And the Couple vowed to stay together in sickness and Health
But frequent visit to health facilities for management of psychological and mental health challenges, caused by the marriage itself, is now a major threat to the survival of the marriage.
Here is the conclusion of our last week’s issue of concern- Marital Bones of Contention. In it, we x-rayed the many bones of marital contention and summarized the red flags as: anger, lack of communication, self-centeredness, distrust, invalidation, blame game, feelings-based love and sex.
We noted that before couple can successfully marry themselves, they must first marry their differences since they are coming together from different values and beliefs backgrounds.
To catch- up click:
https://www.citizencomfort.com/2021/08/02/marital-bones-of-contention-the-health-concerns/
Our intention is to help couples including potential ones enjoy marriage by helping them to build the capacity to fence off marital bones of contention in their marriages. This is because if they don’t dissolve the red flags, the red flags may dissolve the couple’s health, including that of the children and other stake holders before eventually dissolving the marriage itself.
Poor Economic Power; Poor marriage; Poor Health
Before we look at how to build capacity to fence off marital conflicts, let’s look at the quality of marriage and the implication on the health of the individual stakeholders.
Spousal economic conflicts often precede other marital squabbles. The global economic trajectory has put so much pressure on the families. Husbands and wives are losing jobs in droves, businesses are crumbling and yet the cost of living is skyrocketing. The result is a double-edged blow on the family- poor marriage; poor health.
Research studies published in the Social Science Quarterly Journal show positive correlations between marriage quality and psychological/ mental health.
Marital conflicts and marital disruptions including breakups cause depression more among women.
A study titled “Effect of Marital Conflict and Marital Disruption on Depressive affect: a comparison between women in and out of poverty” shows that women psychological and mental health are directly affected by marriage quality.
Other studies (Aseltine & Kessler,1993, Horin, 2004) have shown that family economic status is an important contributing factor of marital process. Poverty according to the studies, accelerates marital instability adding that disadvantaged economic condition is an important correlate of poor mental health for women and children.
Another study, “Marital quality and health: Implications for marriage in the 21st century. A study published in the US National Library of Medicine” by Theodore F. Robles also correlate marital quality and health outcomes. According to the research reports, the past half-century of research suggests a small, but practically significant association between marital quality and health. The research reviewed in this paper suggests that any efforts to increase marital quality may have the additional benefit of promoting health.
Marital conflicts affect the children as much as they affect the couple.
A study in the Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatric “Effects of marital conflict on children: recent advances and emerging themes in process-oriented research” suggested a correlate in marital conflict and children’s cognitive, psychological, mental and physical health.
Marital conflict causes loneliness and other health problems.
A study suggested that conflict early in marriage can lead to poor outcomes a decade later. According to the study in the Journal of Family issues University of Georgia, couples that clash often are more likely to experience feelings of loneliness and poorer physical health down the line. Researchers found that those arguments from earlier in the marriage could have a lasting effect on how lonely partners felt more than a decade later. Adding that the feeling of loneliness coincided with poor physical health outcomes. The Researchers advocated marital dispute early prevention and intervention through counselling.
Domestic violence; Physical Injuries and Death
Apart from psychological and mental health issue, unresolved marital conflicts often lead to messy domestic violence that may cause physical injuries, loss of properties and lives.
MANAGING THE MARITAL CONTENTIONS
Couples are bound to disagree on a whole lot of issues. They can from time to time rile at each other. Disagreement might come in the form of choices of school for kids, food choices, home management techniques, work choices and disagreement on other economic preferences. The hallmark of ideal and excellent couple is the ability to disagree to agree. Couples must jointly fight contentious issues by:
Developing Marital Team Spirit
Stick together in spite of differences to work together to reach consensus on every issue. Couple must compromise to make joint decisions. Couples must grow love to such a level that when “one cries the other taste the salt”
Fight/ Control Anger
Couple must see anger as a choice. We often attribute the cause of anger to what someone does or says. But studies have shown that angers are emotional choices we make to a stimulus (spoken word or action) Burton Kelly said that emotional responses like anger are actually choices that we make. For us to feel emotion, he writes, “we must first be aware of some stimulus—an event, a thought, a memory. Then we interpret that stimulus—and that’s when the emotional response comes. Our interpretation can be relatively positive, neutral, or negative.” (Ensign, Feb. 1980, p. 9.) The stimulus itself has no inherent emotional charge; the emotion comes from within us because of how we choose or are conditioned to see the stimulus.
Thus, to be angry is a choice we make; it is not “caused” by anything or anyone outside ourselves. If we can teach our children, in both words and actions, that choosing not to respond in anger is within our control, we will teach them one of life’s most valuable lessons.
We must refuse to choose anger. Afterall the word of God asserted that anger resides in the bosom of a fool (Eccl. 7:9). Anger is temporary madness couples must avoid it. A neighbor of mine intentionally drove the car he bought for his wife into a canal out of anger
Run your home within your economic status
Couples must prevent toxic economy from creating toxic marriage/ home. Live within you means. Stop comparing your status with friends. Couples must work out strategy together to improve the family economy.
Communicate the Differences
Couples must always discuss their differences for amicable solutions
Lean on each other
Couple must support each other in all ways.
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