Different by Design: Marriage: a Joyful Union of Opposites

By Omawumi Efueye

To say that marriage is today facing unprecedented crises is to be guilty of a chronic understatement. Soaring divorce rates have been fuelled by inadequate preparation for marriage, ignorance about its purpose, premarital sex, and counterfeit incarnations like polygamy, polyandry, and cohabitation. Additionally, economic pressures, increasing global amorality, and the determination to redefine marriage are further sounding the death knell for marriage.
The good news is that there is nothing new under the sun, and this institution, which has survived every onslaught in every community across every age, will continue to do so.
The purpose of this book is to heal marriages in this generation and, more significantly, equip the next generation to approach, prepare for, and conduct marriage as God intended. In this candid, practical, Bible-inspired treatise, you will discover the following:
The purpose of marriage and lessons from the first marriage
How clearly defined roles determine your marriage's success and insulate you from the scourge of unmet expectations
A spiritual and practical checklist for picking the right spouse in the first place
Three critical principles of communication
Learning to fight properly by mastering conflict resolution techniques
How not to make outlaws of your in-laws and parents
"I can't live without you!"myth or fact?
If sex can be good and at the same time godly; also, what is sexually permissible for a Christian couple
What happens when the initial attraction fades or love dies
What to do when your spouse is attracted to or involved with an external party
The key to raising godly offspring
The pervading theme from which the book derives its title is that men and women are different by design. Marriages totter and collapse because spouses do not realise this divine inbuilt design imperative to the success of their connubial experience. Enjoy discovering the truth this book exposes you to and the liberty it engenders in your marital walk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504946506

Omawumi Efueye

Omawumi Michael Efueye is a poet, an author, motivational speaker and pastor. Fondly called Pastor O, he holds a bachelor's degree in literature in English and a master's degree in mass communication. His writing style is fluid, descriptive, and humorous, and he draws from his vast experience in the print media, radio, and television and in the corporate affairs arm of the banking sector. His passion is predicated on his utter dislike of error and his deep conviction that everyone without exception was created to fulfill a purpose, realise a potential, and apprehend destiny. He has a deep love and respect for the institution of marriage and has for over two decades worked as a Christian marriage and relationship adviser. In fact, this book draws on illustrations and experiences from his marriage preparatory and enhancement classes dubbed Friends 4 Life. He has pioneered a vibrant church that he pastored for seventeen years in the bustling Metropolis of London, England. He currently pastors a fledgling church in Central London and teaches and mentors young and veteran couples to recognise that they are different by design but can enjoy marriage as a joyful union of opposites. He has been married to his wife, Carol, for three decades, and they have two children and a grandson. They conduct annual couples' retreats, marriage seminars, and have nurtured many failing marriages back to good health.

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© 2015 Omawumi Efueye. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/07/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4648-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4649-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4650-6 (e)

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Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Scriptures marked as (CEV) are taken from the Contemporary English Version Copyright © 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture is taken from GOD’S WORD®, © 1995 God’s Word to the Nations.

Used by permission of Baker Publishing Group.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from The Amplified Bible, Old Testament copyright

© 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified Bible, New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Contents

Acknowledgement

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One: ‘He which made them at the beginning…’

Chapter Two: Roles Determine Relationships

Chapter Three: Decisions, Decisions!

Chapter Four: Communication is the Key

Chapter Five: Learning to Fight Properly

Chapter Six: Parents, In-laws and Outlaws

Chapter Seven: ‘I Can’t Live Without You!’

Chapter Eight: Different by Design

Chapter Nine: Sex is Good, Sex is Godly

Chapter Ten: Fatal Attractions and Disastrous Distractions

Chapter Eleven: Raising Godly Children

Chapter Twelve: Till Death Us Do Part

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Pastors Gbolahan Faluade and Babs Balepo.

G. Falu, though we were childhood friends, you gave your life to Christ about ten years before I did and became an inspiration, an encourager, and indeed a mentor to me. You introduced me to the vital family/ministry balance and thus ultimately saved my marriage.

Pastor Babs, God sent you to mediate in our marriage when it had absolutely hit rock-bottom. Your godly counsel and wisdom set us on the path of recovery, revitalisation and becoming a restorative reference point.

