physical compatibility – This is intentionally the last but unfortunately, this is where people focus on first. It’s actually very important but it’s the last on the list. It’s actually important that you are physically attracted to whoever you get married to, but not at the expense of the points earlier raised. But after crossing the Ts and dotting the Is, attraction is not a wrong thing. A man of God once humorously said that if you know that you like a woman with a pointed nose, marry one. Though this might sound funny, it’s actually the truth. But really, on a grand scale, when someone satisfies the deepest needs of your heart, even when they don’t look like what you wanted, you will start to fall in love with them because love is about satisfying the deepest needs of our heart. This is what makes people cheat on their partners, because they found someone who satisfies the needs deep within them. I would say make sure that you get married to someone you’re compatible with, on all levels and you’re attracted to, still. Another man of God humorously said nobody is ugly, just that they haven’t gotten money and that’s the truth. There’s almost no ugly celebrity. They all look dapper and sharp. It’s not only when you look closely that you start to see the gaps. But really, we are all beautiful in out own ways. Some need a little shining, others needs alot more shining and some others don’t need shining at all, but we’re all beautiful in our own ways. ⠀
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Thank you for coming to our pep -talk and have an amazing weekend.
Aijay Ufomadu