By Abdulwarees Solanke
…….Interrogating Value System, Social Considerations Critical Choices and Marital Crises
The real force field of our lives is the value system we adhere to. By force field, I mean those indices that drive our lives as citizens of Nigeria and those factors that constitute restraints on us. They serve as our motivational elements and preventive indicators.
The value system we uphold is one of the shapers of our choices and the compass or regulator of our direction in life. In this context, I will reflect on value systems to which families subscribe and how they influence choices in life as they relate even to marriages.
However, please note that I am not a marriage counsellor, nor a family psychology specialist. I do not even have sufficient experience that can remedy most marital misfortunes or that qualifies me as a family moulding expert.
Yet, I am old enough to observe what kills many marriages, wrecks many homes and shatters many families, having lived among different families and cultures, listened to conflict resolution discussion programmes on air and intervened in marriage disputes of very few friends.
It is an issue of conflicting value systems among many marital mates or spouses and not a lack of love. The attachment or conviction in that value system of each party in the family underscored this.
The value system determines the class one moves in, the company one keeps and one’s choices and preferences. It also colours individual aspirations. Indeed, ambition defines his path and pursuits as well as shapes his orientation and interests.
The basis of communication, association and interaction is the values one upholds. Similarly, individual values condition reactions to any situation. It animates our interests. It also moderates our innate or natural tendencies and instincts.
Now on the choice of marital mates: if in consideration or search for a spouse, you disdain, reject, or trivialise your value system, the likelihood is that sooner or later your marriage will run into a storm as we are supposed to marry our soul mates.
There is a Yoruba adage that roughly translates: “When we meet our soul mates, we become engrossed in animated discussion”.
Who are our soul mates? They are those we share many things in common. They may not necessarily be our husbands or wives in the first instance, nor could they be uterine brothers and sisters.
We do not need to have known them for years before saying “I Do” at a colourful, elaborate ceremony called a wedding, sanctified by a Chief Imam or Presiding Pastor, or before a small crowd of friends and families at the Court Registry. No.
When we are choosing life partners, they are expected to be among those with whom we share common values and outlook on life; with the potential of becoming our soul mates, because when we marry our soul mates, the home will be fun-filled. And, there will always be love in the air. Communication will be honest, open and unhindered.
We will easily know what each is driving at. Things will be mutual. No tendency for competition, but for complementing one another. Body language will be easy to understand between such spouses. No misreading or misjudgment and no suspicion, but respect and honour for each other.
But when the choice of a spouse is based on criteria that discount the commonality of values unless they work to align their different values to forge a common or shared value. Or one party abandons the value he or she is coming from to wholeheartedly assimilate into the new culture or value of the would-be spouse.
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There is little guarantee that the marriage will succeed because, in the future, the crucial index of value they neglected will later come to dominate or determine the health of the family.
This is because the reason for the crash of many families or marriages, or why many homes are disjointed with each party going in different directions in fundamental issues that require unanimity or a common purpose is conflict of values.
So, studying the maladjustment of many children, the disjoining of many families or the collapse of many marriages is likely to be explained as incompatibility. What a euphemism for conflict of values!
I have seen marriages crash because of complaints of disrespect for each other’s parents, treatment or reception of friends. And non-attendance or participation in family festivities. Other complaints may be trivial kinds of stuff that ordinarily could be talked over if they have the same orientation.
Further, if they have mutual respect for the conflict mechanism tools and call facilitators to intervene when a crisis brews. The likelihood is that such facilitators will be accused of being interested parties. And they may not be neutral, depending on his or her orientation or background.
For instance, if you are of a royal class and already groomed in the regal carriage, comportment or character, it will be risky to marry outside the royal class or the aristocracy. This is because royal or aristocratic adaptation takes a long time.
If you are a scholar, your best choice is among those who value scholarship and research. If you are an artisan, find your mate among artisans who appreciate your profession. He or she will easily understand the intricacies of survival in your job.
Also, if you are a Pentecostal, marry a charismatic as a complement in firepower prayers. And if you are Muslim, seek a perfect partner in a mate that would help you build or live the Islamic way of life and lead you on the path of perfection, not one who will drag you out of your fold.
No marriage is immune from conflict but conflicts are easily resolved with the instrumentality of value system parameters. Many people, who have marital crises early or later in their marriages, are victims because they are never sincere or they lack conviction in their original value system or culture.
They are hypocritical in their conviction or subscription, inconsistent or lack depth in and appreciation for it. Such people are merely sitting on its fence, without being fully involved or engaged in it. They are woodpeckers in their fold.
If you must marry outside your value system and succeed at it, know that you must be willing to forego your own. This calls for compromise on your part, assimilation or adaptation, learning, tolerance and sacrifice.
You must be ready to change by developing honour and respect for that strange value, be comfortable with its rites and revere its symbols.
You must learn to familiarise yourself with and advance in its ideology and schools of thought, spiritual orientation or social circles. So you become an adoptee of the new culture or heritage, or ethnic affiliation. And, even religious subscription by conviction in the new value system.
Then, your family can face one direction, uniform in everything to have a home filled with love and affection where children do not take sides based on convenience and prejudices as illustrated in the popular but now rested TV sitcom, Fuji House of Commotion, a disjointed family of conflicting values.
Solanke, an associate of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations is Deputy Director/Head, Strategic Planning & Corporate Development Department, Voice of Nigeria, korewarith@yahoo.com, abdulwarees01@gmail.com
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