‘You can window shop all you like so long as you don’t take the goods home.’ This is the attitude of many to marriage. Another along similar lines is ‘you can flirt as much or lust as you like, so long as when you’re having sex it’s with your spouse.’ These are the type of attitudes a young married couple hear a lot from others they work with and even their friends. The idea is that it is harmless but is it?
Faithfulness in marriage isn’t only about sex. It also means not going off for coffee with another of the opposite se, of exchanging phone numbers as seems to be a common enough practice. ‘Don’t these people realize they are leaving themselves I wide open to danger,’ the young woman said.
It’s playing with fire. From secret meetings and exchange of phone numbers it’s easy to take the relationship further. It’s not such a big step to find the attraction of the other person takes hold and ands before you know it you’re involved in a full blown affair.
In case you think this is just the men, it’s not. This attitude is coming from women as well. The excuse is it’s flattering to know that someone else finds them attractive, especially as is sometimes the case when the other person is younger. What does that say about the state of their marriages? In the words of this young woman, ‘The thing is it’s all about self.’ It’s about making themselves feel good and attractive and desirable. But as this young woman went on to say, ‘Marriage is not all about self.’
Exactly! It is about being faithful to each other in every aspect of your lives and your marriage. It is wanting to please your spouse and make them happy. That also means not checking out porn on the internet or flirting online. Again, it’s not only the men guilty of this one.
Instead of indulging in fantasies about others, why not be thinking of creative ways to make the one they are married to happy? It would be a lot more productive and make for better and stronger marriages. Society, on the whole, would benefit from that as well.
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