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Making Hedges in Your Couple III; Master What You See

01/04/2020 by Evans Chama 1 Comment

Three areas in need of personal hedges

The three aspects include: eyes, actions and the mind for the internal personal hedges.

Eyes

The attraction begins with the eyes, and where you focus your eyes matters. So, you can ask: who’s that person who draws the attention of your eyes? How are you managing that?

Actions

To be attracted to someone is natural, and it’s harmless in itself. But the words and actions by which you respond to that attraction matter. Do you speak to that person, respecting that you are already in a relationship? Or do you speak in the way that oversteps the boundaries of decency, self-respect and respect for the other?

Mind

The mind can make you wonder, drift, but you need to tell yourself: I’m married, probably the other too. Some people would argue: I have not slept with her or him, so, it’s nothing. Infidelity is not just physical sexual intercourse; it can also be simply emotional attachment. You are so attached emotionally to another woman or man more than you are to your partner.

Hints, something is happening

Indeed, you may have not slept with that person, and you continue to claim there’s nothing; however, watch out for following signs:

Firstly, if you desire to be alone with that person, and the presence of others becomes disturbing, then, there’s something there.

Secondly, when you feel it’s not safe for your partner to know all that you talk about with that person. Can you tell your spouse all that you talk about? If there’s something embarrassing that you can’t share with your partner, it’s a good sign of a probable overstepping of boundaries.

Signs of stepping boundaries

So, here’s how you can tell if your relationship is getting beyond boundaries: Secrecy, emotional intimacy and sexual chemistry.

Secrecy

Hiding feelings and actions in a friendship is a sign that something else is going on.

Emotional intimacy

When you begin to find support and companionship outside more than from your partner, something is happening. You begin to reveal intimate issues with that person, even things you hardly share with your partner; you begin to find consolation in that other person, and not from your partner.

So, you can introspect yourself; Who’s that person before whom you are pouring out your most intimate feelings? Is it your spouse, or someone else? On which shoulder do you long to lean and cry when things are hard for you?

Sexual chemistry

Gary Chapman calls it “trigger,” the feeling that a person is attractive to you. It’s not evil to be attracted; but then, when you realise that you are not married to the person, it’s an indicator that the relationship is going beyond boundaries. So, how are you dealing with those feelings?

If you have those elements; and you don’t run away, that is, you are not bothering to keep a distance, but rather go on to have exclusive moments with that person, then, you have all it takes to fall into infidelity.

Internal hedges as couple

Improving effective communication and managing well conflicts to enhance intimacy and friendship. This will help to bring about satisfaction in a relationship, hence, there will be little temptation to go and seek it outside. A certain woman said: I don’t just feel loved enough; I’m married but I’m kind of always longing for someone, I don’t know who, who will love me.

How do you feel about your spouse? Satisfied? Unsatisfied? And what are you doing about it?

For now, feel free to encourage and inspire others by a comment or a contribution in the comment space below the post. Join us on WhatsApp or Facebook group named: COUPLES’ CORNER. You can also subscribe on my blog, https://singlehumanity.com/ to receive new postings by email.

See also:

The Threat to Your Couple; Making Hedges II

Making a hedge in Your Couple I

Wrong Partner II; Infidelity in a Familiar Kitchen!

When You Feel You Have a Wrong Partner

When Men Choose a partner

Choosing your conjugal partner

Recovering the Lamb in your Spouse

When You Fall in love

Couples’ Corner: New Series for your Couple

The Threat to Your Couple; Making Hedges II

22/03/2020 by Evans Chama 1 Comment

The hedges in your couple, against who or against what?

Before you can create whatever fence, you should know the enemy or the threat. Against who, are you protecting your couple? Where’s the enemy?

In fact, there are both external and internal threats. It means, what’s going to pose a threat to the marriage is not just something out there, but also from the couple itself.

External enemy

As external enemy, we have persons out there who:

have no values of fidelity

have no respect for what belongs to others

desire or who are attracted to your spouse

or attract your spouse

Besides, we are a living in a society with easy interactions with little boundaries: through school, work, church, and easy means of communication.

The organisation of the traditional society, with its mechanism of separation doesn’t just work today. You are married man, married woman; but you share the same workspace with someone’s husband or wife. You can hate each other, or you can also be super friends, to the point of becoming even intimate friends, even more intimate than you are with your partner. And there you have the recipe for things to happen.