For every relationship enhanced and sanctified, for every marriage conducted, saved and strengthened by this book you will doubtless be partakers in the rewards.

Thank you and may God continue to bless your own marriages and homes.

Acknowledgement

I would like to start by thanking our Heavenly Father, Abba, the Author and Perfecter of the institution of marriage and the One from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. (Ephesians 3:15 BBE). It is a measure of His mercy, love and awe-inspiring grace that He has chosen someone as eminently unqualified in pedigree, experience and scholarship as I am, to write on a subject as critical as marriage is to societal well-being.

I also want to thank my darling wife who has endured me, warts and all, for three decades (and still counting!) It is because you did not give up on me that I have a relevant story to tell. My children, natural and spiritual could not ask for a better mother. I will never stop declaring that you remain the best investment I ever made.

My two children, Dede and Marcel deserve kudos for weathering all the storms that come with being PK’s (Pastor’s Kids). In spite of all the pressures and unrealistic expectations people have placed on you, you have been swayed but not broken by the winds of affliction. Remain strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

A big shout out to everyone who has been involved in the former Forever Friends and now Friends4Life classes: Bebe Ojukwu, Ronke Faboro, Ngozi Aligwekwe, Rovi Oluwole, Mabinty Esho, Christina Constantinou, and many others. You had all been begging me on to write a text for the course and classes. Now you can see the birth of the dream.

Bebe and Mabinty, thank you for typing and editing and putting the Text and Workbook together. Obi Ejiogu (Obi 1), thank you for the dispatch with which you produced the very vivid and apt illustrations for the Workbook.

The core community of Chapel of Life deserve particular mention. Victor and Biola Odunlami, Uche and Ify Oti, Demola Soremekun, Sumbo and Niyi Aderinola, Sade Abiodun, Dapo Akinola, Demola Grillo, Patrick and Nadia Egbuchiem and the rest of the COL family. In such a short time you have established, according to God’s desire and pattern, a church without walls. In this environment I believe godly relationships will evolve and thrive and marriages that glorify God will blossom. Thank you for believing in and supporting me and the God-breathed vision.

To Bidemi and Bukky Arowolo I want to say words cannot express the depth of love and gratitude that suffuses my heart when I think of your love, sacrifice and unrelenting support for me and all my projects. God who sees in private will surely reward you openly.

I cannot but acknowledge Jide and Bukky George who for my ordination in August 1997 gave me, as a present, the life-changing book Marriage as God Intended by Selwyn Hughes. The copious references made from that book in this one is a testament to Rev.(Dr) Selwyn Hughes as one of the foremost marriage counsellors in his generation. It also eloquently testifies to the wisdom, insight and practicality that characterised his life and ministry. He remains one of my mentors even though I never had the privilege of a face-to-face meeting but I’m encouraged by the thought that he is enjoying ‘Everyday With Jesus’!

Foreword

Over the years I have been asked to write commendations for a number of marriage courses. This is not always easy as those of us who preach are bound to have different ways of presenting the many sensitive issues that such courses involve. Furthermore, alongside abiding truths there will always be cultural considerations that have to be taken into account. Here, though, is a course that comes from a man who is not only well-versed in Scripture but is also capable of empathising appropriately with his audience. Pastor Efueye has taught this course many times and I am delighted that he is now making it available for a wider public.

Here you will find wisdom on every page, coupled with scrupulous honesty. Each chapter is full of biblical truth set in a culturally relevant context. Pastor Efueye is a man who is prepared to share his heart freely to ensure that marriages are built on the best possible foundation. I think no-one can ask more of a marriage course than this. No matter what cultural lens you are looking through as you read it, the clarity and openness with which Pastor Efueye writes will be a blessing. His enthusiasm for marriage is bound to inspire you.

Some marriage courses read rather like the workshop manual a garage mechanic might use for fixing a car – endless descriptions of nuts and bolts, with instructions for dis-assembling and re-assembling the parts. This course is no less practical but it is written with a passion for the vehicle as a whole that demands it receives the utmost respect. If you treat your marriage the way this course recommends, it will last a lifetime and give you a safe and rewarding journey through life. Just make sure you share the driving!

