For the past few years I’ve been counselling couples, I’ve realised that 65 percent of couples having issues in their marriage, married out of the physical appearance. How did I get to know this? I usually ask couples what brought them together and why they got married.
Most of them would usually respond by saying he or she liked the partner because of his or her caring attitude. Wonderful, isn’t it? But when I probe them further, I get the deep revelation; the truth. It is always because of the physical appearance of the person or the material things they could see. Caring attitude was never the reason for that marriage, because if indeed you married your partner for the caring attitude, the question is, what has happened to that caring attitude? Has anyone stolen it that it’s now lacking? Your guess is as good as mine.
The problem usually, is that people get married out of the physical appearance and qualities, or the person’s material possession. The Marriage hits a hard rock when having found themselves in the union, they realise they need more, and not getting that more is what brings up the disastrous issues in the marriage.
What’s a physical appearance?
A lot of people would restrict the meaning to just the person’s physique; being handsome or pretty looking. Yes, that’s physical appearance, but it goes beyond that. Physique is just a part of a whole.
Physical appearance includes your material possession, lies, hypocrisy, nature of the voice, fame, and of course, your physique. Marrying a woman or man based on these is highly dangerous. Such marriage is doomed for crisis.
Let me shock you; of all couples I’ve counselled, one person out of each couple, or the two, has/have great looks (pretty or handsome): this is usually more. There are even those who got married simply because of voice; one partner couldn’t do without hearing the other’s cute and sexy voice like they often say: but this set of people is usually few.
For some, they were deceived, either by lies or the partner’s life of hypocrisy. There are many who suffer in their marriage today, just for this reason.
Some months back, I had a tough time counselling this young couple who had issues that were gradually nose-diving into Domestic Violence. The husband is very handsome, and the wife, being pretty is an understatement. From what I gathered from the private chat I had with each of them, they both had set their minds on marrying someone with great looks, and so when they met each other, they quickly fell in love, and before you could say jack, the wedding bells were ringing.
This couple got married, and started having hard times coping with each other’s weaknesses. Each one realised they needed more, something far beyond the great looks. The love they thought they had, started to fade. I remember one of the couple saying this; “I think love is not enough for marriage.” Is that really true? Well, that should be a different topic for another day. But I recall telling him that day that the problem is that people mistake their emotional feelings for love. What People call love is really not the true love the Bible teaches us. We shall be looking at this in the next topic.
Look around you, or perhaps you read news of numerous divorces, especially those from celebrities, what do you notice? There are many people who believe that celebrities’ marriages do not last. It is not true for all. We hear about them because of their fame, but we don’t often get to hear about those who are not celebrities but whose marriages have crashed.
Celebrities whose marriages experience difficulties and eventual divorce, did not get married for what they truly need in a partner, but the fame, and what they see, beclouds their sense of choice. The physical appearance is the number one enemy to such marriages.
A man said to me sometime ago that he married his wife because she used to be pretty and sexy looking, but now she’s grown too fat and she is too lazy to do exercise. He said he was fed up with her. Sounds stupid, you think? Yeah, you’ll be amazed at what people put their interest, and the words that comes out of their mouths.
Who should you marry?
My answer is very simple; marry your true friend; a friend who knows you in and out, and understands you. However, and most importantly, it is not enough to marry just a friend, but marry that true friend because of those virtuous qualities and ideology you’re sure you can never get tired of, but would love to live with for the rest of your life. Flee from marriage based on the physical appearance.
Let’s end this here for today. Watch out here for my next topic.
For questions you might have for me, please email me on this contact:
lizzy@cosmicrayintl.com