Given such exposure, it becomes necessary to have in place measures of protection, as hedges against the external intrusion.

Apart from these external “threats” there are also internal ones.

Internal enemy

What may provoke unfaithfulness are not just bad people out there, but also the partners themselves in the couple. This can take different forms. It can either be the weakness of the partners as individuals or the weakness of the relationship, as a couple.

As couple

A couple that is living in a chronic conflictual relationship, and where there’s serious lack of friendship between partners, is vulnerable to infidelity. I can add also, to say that, a couple that is seriously handicapped economically is vulnerable. In fact, if you look at some of the reasons people engage in sexual relationship -money is one of them. It’s just a reality of our society. The satisfaction that partners don’t get from their relationship will be sought elsewhere.

As individual partners

Partners, as individuals, may become vulnerable to infidelity due to number factors. The quality of the relationship can either make them strong or susceptible. An unhappy couple may tempt partners to seek outside what they don’t get in their relationship. Other personal factors may include:

Type of work they do, especially if it involves frequent and prolonged absence from home.

Their upbringing also counts, especially the type of family in which they grew up; was fidelity a value for their parents?

And it depends also on the moral virtues of the partner, the capacity to be faithful to their commitment.

What type of hedges?

External

Declare your relationship: Let people know of your relationship. Marrying before civil or religious authorities is a way of rendering public your relationship. Be proud of your partner, don’t be ashamed to introduce them to your friends or workmates and be ready to speak about them in a positive way. In that way, you are not selling yourself out as someone in need of rescue from a miserable couple.

Ideally, it’s important for a couple to be living together; prolonged absence doesn’t render good service to marriage.

Don’t expose yourself, or your partner, unnecessarily to danger. (The social etiquette for the Bemba of Zambia, a man who comes and finds his friend absent but only the friend’s wife, normally he shouldn’t stay. Of course, it depends on the number of situations, especially when there’s no one else around. Why?

An unbridled familiarity can lead to trouble. It’s good to bear in mind that there are not rare cases where problems in a couple are triggered, not by strangers, but close family friends.

In fact, when there’s a problem in a couple, there’s tendency to compare your spouse with their friends to point of entertaining the dream: “I wish I was married to his or her friend -I would have been better off.”

When you are harbouring such thoughts towards your partner’s friends, then, it’s important to take precautions in the way you interact with them. When you appreciate the risk, you take the necessary steps to mitigate it.

Internal

For internal hedges, you think of those concerning the individual partners and as couple collectively.

Internal personal hedges

Cultivating values of fidelity and being coherent with one’s commitment. Know yourself: know your strengths and your weakness, and then act appropriately. That is, know what renders you vulnerable: alcohol? Desire for money? Then, know the safety valves to put in place: what amount to drink, where and in which company?

Why do I insist on knowing yourself and putting in place safety nets? It’s because often people begin with no intention of committing adultery, but they end up in it.

Knowing oneself includes also admitting that you are vulnerable. You are not stronger than anyone else. You are human being; you are attracted by others, and you also attract some people. There’s nothing wrong with that; what matter is what you do thereafter, taking into account of the existing relationships. How careful are you about putting hedges in place?

Do you have a crush on someone? How are you handling it? Don’t deny it. Admit you are feeling something for someone and then “run away”, if you must.

The situation worsens when you don’t want to accept and to face what’s going on, and so, you don’t run away. “There’s nothing”, you say, and so you put no hedges. If you don’t admit there’s something to hurt you, you won’t run away. You shall be caught up.

Running away is not about avoiding people, but rather, facing what’s happening and taking the respectable distance, especially avoiding those situations where you see yourself defenceless.

Eyes, actions and the mind are three areas in need of hedges, where internal and personal threats are concerned. But we shall develop that in the next chat.

For now, feel free to encourage and inspire others by a comment or a contribution in the comment space below the post. Join us on WhatsApp or Facebook group named: COUPLES’ CORNER. You can also subscribe on my blog, https://singlehumanity.com/ to receive new postings by email.

Making a hedge in Your Couple I

08/03/2020 by Evans Chama 2 Comments

What is a hedge? A hedge or hedgerow is a fence formed by closely growing bushes or trees which serve as boundary and as barrier against intrusion.

What’s a couple? Here we refer to the conjugal couple, that is, man and woman who are committed to each other in an intimate and exclusive relationship.