Dr Hugh Osgood

Founder and President, Churches in Communities International

Introduction

‘I curse the day I met you.’ Those words were spat out with venom and frustration. They hit their intended target – my heart. The full force of this delivery, apart from the message itself, overwhelmed me. Tears of anger, remorse and frustration flowed freely from my anguished soul and down my despondent visage. We had been married less than two years, and now we were so embittered and disappointed that we didn’t know which way to turn. Guilt and self-recrimination engulfed me as I considered that I had failed as a husband: the woman who had once loved me now rued the very day fate caused our paths to cross.

We had battled challenges right from the outset, having limped uncertainly from day to day, staggered tentatively through all kinds of problems, and eventually ended up on the verge of divorce. We’d exhausted our patience, understanding, and will to live. I wondered where we’d gone wrong, and realised that we would have to do something dramatically different if we were going to save this dying marriage.

My wife’s solution was simple and logical: it was obvious we weren’t compatible, and this marriage wasn’t working, so we needed to go our separate ways. I, however, had a major problem with this option. As a young boy in my prepubescent years, I had looked at my family situation and, grossly dissatisfied with the parental model presented to me, had purposed that I would never end up like my father.

Let me explain my background, to throw more light on how this decision was reached. I am the fourth of seven children or the fifth of eight, depending on whose report you believe. My father was a serial polygamist who had seven children by six different women. My immediate older sister and I were the only ones who had the privilege of sharing a mother. What was peculiar about our set-up was that unlike other homes around us, which were either monogamous with one wife only, or polygamous with two or more wives, my father had no wife living in our home. I was told my father could not live with any woman. Once a woman had a child for him, she was doomed – he would retain his child and separate from its mother. This had happened twice before my father met my mother, and would have happened to her too but for the intervention of what some people would call fate, but I know to be the hand of God.

After the birth of my aforementioned sister, my father decided to leave Nigeria to study law in England. My mother was to accompany him and take the opportunity to further her own education. They therefore left their little girl in the care of trusted relations and agreed to concentrate on their studies, complete them and return to Nigeria as quickly as possible. Having a second child was therefore totally out of the question. However, they did not desist from those activities that produce children, and did not take the necessary precautions, so before long my mother became pregnant – with me. My father was livid and they spent the next few months trying hard to abort the foetus. All attempts failed woefully and the baby just kept getting bigger. Eventually, in sheer frustration, they consulted their doctor, who took their details, then warned them that should any harm come to the baby, they would be imprisoned. To a twenty-first-century mindset, at a time when a school teacher can take a twelve-year-old child for an abortion without her parents’ knowledge or consent, this threat may seem decidedly strange. However, in 1958 abortions were still illegal. Thank God for good laws: I am alive today, only because of such a law!

My parents’ marriage did not last to my third birthday. My father would go on to have three more children: by three different women, of course. He would, as was now his tradition, take the children in and bring us all up under one roof as a ‘single parent’, with different women coming and going for varying lengths of time.

Lest I forget (and it’s important to keep accurate records), there are only seven of us thus far. In my teenage years, however, my father’s older sister brought a young man into the family. He was introduced to us as my father’s long-lost, previously unknown, first-born son. This naturally incurred the chagrin of my elder brother who had suddenly lost his coveted and valued status as ‘first-born son’ to some ‘unknown quantity’. I may have other siblings of whom I am blissfully ignorant. After all, I do recall the family of a young woman having a meeting with my father over his impregnating their daughter. The bottom line is that they took their daughter away and claimed she lost the baby, and we never heard of or from them again.

Being born into this highly dysfunctional setting (of which gripping and dramatic soap operas are made) was what provoked me to decide as a teenager that I would not end up like my father. The supreme irony was that I was now married, but I was on the verge of divorce in the very early stages of our life together. With our seemingly intractable problems and our perception of incompatibility, and with my wife willing to walk away and release me to do the same, all that held the tenuous, fragile, tattered strands of the marriage together was my resolve never to end up like my father. Something inside me told me that once I’d left this woman, I was doomed to see history repeat itself as I was sucked inevitably into the quagmire of serial polygamy, born of failed relationships, mindless hedonism and ignorance. By the way, my instinct was right: statistics show that the divorce rate in England is 45 per cent. The rate for second marriages is 75 per cent, and for third marriages 99 per cent!

