The Challenge of Marriage

Amidst change of every kind, while being impacted by force at work for which we have little or no control, and juggling more responsibilities in our daily lives than ever before, we are challenged to foster a healthy and nurturing family life. We can choose values, behaviors, and activities that will contribute to the overall health, well-being, and happiness of our family. It can be done.

“Life is difficult”, we can add that life comes with no guarantees. This is not to take the joy or the hope, out of life, but rather to recognize the reality that, to varying degrees, life will have its challenges and hurdles as well as its pains and struggles. Spiritual writers, past and present reminds us often that there is no growth without struggle or sacrifice. So, too the relationship we call marriage and the set of relationships that form a family will have their moments of difficulty, challenge, struggle, hurts, pains, misunderstandings and problems. From all of them we can grow as persons and in our relationships.

A relationship can only be as strong and as healthy as the individuals within it. If one of the persons entering the relationship of marriage is “broken”, is incomplete in some way, brings a significant amount of unfinished work from childhood or adolescence into the relationship or has major physical, emotional and psychological problems, the relationship will begin with huge challenges and problems. If both persons entering the relationship bring major issues, the problems and hurts into the relationship, the impact on the relationship more than doubles its problems and challenges because an addition to the two “handicapped” individuals, the “we” or “us” relationship-  the new reality created by marriage- will present its own challenges and problems. Before entering marriage, people need to know themselves and to have dealt with their principal, substantive and predominant problems and issues. Ideally, people entering marriage will have achieved the developmental goals appropriate top their age.

Subsequently, relationships in a family can only be as strong, nurturing and life-giving as the individuals in it. Of course, the physical, emotional, social and spiritual health parents have the greatest impact on the strength and vitality of the overall health and well-being of the family.

Building healthy and nurturing relationships in a family presumes that parents have achieved the level of maturity and acquired a set of skills for dealing with one`s problems and challenges. In addition, parents should have made a firm commitment to working on their relationship as husband and wife as well as ion their family life, with its unique set of relationships. This requires a willingness to make a family life a priority and to make the decisions and sacrifices necessary to keep family life a priority. It is not easy. It is possible.

The relation of husband and wife establishes the marriage it`s the primary and foundational relationship upon which the family is built. The work of marriage continues even after children are born. In this regard, it is critical that the husband and wife never forget that this primary relationship will take work and must be actively and intentionally nourished throughout the relationship. When a couple forgets, or fails to tend to their marriage at any time in its life, but especially when children become part of their relationship, they will find that slowly and almost without notice, they will grow.

If the husbands and wives do not grow together, share in and contribute to each other`s growth throughout the relationship, the relationship is doomed. The greatest gift a mother can give her child is to love the child`s father, her husband; the greatest gift a father can give his child is to love the child`s mother, his wife. Their love created the child, their love provides the soil and environment in which their child will grow into adulthood.

The birth of children creates a nuclear family. Children depend on their parents for care, support, comfort, nurturing, discipline, affection, and love.

Parents are not only the first teachers of their children, they are their child`s first role models of good relationships. Their relationship becomes a paradigm experienced and observed by their child (children) that will be initiated, adapted and formative of their child`s views about marriage, about the relationship between husband and wife, about what it means to be mother or father.

Love is a decision. Love does not just happen; it takes hard work. Equally, creating a healthy, nurturing and life-giving faily relationship takes hard work. In fact, husbands and wives, most of whom become mothers and fathers, make love a reality in their commitment to working on their relationship as husband and wife and as mothers and fathers. Love takes on fresh in living it.

A healthy family is one in which each member of the family is valued and respected; one in which each member of the family feels safe and se cure; one in which each member of the family is supported, comforted encouraged, guided and challenged to grow.

A healthy family provides an environment and resources for each member of the family to fulfill developmental tasks appropriate to each family member`s age to achieve an appropriate level of maturity and to reach his or her maximum potential.

Occasional Sex Doesn't Work as A Stress Inhibitor by Helping to Feel Better About Everything.

 

From the article of Teresa Morales Garcia published in the 14 Aug. 2018 titled "Casual sex? Of course I do." The author defines casual sex as a practice with someone without an affective bond or commitment. In addition, "this type of sexual practice in which there is no stable relationship or a minimum of sentimental obligations between the two people, not only cannot be bad, but functions as a stress inhibitor and helps to feel better humorous about everything." With this author's thought, I wonder what that sexual experience can occur without Eros, without being in love, and that this Eros includes other things besides sexual activity? Sexuality that is common to all of us and entirely common to all people, but a properly human variety of it that develops within "love", what I call Eros.

Sexuality can act without eaves or as part of the eaves. I believe that it is the absence or presence of the Eros that makes the sexual act "impure" or "pure", degrading or beautiful, illicit or lawful. If all those who lie together without being in love were detestable, then we all came from a dishonorable line.

According to many cultures, most of our ancestors married at an early age the couple chosen by their parents, for reasons that had nothing to do with the Eros. They were going to the sex act without someone else. And they did well: Christians and honest husbands and wives who obeyed their fathers and mothers, fulfilling each other, and forming families in God's fear.

On the other hand, this act performed under the influence of a high and iridescent Eros, which reduces the role of the senses to a minimum consideration, can nevertheless be a simple adultery, can break the heart of a wife, deceive a husband, betray a friend, stain hospitality and cause the abandonment of children. God has not wanted the distinction between sin and duty to depend on sublime feelings. This act, like any other, is justified or not by much more prosaic and definable criteria; by the fulfillment or breaking of a promise, by justice or injustice committed, by charity or selfishness, by obedience or disobedience. My treatment of the subject despises mere sexuality, that is, sexuality without eaves for reasons that have nothing to do with morality.

Sexuality is an essential, constitutive characteristic of the human being. It's what makes a man and a woman. It is the substantial way of being of the person, not just a simple attribute or a functional capacity of it. As a "unity of soul and body", the person is marked by sexuality throughout his being and throughout his existence, sexuality affects the person integrally and dynamically: from the structure of his cells, through his organic configuration, to his psychic and spiritual life. The sexual differentiation of the individual is already present in the creative project, as male and female the person is the image of God (Gen 1:27); its meaning consists in the reciprocal integration of the two members of the couple ("the two will be one flesh". Gn 2:24) and in the task of procreation ("be fruitful and multiply": Gen 1:28), Sexuality, as it belongs to all human beings, is also marked by sin. The estrangement of God also leads to disorder in the sexual sphere so it leads us to occasional sex (casual sex).

conclusion

It is important to take account of the procreative dimension the responsibility arises to decide whether and when to procreate, that is, responsible procreation and to face the fruit of procreation as in front of a person. Also, the dynamic idea of a sexuality that accompanies and determines the becoming and being of a person finally derives the importance of a sexual pedagogy that helps to discover and live the sense of love and sexuality, which is decisive for the meaning of man's life on earth and for his future destiny.