Do Not Allow Marriage To Set You Against Your Relatives

                         We all know this but very few among many do their best to put it into practice because of the sad realities that usually show up at the tail end of it.
While putting up the materials for this very post, many ideas came to my mind as to how to present it without unnecessarily cutting at some of my readers deeply and cause any pain, but while that was racing through my mind, I also realized that for anything to work out well in any areas of this life, it has to carry some bit of touchy effects to accomplish its intended purposes.

 So if this write touches or pricks at some of the wrong spots, please accept my apologies and if possible, swallow your pride and move on with the necessary adjustments to right whatever wrongs you may had  allowed to fester with time. 
Do it because it worth any sacrifices you can make.

The Big Question To Start With Is, WHO ARE YOU?!

 This is an old time question that we have individually answered and had kept on answering as long as we are alive with the breaths of life still passing through our nostrils.

 Several things may lead to the above question and we owe it as an obligation to give satisfying answers to the inquirers at any time.

But what happens if the same question gets thrown to another person, would the person give a befitting answers in your behalf without unnecessarily adding other hidden facts to qualify it with some lies or exaggerations?

  SEE ALSO: HOW TO STAY MARRIED DESPITE THE CHALLENGES

Let us consider some common scenerios that may make it necessary for someone else to speak in a person's behalf

 There are many instances that may call for this but I will for the sake of this post narrow it down to  Marriage and our Relationships with the extended family members as commonly practiced in African cultures.

Enough apologies to my Western audiences because this may sound a bit awkward to your cultural values which is bit far different from the African traditions. I'm sorry because this post has a lot to do with African ways of life. Thank you!

Traditional marriage in Zulu S/Africa / answersafrica.com

  It is a common thing around the world for two persons in love with each other to take their friendship to some higher levels by marrying themselves irrespective of their cultural differences, races and traditions as long as they agree to stick with one another come what may, as husband and wife; especially as man and woman even though many twists has recently been added to marital unions.

 Same sex marriages, marrying of one's self or getting married to anything of choice be it an animal or a tree. It's all about choices and preferences but here, we are dwelling on marriage between man and woman.

SEE ALSO: SOME EFFECTIVE WAYS TO TRAIN OUR CHILDREN

Marriages in Africa are usually welcomed with great joys among friends and relatives of the both partners in love. Sometimes it would be within the same community, other times it will involve two persons from different tribes even countries afar off, having different skin colors and other differences but true love knows no such as barriers to their intimacies, ask why it is taking place like that and you would be reminded that true 'love' is blind and knows no bounds but with keen eyes on the person he or she loves.

Before that marriage, we were like this

So it goes and probably your son, daughter, brother, or sister chooses  to marry the man or the woman of their choice and family life begins from there with all the rests and whatever problems and oppositions they may have encountered on the way because of the their love for each other now turns a history.

 As they continued with their love life and gradually other blessings ensued in terms of some additional good things of life and probably with the fruits of the womb and things were taking some needed shapes in the family because the man is working hard to make sure that his family lacked nothing, doing everything within his power to keep his growing family on the list of those to be reckoned with in the society or the neighborhood where they are live.

Where Some Men Get Things Wrong

   Whether or not you marry from your locality is not the issue here because it applies to all marriages, but mostly the inter-tribal/racial marriages. Some men, once they are married, considers themselves freed from all the responsibilities from their father's house and takes some steps further to empower their wives to serve as their shields against anybody or anything that would likely come to him from his biological family for help or for any other thing.

This is one order that women like most and trust some of our ever loyal women wives, even if there are not obedient in other areas, the need to live undisturbed from anyone is usually their best.

 For sure, they would be ready to carry your instructions to the highest degrees, even to your utmost surprises as the case may be sometimes.

SEE ALSO WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MARRIAGE

     While the stage you set with your own hands is gradually gaining grounds with the gap between you and your parents and the rest of the family becoming wider, along with every other things that has to do with the community you hails from taking the same route, before you knows what is happening, your wife and children would have been completely brainwashed by you into believing that all that has to with your parents, relatives are bad and not to be associated with.