And so, when we talk of making a hedge in a couple, we are talking about putting in place measures to safeguard the conjugal relationship against whatever may risk violating this exclusivity. This in no way means living in isolation, cut off from others. That’s not the point.

As men and women, we are relational beings, meant to interact with others. Yet, marriage is a special relationship with that special person, as wife or husband, in an exclusive way. It means, I can’t relate to more than one person as wife or husband. If not for some cultures which permit polygamy, that will be infidelity.

We don’t wait till our relationship is threatened in order to act, rather, we need to be proactive in safeguarding it. I mean, we protect jealously that which we treasure. Indeed, isn’t prevention not better than cure?

In different cultures we find mechanisms put in place which serve to preserve the exclusivity of the conjugal relationship.

Hedges in cultures

What do we find, for example, in the palaces? It’s the eunuchs who attached to the service of the royal household. One reason, among others, is to safeguard the imperial ladies’ chastity.

You would find also chastity belts which women wore in order to prevent them from having sexual intercourse with another man apart from their legal partner.

There were also certain relations marked by the observance of certain distance, like among in-laws like a man with his mother in-law or a woman with her father in-law. The distance is in order to avoid the familiarity likely to lead to overstepping boundaries, with all the possible scandalous consequences.

In strong patriarchal societies you also find limited of interaction between members of the opposite sex.

And today, we have laws regarding adultery; adultery which can even be a motive for divorce. Such laws and the associated penalties act as hedges.

But why is fencing important?

Infidelity, adultery precisely, is a reality of conjugal life. It brings a lot of suffering to partners, at times even a complete break up of marriage, thus affecting children too, if there are any. so, we just can’t afford being indifferent to such reality.

Suffering that infidelity may cause

The unfaithful partner loses trust, breaks the vows and risks losing not only the spouse but also that they have built together in that relationship. Beginning all over again may not be easy, besides, who knows if the new relationship will work?

Betrayed partner risks, psychologically, suffering from loss of self-esteem, “I’m nothing”; why did he leave me for another woman? There’s also the abuse of trust.

Children who are raised in a conflictual home, marked by infidelity and broken home will likely have challenges in their development as persons. Another problem is the difficulty of being brought up by stepparents if their parents break up and remarry.

Besides the suffering proper to each individual, the family, as collective unity, suffers also. The entire family may suffer economically because of the deviation of resources, especially when there are not enough.

But the hedge against who or what?

Before you can create whatever fence, you should know the enemy or the threat. Against whom are you protecting your couple? Where’s the enemy?

For now, feel free to encourage and inspire others by a comment or a contribution in the comment space below the post. Join us on WhatsApp or Facebook group named: COUPLES’ CORNER. You can also subscribe on my blog, https://singlehumanity.com/ to receive new postings by email.

2nd Sunday A: Who’s your “Lamb of God”?

17/01/2020 by Evans Chama Leave a Comment

In the first reading, from the Prophet Isaiah, we have the promise of God’s servant who will liberate his people. And this promise is fulfilled in the Gospel where Jesus is that servant, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Bible readings
Isaiah 49: 3, 5–6
Psalm 40: 2, 4, 7–10
1 Corinthians 1: 1–3
John 1: 29–34

Israel at rock bottom

What’s happening in the first reading? Israel has reached the point where things cannot get worse. She has been defeated in war and able persons have been driven into exile where, away from homeland, the people can’t continue with their religious cult. At this time the people of Israel suffer the identity crisis as they wonder: if we are really his people, how can God abandon us into the hands of enemies? If God was on our side, and if really, we were his people nothing of the kind would happen to us.

It’s amid such discouragement that Isaiah comes with God’s promise that gives comfort and hope to the people. Not only does God want to liberate his people but he also will turn their presence in the foreign land to good use; it will serve to make known the God of Israel to pagan nations. It means that even those experiences that may appear as mere suffering and empty can turn out to be a means of salvation for us and for others. God works like that. Indeed, we can see that in our daily life.

There are people after the death of their dear one, in a certain circumstance, or after suffering from a certain illness; they later become committed to a cause in order to help others. Indeed, doesn’t St Paul tell us: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Rm 8:28).

There’s the Lamb of God

In the Gospel, in a way, we have the promise of God fulfilled. John introduces Jesus as the Lamb of God. What’s the Lamb? It may not mean much to us today as it meant to the people of Israel. The people of Israel were protected by the sign of the Lamb’s blood on their door posts. And before leaving Egypt they ate the lamb, meaning source of nourishment as they prepared themselves for the journey. Later, the people will continue using the lamb for expiating their sins. In the new covenant it’s different.