But I’d become a born-again Christian and discovered that God hates divorce, and this lent impetus to my decision to fight for this marriage.

The Root Causes of Marital Disintegration

With the seemingly infallible but actually pseudo-omniscient arrogance of hindsight, I realise that several factors accounted for the place where we found ourselves. Many of these factors, seen more widely, help to explain the fragile state of marriage today.

Firstly, we are all products of our backgrounds and experiences. However, we do not have to be enslaved by either, and educating one’s self and ‘the renewing of your mind’, as the Bible eloquently puts it in Romans 12:2, is the key to emancipation and progressive transformation. Contrary to most parents’ view, children do not learn as much from what they are told or taught as they do from what they observe around them. This is why research has proven that if your parents smoke and drink, for example, you are more likely to do the same, from your teenage years into adulthood. My background and experience provided absolutely no positive role model for me to emulate in the sphere of marriage, so on that score it seemed that I was doomed. I did not pursue an education to rectify the issue of my ignorance. Thus I was like the one in the proverb: ‘He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool.’ I went into marriage completely ignorant and unprepared. I would later discover, after being pierced with many unnecessary darts of sorrow, that what I considered to be intractable issues was actually ‘temptation … common to all mankind’ (1 Cor. 10:13), in particular those among (hu)mankind who choose to enter into this mysterious institution called marriage. I indeed had come close to ‘perishing for lack of knowledge’ (Hosea 4:6).

Secondly, like nine out of ten people who get married, I did not know the purpose of marriage. True, I had first met my wife at a traditional wedding ceremony and had taken to her immediately. I guess that was what the romantic fiction writers call love at first sight. Even at the height of our problems, I still loved her and she still loved me. However, we would come to discover, like many others before and after us, that romantic love is not enough to sustain a marriage. Tina Turner did not realise how prophetic she was when she crooned ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ Too many people marry for the wrong reasons and forget that where purpose is unknown, abuse is inevitable. Moreover, what we classify as love is usually infatuation, a ‘fatal attraction’, or just plain lust. Even where true love undergirds a marriage, as we will discover later in this book, love is two-way and involves a lot more than giddy feelings and mushy sentiments. The understanding and pursuit of purpose is both a strong incentive and a weapon to make anything work – including a marriage, no matter how afflicted it may be.

If your primary reason for getting married is selfish then your relationship will inevitably self-destruct as it feeds on the fuel of its own insatiable appetites. Furthermore, when you hit inevitable obstacles along the way, your goal will be to feel better by scratching your itch, rather than making whatever sacrifices are required to solve the problem. In a nutshell, true love is characterised by the propensity to ‘give’ rather that to ‘grab’. This is another dimension of Jesus’ teaching that it is more ‘blessed’, more profitable, more fruitful, ‘to give than to receive’. When you know and adhere to God’s purpose for your marriage, you will give whatsoever you have to, no matter what it costs you, to make your marriage succeed at being what God intended it to be. This issue of purpose is one we will confront in our very first chapter.

A third issue that bedevils many marriages today is premarital sex. Mankind today, including many a blood-washed believer, has drifted far from God’s original admonition against premarital sex. Now the few voices of protest from advocates of premarital abstinence are either openly ridiculed by the powerful media or, worse, castigated as fanatics, extremists and killjoys.

With Britain now notorious as the teenage-pregnancy capital of Europe, and with an alarming rate of prepubescent sexual activity, it is obvious that successive governments, and society as a whole, do not have answers. Moreover, easy access to abortions has been abused to the point where many teenagers, and even adults, use abortion as a form of birth control.

It is time that the Church began to spearhead teachings on the dynamics of sex from God’s perspective. People need to know the origins of sex, its purpose, boundaries, implications, benefits, and the consequences of its misuse and abuse. We will come to discover that sex is not merely physical but it involves and engages the souls and spirits of participants, with all the emotional and spiritual implications that this entails.

