*Photo: Abdulwarees Solanke*
The real force field of our lives is the value system we adhere to. By force field, I mean those indices that are drivers in 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 compass or regulator of our direction in life. In this context, I will be reflecting 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 lack of love. It is underscored by the attachment or conviction in that value system each party in the family upholds. The value system determines the class one moves in, the company one keeps, one’s choices and preferences. It also colours individual aspirations, indeed ambition. It defines his path and pursuits. It shapes his orientation and interests too. The basis of communication, association and interaction is basically 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 trivialize 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? 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 we have known them for years before saying I Do at colourful, elaborate ceremony called 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 making the choice of life partners, they are expected to be among those whom we share common values and outlook to 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 of competition, but complementing one another. Body language will be straight to understand between such spouses. No misreading or misjudgement and no suspicion, but respect and honour for each other.
But when the choice of a spouse is based on criteria that discount commonality of values, unless they work to align their different values to forge a common or shared value or one party totally abandons the value he or she is coming from to wholeheartedly assimilate into the new culture or value of the would-be spouse, 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 different directions in fundamental issues that require unanimity or common purpose is conflict of values.
So, study the maladjustment of many children, disjoining of many families or the collapse of many marriages, it is likely to be explained as incompatibility. What a euphemism for conflict of values! I have seen marriages crash in because of the complaint of disrespect for each other’s parents, treatment or reception of friends, non attendance or participation in family festivities and rites and so many trivial stuffs that ordinarily could be talked over if they are of the same orientation or they have mutual respect in the conflict mechanism tools and facilitators called to intervene when crisis brew because the likelihood is that such facilitators will be accused of being interested parties and would not be neutral depending on his or her own orientation or background too.
For instance, if you are of royal class already groomed in regal carriage, comportment or character, it will be risky to marry outside the royal class or the aristocracy because royal or aristocratic adaptation takes long. 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 and easily understand the intricacies of survival in your job. 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. Most people who have marital crises early or later in their marriages are victims because they were never sincere or they lack conviction in their original value system or culture. They were hypocritical in their conviction or subscription, inconsistent or lacked depth in and appreciation for it. They were merely sitting on its fence, without being fully involved or engaged in it. They were 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 value that is strange to you before, be comfortable with its rites and revere its symbols. You must learn to be at home and even advance in its ideology and schools of thought, spiritual orientation or social circles. Then you become an adoptee of new the culture or heritage, ethnic affiliation and 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 on the basis of convenience and prejudices as illustrated in the popular but now rested TV sitcom, Fuji House of Commotion, a disjointed family of conflicting values.
Abdulwarees Solanke is Deputy Director Strategic Planning & Corporate Development Department,Voice of Nigeria., korewarith@yahoo.com, abdulwarees01@gmail.com
