I was earlier asked by a reader of my article, “How do I choose my lifetime partner,” whether my wife and I are already successful in bringing up our relationship. At first, I consider her question an insult because it is obvious that my wife and I are still in our early days of living together as married couple.

Remember that we got married only last June 20, 2008. And it was too early to say that we are already successful in bringing our relationship.

I knew that you knew that the success in marriage can be finally told on the death of one of the couple because that will be the time when our bond as husband and wife will expire. If one of us dies with our relationship intact then we can say, we are successful in bringing up our relationship. On the other hand, if one of us dies while our relationship still broken, so we failed.

How do we manage our relationship?

My wife and I have no secret on how do we manage our relationship. We are just following the advises of the Executive Minister of the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) during the seminars that we both attended through the Minister of the Church who was tasked to give us the instructions before we finally get married.

(1) ‘Til Death Do Us Part

We are taught that we will remain husband and wife as long as we both live. One of us will be freed from that bond if one of us dies. Since we both believe that it is God who unite us into one flesh, so we also believe that we both have no right to break that bond and it’s God alone who has the power to do so. In other words, we have no right to look for another partner as long as both of us are still living. The contract is: ‘Til Death Do Us Part.

Because of this, every time we experience misunderstanding, we always tried to settle the problem for us to preserve our relationship and to avoid the entrance of someone or something that could ruin our relationship.

(2) Woman is Fragile

As husband, I was taught that woman is very fragile. She is compared to a jar. If I would not be careful, that jar would be broken and I would have the hard time forming it back to its original state.

So, I really tried my best to be patient in dealing with her. But since I am just a man and am not really a perfect one, so there were times that I hurt her with my words. However, I never went to sleep without settling any problems. Before we perform our devotional prayer to God, we first reconcile and forgive each other from the things that we did which caused trouble in our relationship.

(3) Respect to Each Other

My wife was taught to respect me as the head of the family. And she really tried her best to show her respect to me as her head by respecting all my decisions.

But of course, I also have to show my respect to her as my wife. Before deciding on what to do for our family, I consult her first because I know that my wife always has a better idea than me.

Our respect to each other can be shown not only on decision making and on the way we deal with each other, but it can also be shown during our sexual adventures.

It might be true that I am more sexually aggressive than my wife, but it doesn’t mean that I would just do the things that would give me pleasure. I should also show her how I value her by giving her the sexual pleasure that she also needs to feel and enjoy.

Finale

We’d done lot of things that would help us preserve our relationship. But I know that you also have good things to be shared to us. Please share your thoughts by replying this email, or by posting them at our comment section.

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