   Yes, the man, as if in a lecture hall, is always narrating to his wife and children of how wicked his people were and what made him to leave home, marry outside their hometown, established his business outside his hometown and probably abandoned the house he has built there and now manages either with the house he build outside his hometown or even in a rented apartment, just enough of anything capable of soiling their already damaged minds of their father's families back home or even within the town where they live.

At times, some also wrongly accuse religion of being the cause of such unbecoming attitudes, but what of those of the same religious background? If I may ask.

Men like this hardly go home to see how their people are doing as is customarily expected of them; not that they could not afford the money or the means to do so, but just  out of some pure neglect of their duties as sons, not only their parents, but the community they come from.

Additional Reasons For Getting Things Done Wrongly By Some Men

  As I said earlier, this usually happen to a man who married outside his hometown and consequently fails to perform his duties right by having and maintaining cordial relation with his relatives and with high mindedness that he is well off believing that nothing would connect him with them as long as some deceptive thinking are blinding his eyes of reasoning. (WEALTH WHICH CAN GROW WINGS ANYTIME AND FLY AWAY).

 When the unexpected comes calling, the probably innocent wife and children are usually held as the culprits whereas it was the man that spoiled their innocent minds while they on their own were simply obeying him to their detriment and by extension, that of the irresponsible husband and father.

 The only exception to this may be someone who is accursed by his own people to behave like that, because some people really do perform wonders with their African black magics. That is by the way and probably another topic for days or years to come. So, never mind.

Other Facts To Bear In Mind When The Questions Starts Coming Up

When such a man is to be inquired about from a third party, how do you expect the replies to be like?

While you are thinking about how the answer should go, let's get on with some basic realities;

1.  The fact that we married away from our immediate locality is never a license to disregard where we come from and treat our cultural values as nothing.

2. For the reason that we are prosperous outside our hometown shouldn't be a reason why we have to disregard the places of our origin.

3. We can never be wiser than our parents and other elderly ones from our villages just because we've gotten some exposures from the outside world so to say. Do you know where they might have been and still retain their home identity?

4. If our parents have not remembered where they hailed from, we would have been busy claiming another man's land with the true sons and daughters of the soil. Forget what the handwritten laws and constitutions may say and accept the reality, you are a foreigner.

5. If we stay put in a foreign land, we and our children would for all times remain foreigners. No roots in the real sense of it.

In all, we can pride and deceive ourselves with the flitting natures of material things, but the realities remain that the shame of face remains ours even when we might have long passed away because our children, if we raised any, would continue with the instability we left them with. But that we wouldn't deliberately ever wish to do.

Our Responsibilities As The Family Heads - Facts And Figures

 If you have stayed for too long in a place far from your place of origin, it is a high time you get yourself organized and do the necessary thing; for it was never in vane that God allowed you to come from that particular place.

 If what you are doing outside your hometown is not genuine enough to keep you there,  why waste your time lavishly on what's not working?

 Why retain that title which you knows very well that you does not deserve in the real sense of it?

 Why everything outside and nothing inside?

 Your name is everywhere in the town and on the lips of all the people there but no one knows who you are in the village where you come from because you never go home nor bothers to care about them year in year out. why! why!! why!!!?.

 Let us excuse religion from this because you neither serve as any missionary nor was driven out of your hometown because of your religious beliefs, even if you are, time would have addressed some of the issues.

It is also a known fact that we do not know what tomorrow holds concerning our lives, but let's not overly leave our burial places for chances at that. Even if we are to be buried outside our place of origin, which is not a crime per say, may that not be due to no choice of where we are to be laid down because of uncertainties of who really our relatives are or in confusion of where we originated from.

 Some may argue that it doesn't really matter much as long as one is laid to rest in any place. Well, that may sound true to some extent but not in its entirety. As a person I do believe in the resurrection of the dead ones, but still, our burial places still serves some purposes to retain a person's dignities even though he is completely lifeless and means nothing all the time he is to remain there as mere sand until God calls him up from the dead. For the believers in the resurrection only! Act 24:15.

