wonders of transparency in Marriage
-By Bisi Adewale
Transparency is very useful in any human relationship, it even becomes more useful when it happen in intimate relationship like marriage, let’s study benefit of transparency in marriage, you will then see reasons to be transparent to your own spouse.
1. Transparency builds trust: Somebody said “transparency is the mother of trust. No openness, no trust” he added. This is the whole truth, don’t just pray for trust in your marriage, trust don’t answer to prayer just be open to each other trust will be the end result.
2. Love: It is possible to trust somebody you don’t really love if he has proven himself in that kind of situation before, but it is difficult to love somebody you don’t trust.
3. Eliminates conflict: When there is openness and transparency, conflict will be reduced to the barest minimum at home.
4. Breed Joy: Two people in marriage who knows they are not been deceived are always happy with each other and do have joy in themselves, because nobody love been deceived; everybody love been celebrated, handled with sincerity, honesty and truth.
5. Makes two hearts to beat as one: Transparency is the secret behind real intimacy in marriage. Somebody defined intimacy as IN-TO-ME-SEE, how can this happen without transparency? For your marriage to go beyond wedding into BONDING, be transparent in your marriage. Wedding is the joining of hands at the altar on your wedding day, bonding comes by joining your hearts all the days of your marriage to your spouse.
6. Leads to easy agreement: Transparent couple do easily agree with each other they do find it easy to understand each other since both of them are sincere with each other.
7. Leads to better result in marriage: Better result, promotion and synergy is known to be part of marriages where people involve are transparent.
8. Builds mutual respect: Transparency in marriage helps to build mutual respect between husband and wife. It is very easy for a woman to respect a man she can trust and rely upon than for her to trust a man that is not reliable or dependable
9. Leads to better result: transparency do lead to better result in marriage, since transparency do lead to trust and unity, it makes couples to move faster and get better result than couples who are at the logger heads with each other because there is no trust.
AREAS OF TRANSPARENCY IN MARRIAGE
There are many areas where couples should make sure they are transparent to each other if they desire stronger and better marriage.
1. FAMILY TRANSPARENCY. Couples should be transparent the way they relate with their individual families; given secretive supports to you family without the knowledge of your spouse will totally break trust if your spouse gets to know. Handle your families together in love, openness and transparency. Don’t allow your family to come between you as couple, you are not even permitted to love your family more than your spouse, your spouse comes first after God in your life.
2. PHONE TRANSPARENCY. This is another area where modern couples do fail to be transparent. Many do hide their phones for their spouses, some do take their phones with them when they go to the toilet and bathroom, many do put codes on their phones so that their spouses will not be able to access it if they (spouse) were able to lay hands upon it accidentally. Some will be receiving calls and be walking away from their you spouse saying “hello, hello, network is bad” just to walk away from where their spouse can hear them, some will deliberately not pick some calls in the presence of their spouses. If you have nothing to hide why hiding your phone from your spouse or make or receive call secretly? If there is no skeleton in your cupboard why taking phones to the bath room? Or restricting your spouse access to it.
- MAIL TRANSPARENCY. A whole lot of people can never allow their spouse to have access to their mails; if you have nothing to hide, then you don’t need to hide your e- mails details to your spouse. There is no e-mail address that I have that my wife cannot access, a times I will even tell her to check the mails for me or send mail to people in it. Remember both of you must first be NAKED so as not to be ashamed
4. FRIENDSHIP TRANSPARENCY. No other relationship should be stronger or better than your relationship with your spouse. The relationship with your spouse comes first in everything you do. Your spouse has the right to know what transpires between you and anybody you call your friend. Please note that if you are a married man your close friends or people you call “friends” should be men like you not ladies, like wise friends of married women should be ladies not men as this help to destroy trust and transparency in marriage and bring fear and suspicion.
5. FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY. If there is any area couples do find it difficult to trust each other, it is in the area of financial transparency. Most people value money more than their spouses, hence, they make sure they hide their financial plans from their spouse. They easily tell lies when it involves money, they hide their pay packet and make sure their spouse do not know how much they earn as salary and other incomes.
To have financial transparency in your marriage, you need to be open to each other about how much is coming in and how it is been spent. Let your spouse know your debts, obligations, fees, bills, rents, rates and fares to be paid and when. Your expected income and how you plan to spend it. The project you have at hand and how it is been run etc
Pastor Bisi Adewale is a family and relationship expert; author of Secrets of an Irresistible Wife and more than 70 other books on marriage and family life. You can reach him on familybooster@gmail.com, 08068312004, 08051512823, www.familybooster.com facebook
.com/Pastorbisiadewale
