Look at marriage in general and see if there are any lessons you can learn from others.
Also seek to understand how you choose the women you marry.
Some insecure men seek to marry the first woman who gives them a motherly look.
I have just been through my third divorce. I think that my inclination to get easily angered and do things that cause my wives to run away is the reason for my problems. What should I do?
We do not know what things you do or don’t that lead to your wives to run away, and you leave us to imagine what those things could be.
On the face of it, you are more likely to be the cause of the divorce, because from a lay perspective, three women are unlikely to be all wrong. That said, let us now look at marriage in general and see if there are any lessons you can learn from others.
A few months ago, a friend’s daughter was getting married, and a number of elders expressed shock and surprise at the “words of wisdom” that the priest gave the young couple.
For almost an hour, the unmarried man of the collar told the young couple what to expect in their marriage. He told them of his long experience as a priest and all the things that he had seen go wrong.
For a start, men are mostly unfaithful to their wives, come home late and are always drunk and lazy. There are a few lucky women who marry men who are not violent.
If your husband turns out like many of those that he knows, she was advised to tolerate and pray that God changes him.
He further explained that these days men have become lazy and depend too much on their mothers. They often run away from parental duties and do not show affection to their wives.
In his punch line, he told the couple that he had come across a few cases where young men were impotent.
The young couple was then told how some young brides did not respect their husbands. The last revelation was delivered in a low, husky and horrifying voice that led the whole Church to a pin drop silence.
To make his point he told them of two cases he had dealt with and which ended up in divorce. In one case, the girl was a highly educated economist who had a good job in a multinational company. The priest explained that in their case, “the girl came home with her job title” and to the priest’s alarm; she failed to make tea for her husband.
This type of insult led to others including her coming home late, after what she called “office meetings.” No self respecting woman should come home after her husband, the young bride was advised.
In the second case, (the priest went on) a young mother turned away from her husband and denied him his conjugal rights.
She was such a bad girl (in his view) that she did not talk to her husband when he came home tired from work, she cried for her mother all the time, neglected the baby and refused to cook for her husband.
One of the elders pointed out that these symptoms were consistent with post natal depression. The sermon ended on this tragic note.
The elders at the wedding reception tried to undo the damage done by the priest. They did their best in their speeches, but one lady stole the show, and made a most memorable speech.
She told those gathered how happy she was in her marriage of 40 years. She asked those present and whose marriages were going well to stand up and say something about their marriage.
To the surprise of the young couple, most people had something positive to say about their marriage!
All concluded that the priest might have got something about marriage wrong. There are, after all some aspects of marriage that work well for some people!
If marriage was all wrong as the priest would have them believe, then it should had died as an institution, they further concluded.
All the foregoing is intended to get you to go back to the drawing board and to examine yourself and the reasons that take you to the institution of marriage. If the advice you have is that it will all fail whatever you do, then you might wish to seek advice from other experts.