May we not create confusion for our children and the woman who had left her family irrespective of what custom they had and has vowed to spend the rest of her life with us as our sweetheart and mother of our children.
 Though we do not know how it is all going to end but let us act in such a way that we don't necessarily make things difficult for them and our children.

  If before now, you are the very type that had stayed far away from your place of origin for too long or does not feel like going home at all even when it is in the power of your hand to do or be doing so, why not reconsider your reasons for that and have things readjusted accordingly?

 Today is still early as long as you can still do it and I believe that you could always, because you have not come to your end and may not likely do that anytime soon! I,m sure you agree with me.

 Some unfounded reasons why some people ignores going to or cares about their hometowns

(1.) The villagers are bad and demonic

(2.) They will kill me and my children

(3.) Am comfortable here in the town

(4.) My biological family members are too demanding

(5.) They hate my wife etc.......

  All of the above are all unfounded reasons and perhaps the ones we cooked up our selves or allowed the woman we married to make up and fed us with for her dubious motives if she is the wicked and greedy type that married you for a selfish purpose.

we should always be mindful of what it could cause us on the long run

   If you regularly visits home, the villagers will know you as their own and you will also know them and the reasons for fearing each other would be highly reduced.

  That would also save you the unnecessary and unfounded fears that usually grip you when you or your wife and children falls sick at home due to an ordinary change of environment or if your vehicle develops minor or major mechanical problem as the results of the wears from the long distance  journey and things like that. All of these could happen in any place, even worst.

  Allow your children to know where their father come from because that is equally their origin and let them have some senses of responsibilities towards home for it is their rights to know how things are done there to some reasonable extents.

 No matter how highly placed you may be or aspires to be in the future, one thing remains that you started from somewhere and would definitely end it somewhere but not just anywhere preferably. Or what do you think?

Moreover, if any of your children stands up tomorrow to take up that which you were known for when you was younger and had that vitality of a capable man, the once real you, they could easily be related with and the fun life continue as it used to be even with more admiration from your well wishers both young and old ones alike.

      Take for instance some late musicians or elderly ones whom either one of their sons or daughters takes after them and continues from where they stopped, how long do you think it takes them to build up fans and followers? Very easy! unlike the new start ups because their late or aged father or mother had built that for them and only for them to continue from where they stopped.

 When you hear the voices of the late Fela's sons, Oliver de Coque son, Captain Muddy Ibe son, Chief Osita Osadebe son and many other musicians that you could think of, and if you are outside Nigeria, think of your own country and those old or late musicians whose children has taken after them and try to understand what I,m trying to bring out here.

Burial ceremony of the late popular Nigerian musician Oliver De coque / martelkapale.unblog.fr

 That was so because they all know their roots and what they are known for in the societies during the hay days of their fathers so to say.

   Now let me ask, would that have been possible if their fathers had brainwashed them with all the unnecessary hate speeches of how one Mr XYZ of 19..... nearly killed or useless-ed their uncle during one land dispute or the other and eventually the village chief did this or that leading to all the uncalled for....., which made you to leave your brothers and all that has to do with them to start your life all alone in an unknown land and had since then not asked after them..... right up to this sorry stages of your vain life, that if put in a vehicle to take you back to your village, if at all you could still identify where you come from, may not reach there alive because of old age and disjointed ankle and joints?

  No matter what, it is better to do it yourself and realize that there are not just a day of reckoning but years of reckonings if you didn't play your role as a father well,  than to have your innocent wife and children vomit all they had enjoyed while with you as their caring father and husband.

May they not regret ever having you as their father at the tail end of it all. Make them to be proud of who you are and when asked either from them or someone else of who really YOU are or were?, even if you are already late, they would be happy and proud to relate without mincing words, the legacy and all that you left for them as a loving father.

Keep your family always in the good frames of mind and see it reflect back at you

  Please, spare them the shame of face that results from you not doing the right thing when you had the opportunity.