Understand your partner before taking your marriage vows

Listening to radio stations in the morning forces one to critically think about marriage and relationships. Callers to the stations speak openly about the pain and anguish that they experience. What cuts through, though is that the callers seem to express shock and disbelief at what they consider dramatic changes in the other person.

Just this week one of the radio stations hosted a discussion on the changes that occur when women get better jobs. Several men called in and expressed frustration with what they considered negative changes in their wives or partners, once they got better jobs and opportunities.

On other occasions women have also called in with their share of horror stories of men who get better jobs and change dramatically for the worse.

Listening to the account of such changes, I keep thinking that the things money should change about you fundamentally are; it will change the clothes you wear and the house you live in, but those are superficial changes.

Money should not change the loving, caring and honest person that you were. My take then is that it is possible that the persons, who are considered to have been changed for the worse by the money, were always that way at the core, but that the partner did not know of it.

Many people of my time and before will remember older people advising young people to do background checks on their future spouses to establish whether there were thieves or witches in the family.

I am sure many of us will also remember taking that literary and wondering why you should be bothered about the rest of the family; in the view of most young persons, they were not marrying the family, so it did not matter that they were sorcerers or thieves.

The young people completely overlooked that fact that the person they sought to marry was not only a product of his parent’s DNA but even more of the socialisation of by the family.

I caught myself talking to young lawyers that I work with: I said “Guys. I never thought that I would be the one to say this but listen, you need to know the background of the person that you intend to marry.” When they looked at me quizzically I said that it does not mean that you know his three names, and where his parents live. I mean that you take an interest and find out his core values. As you might not get to know his core values by just being with him, meeting and knowing his family deeper might help. I caught myself repeating a phrase that I learnt many years ago and that brought it home for me; that we are born male and female but society makes us men and women.
My understanding of that phrase is that children are born without any values. They are taught by their parents, teachers, and others on what is considered good behaviour in the family and society. Girls learn how to be daughters, sisters, friends, wives, and mothers. Boys learn how to be sons, brothers, friends, husbands and fathers.

Your future spouse was not born a husband or wife; he was taught by his family and later by teachers and peers. If you got to know who brought up your future spouse, you will have a fair idea of the basic values they learnt because “a fruit does not fall far from the tree.”

If I was asked to tell people entering into relationships what to look for, I would repeat what the elders told us but I would break it down like this; there are all sorts of reasons for getting married. Things like physical attractiveness, making good money, being a nice person. However, the one thing you really need to say before you marry is “we share the same basic values!”

My take is that it is not about marrying a person from your country, tribe or religion but about sharing core values.