It’s no longer through an animal, the lamb, that we are forgiven and nourished, but by Jesus himself, the son of God. That’s why John introduces him: here’s the lamb of God; it’s as if to say: do you want to be purified, it’s through him. Do you want to be strengthened, in him you will find true nourishment? And Peter affirms: “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:10-12). It means, any search for life and happiness outside this Lamb of God, it’s like searching for water in a cracked cistern -it’s an idol.

The lamb of God of my life

And so, it’s challenge to us to be able to introspect ourselves: in what ways am seeking to be justified before God? Whom am I turning to for new strength in my Christian life? There’s no other but Jesus, the Lamb of God, through whom we have life and our sins forgiven.

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See also alternative:

Homily: 2nd Sunday A, Ordinary Time. Here’s the Lamb of God….

Baptism of the Lord A: Heaven and Earth Embrace!

10/01/2020 by Evans Chama Leave a Comment

The Dimanche after Epiphany we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. In what way does this feast to nourish our faith and our hope as Christians?

Bible readings
Isaiah 42: 1–4, 6–7
Psalm 29: 1–4, 9–10
Acts 10: 34–38
Matthew 3: 13–17

Jesus’s baptism, turning things upside down

Seeing Jesus come before him and ask to be baptised is something that took John the Baptist by surprise. In fact, John did the baptism of repentance, inviting people to turn from their sinful ways in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. That’s why people from different cross-sections of society like tax collectors and soldiers, to mention but just some, came to ask John what they should do to repent. It means it’s the baptism for those in need of changing from sinful ways. But does Jesus need repentance? If this is about preparing for the coming of the Messiah, what does his baptism serve?

Being parent to one’s children

Posing the question as to why Jesus would put himself on the queue of those seeking to be baptised, makes me think of the demands of being parent. To parent one’s children, especially little ones, is quite demanding. It takes much more than providing material needs and employing a babysitter. Given the necessity for direct involvement of parents in this demanding task of grooming their children, it’s recommended that couples, if possible, have children while they are still in their youthful age.

A parent of little children is challenged to rediscover infancy: use easy and simple words, running around and to take interest in what little ones like, children’s games for example. That can be tiring, you need to be fit. The point is: parents are there to accompany their children in their infancy and in their adolescence, not in order to keep them stuck in their pre-maturity, but to accompany them on the way to responsible adulthood. I discern something of the kind in the son of God who has become human to share our life.

God-man walks down to the baptism of repentance

Though he is sinless, thus, no need for conversion, Jesus, nevertheless, puts himself on the line of sinful humanity to the water of Jordan for baptism. He doesn’t mind being identified among sinners. What’s important, for the one who has come to so that we may have life, and life in abundance; is to walk along with us, to support and encourage us so that we may rediscover our dignity. We find beautiful images of this loving patience in the first reading.

This servant of Yahweh: “a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench”. What does that mean? He patiently walks with the fragile, bruised humanity, propping it till it’s regenerated. For those whose life has lost the flame, he doesn’t give up on them, he fans it with his breath, thereby making smothering fire burst into a flame. Indeed, we see a new spark of life in humanity at the baptism of Jesus.

Renewed humanity at Jesus’ Baptism

At the baptism of Jesus, God-Man, the Spirit descends on him, and God affirms: “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom am well pleased.” In Jesus the entire humanity rediscovers its beauty and dignity. Indeed, what we will see later in his public ministry, like healing the lame and the lepers or forgiving sinners; it’s not about Jesus parading himself as miracle worker. He would be uplifting humanity, bowed down by all sorts of ailing. With the heavens opening, heaven and earth are once again in communication; humanity is once again in the warm embrace of the Father. Humanity hears, together with Jesus, the declaration of love -you are my beloved son!

Missionaries of reconciliation

Then, as our mission, not only are we called to walk alongside others in their fragility, but we are also inspired, by the opening of heavens, to establish relationship where communion has been ruptured. We appreciate, then, that in his baptise of repentance, Jesus is not ashamed of being counted as one among us. Of course, he’s not there to pat our backs to continue our sinfulness; he aims at leading us where we belong: to the dignity of who we are in God: God’s beloved children. Then, with Jesus, we can dare to raise our hands, and call God: “Our Father”, thanks to the door that Jesus opens for us through his baptism.