BY VICTORIA NGOZI IKEANO
 
 victoriangozii@gmail.com 08033077519
 
Recent public spats between two couples got one reflecting on the concept of marriage. In one instance, a 25 year-old married to a billionaire senator voluntarily separated from him citing lack of freedom. But the billionaire accused his apparently now estranged wife of drug abuse, alleging that this had made her to be misbehaving. He vowed not to allow her back into his house unless she completes her rehabilitation programme.
 
 In another instance a notable musician was reportedly arrested, handcuffed by  United Kingdom police officers following what appeared like an altercation with his new wife at a shopping mall there. This popular artist who clocked 40 years sometime ago and whose new wife put to bed recently is said to now have eight children from four women.  A member of the musician’s management team said in an interview that the new wife has an overbearing, possessive attitude towards him and wants him to let go of his music career for the time being and concentrate on their family (husband, wife, child) matters. He also hinted at drug abuse.
 
Wherever one or both couple indulge in hard drugs, excessive drinking and the like, there is no happiness there. People indulge in these excesses as a way of getting some relief. But such a so-called relief is illusory, akin to building castles in the air. It is an artificial rather than a genuine means of solving a problem. Instead such an indulgence, abuse has negative effects on the body and may ultimately lead to death…
 
   The first cited example proves that money does not guarantee happiness. We may have more than enough money to acquire all the things that facilitate living here on earth, able to acquire all the luxuries of the earth, yet what all these earthly possessions give us is FUN not happiness. Happiness is of the soul, it is a characteristic of the spirit which is the inner core of a human being, the physical body being just its cloak, a covering, a tool that it needs to be able to work here on earth; during its time on earth. The spirit animates the body. At death, the spirit leaves behind the body and journeys to its homogenous sphere in the spiritual realm, that is, paradise, heaven…  Thus, the body feels fun while the soul/spirit experiences happiness, joy, bliss;  
 
    “Marriages are made in heaven”. Before we delve into this sentence. Let us first reflect on the state of marriages today. Fact of the matter is that most marriages today are beset with problems, fraught with disharmony. And this is a worldwide phenomenon, cutting across all classes of persons, viz, the upper class, middle class and lower classes; the elites and masses. It is not peculiar to any one people or country. Rather it is pervasive, cutting across all peoples, not least Nigerians. It has been like that for several decades but we now have more of crashed marriages than ever before. We have heard/read of royalties, people with blue blood divorcing, politicians/leaders separating from their spouses, middle class persons turning their backs on their marriages, the common man cum average person calling it quits with their marriages, and so on and so forth. We get to hear more of crashed marriages involving celebrities, entertainers and those in similar fields because these thrive on the media and so their marriage collapses are more often splashed on the media, especially social media.
 
 However, there are thousands of other couples that quietly dissolve their marriages without making any noise about it, so to speak. Still, there are thousands, millions of women whose marriages though joyless, acrimonious, nonetheless, stick to it because of societal pressures, cultural norms. This is particularly so in Africa where women are asked to endure all manner of iniquities, domestic  violence they experience in their marriages, because of their kids, financial incapacity, the so-called respectability that society confers  on  a married woman.
 
   Marriages crash for a variety of reasons, chief among which is incompatibility of the couple.  People get married nowadays mainly for mundane, earthly, external reasons and not because of the stirrings of their souls, their inner being, their spirits. Thus we have billionaires, royalties, governors/leaders generally arranging for marriages within their folds with a view to perpetuating their socio-economic class, the upper class. There are those who marry for money, to be able to “secure their future” and those of their unborn children. Then there are those who go into marriage because a person is pretty, handsome, beautiful.  All of the above reasons are purely ephemeral. And as they are ephemeral, the marriages entered on such basis are bound to be ephemeral, collapse sooner than later. They are unsustainable in the long run. Such marriages are largely based on ulterior motives rather than on pure love that issues from the soul. Love is blind, so goes an adage. True love does not consider whether one is a millionaire or not; whether one is pretty or not; whether one is endowed in the earthly sense or not. Rather, it wells up from out of the soul and on meeting with kindred soul they naturally gravitate towards each other.
 
“Marriages are made in heaven”. The Almighty in creating us imbued us all with varying qualities. When a man enters into a relationship with a woman with qualities that are complementary to his and consummates it with marriage, there will be harmony in such a marriage because they complement each other and any activity they jointly embark upon will be of full value because it is infused with joy and love, each living to the joy and happiness of the other. Such are the marriages that are made, ‘approved’ in heaven. Needless to add that such marriages are enduring, long lasting, beneficial to the society at large.because of the harmony within them.
Victoria N. Ikeano writes via victoriangozii@gmail.com 08033077519