Suffice to say for now that when you have sex with someone before you marry them, even when and if you finally do, you have sown into the foundation of the marriage distrust and a spirit of harlotry, or in modern-speak, prostitution. That sounds serious, and indeed it is.

Fourthly, marriage as God intended it has been under ferocious attack from counterfeit incarnations masquerading as viable alternatives. From immediately after the Fall, man through his religious traditions and culture began to devise hedonistic alternatives to God’s one-man-one-wife injunction. Many men love the provision in one religion that you can have up to four wives, as long as you love them all equally. In a beautifully ironic way, this actually bears out God’s original admonition of monogamy, as no man in history has ever been able to love two wives equally, let alone four! Jacob, Elkanah and David, to name but three, are eloquent biblical testimonies to this fact.

In many traditional African settings polygamy is practised, and many who grew up in that culture can bear witness to the multiple damaging effects of this tradition on women and children, who are the inevitable victims.

Now before those in the ‘advanced’ Western civilisations begin to glow with self-congratulatory pride as so-called champions of monogamy, let us not forget that many of them indulge in the commonly practised, and barely hidden, ‘mistress culture’.

The fifth threat to marriage, and by far the most subtle, prevalent and insidious, is cohabitation. To cohabit is defined by Dictionary.com as ‘to live together, especially as husband and wife, without being married’. Cohabitation in Great Britain, prevalent as it is, does not qualify as the functional equivalent of, or indeed a lasting alternative to, marriage. Rather, it more often functions as a prelude to marriage, or as a ‘trial’ marriage. CIVITAS, the Institution for the Study of Civil Society, an independent social-policy think tank, has discovered in its research that the average length of a cohabiting union is two years, before it either converts to marriage or dissolves. There are many negative effects of cohabitation on cohabiting parents and their children, when compared to married couples and their offspring. Married couples and their children enjoy on the whole qualitatively better economic circumstances, superior emotional well-being, and better physical and mental health.

To exemplify typical attitudes to cohabitation, the study Sexual Behaviour in Britain (K. Welling et al, London: Penguin, 1994, p. 363) showed that cohabiting men are less likely than married men to say they think that sexual fidelity within a partnership is important. To this end, cohabiting men actually engage in slightly higher rates of unsafe sex (having multiple partners and failing to use a condom) than single men, and much higher rates than married men. CIVITAS’s conclusion on the issue of cohabitation (p. 6: ‘Does Marriage Matter?’) comes in the form of advice to those in what Joel calls ‘the valley of decision’: ‘couples who are considering whether to marry or cohabit also should understand that there is no such thing as common law marriage. If couples want legal protection and the social benefits of making a commitment they should marry.’

The sixth and final factor contributing to the rapidly increasing rate of divorce is inadequate preparation. A friend of mine describes marriage as a secret society with rites and practices known only to the initiates. For me, ignorance was responsible for the near-breakdown of my marriage in the early years. I went into marriage completely blind and unprepared, so everything was a surprise, every obstacle or challenge an enigma. In the eternal words of George Benson, ‘If I knew back then, what I know now’, I would have suffered less trauma and inflicted less trauma on my poor long-suffering wife! Not having gone through a thorough premarital programme, we had to learn by trial and error on the one hand, and the harsh reality of experience on the other. Experience is not the best teacher, contrary to the old adage. Other people’s experience is a better teacher. In fact a wise person learns from other people’s mistakes, while a fool learns from his own.

There is virtually no profession, vocation, job, assignment, or even hobby that does not require training, tutelage, induction courses, internship, or similar preparation. Yet it amazes me that two people who are barely out of nappies, in a manner of speaking, can – literally on a whim – decide to spend the rest of their lives together. Many couples with no clear purpose or destination, no marital satnav aids, no emergency supplies or procedures, no guidance, counselling or mentorship, simply undertake ‘to have and to hold’ one another ‘till death do us part’. Since the quality of any performance is predicated on the level of preparation, it is not at all surprising that marriage today is in such dire straits. While it is true that some conflicts and problems are inevitable, it is equally obvious that most are avoidable.