Dating-marital-love Relationships

Every day, the issue of dating-marital-love relationships pop up everywhere we can possibly imagine. Ranging from the chief of them all - media, religious setting, family and all. 

Today, we will be discussing about this crucial issue with Dr Stanley Orji, a father, senior pastor of The RestHouse Christian Centre and a medical doctor.

ARKore Writes: A look at the subject of dating-marriage-love, is there anything that has changed in the way your generation handled it and this current generation?

Rev Stanley: The coming of social media technology changed everything. Before you rarely get to see each other, but now we are all into each other’s space with access to telephones and social media platforms. 

Then, dealing with natural tendencies of young people was a bit easier than now, but sexual immorality has change in form – sexting, sex videos and pictures. For the young, it has changed for the worse. But, with older people, who are married, but their spouse stays abroad, it makes communication easier for them. 

ARKore Writes: Looking at the worse part of relationships of this age as influenced by the social media, how best can relationships be nurtured in the right way?

Rev Stanley: Life starts with background, upbringing, value, not with relationships. Nothing has really change, right is still right and vice versa. 

Social media has raised various kind of role models for young people. The church, parent and schools are not deliberate about countering the narrative of the media and letting young people know the real thing. 

You can’t avoid social media, but how you digest what you see matters – It is a skill that needs to be taught. For example, there is no fame having a child for a celebrity outside marriage, it only makes you immoral. Everybody knows the right way, it’s about raising a generation that will achieve it – we have to go back to the basis. But, it has to first happen within you before it can happen through you.

ARKore Writes: Looking at the influence of the media industry in portraying relationships, what can you say are the real things in relationships not portrayed in the media, especially on television?

Rev Stanley: As they say “Television is a mind bender”. Increasingly these days, with the social media and all, most people live fake lives, because people are more interested in the way they paint themselves out there. It’s not about the Television influencing people, you now see people influencing people.

Everything that glitters is not gold. Television love is not real. But, unfortunately, TVs influence people – how they talk, dress, handle relationships. 

It all starts from the cradle. Teach young people what the right thing is. 

It is natural to enjoy the company of the opposite sex as. But, the relationship can be sustained without it getting contaminated if you are equipped with the foundation of what is right. If you don’t have such background, it will almost, always get out of hand.

If the right model is there, like in the family setting, when you get into relationships, you will be like every other person, but you will not do what every other person does. 

ARKore Writes: All right sir, what is your advice for youngsters looking forward to marital bliss?

Rev Stanley: marital bliss is a reality. It still does happen. But, you cannot build marital bliss without a foundation. A three-storey building can’t stand on a bungalow’s foundation. 

For example, when a woman complains that her husband is cheating on her, the question I normally ask is, ‘Before you got married, were you sleeping together?” If she said "yes" then they had a faulty foundation. She married a man that sleeps with someone he was not married to. The wedding band can't make him a faithful husband. He is still the same man that sleeps with other people he is not married to.

Marital bliss itself have different definitions to different people. If you are looking at marital bliss as defined by the person that instituted marriage, then it requires foundation. Marital bliss doesn’t just happen. You work it – it is not a wishful thinking. You have to be the kind of person you attract. It requires deliberateness. 

Finally, you need to know what the person that instituted marriage says about it.

Literalism and Information