Some years ago some young men (between the ages of 28 and 38) hosted a radio show talking about men, understanding how they think and what they want. It was really an interesting program, each week several people call in from all over the place to share their experiences and these young men made suggestions and recommendations. They said that after several years of research and comparing notes with each other, they had discovered the secret to how men react and respond and that they could help women who struggled in/with their relationship (obviously with men). A couple of the callers had very interesting questions/issues but one, only one really kept my mouth ajar-if ajar means half open for a while.
The phone rang and the caller goes “good afternoon gentlemen…” and the men, including the presenter who is also a man , responded “good afternoon”. She went straight to the point; she didn’t want to waste their time as she knows that there are other callers waiting. Her question was direct “what do men want from their wives? That sounded easy for the “experts” but in order to get further clarification the presenter asked the caller if she was married. “Yes” was her answer. He went on to ask how old she was, how long she had been married, is it her first marriage and etc. The caller answered “I am 65 years old and have been married for 40 years to the same man but I still do not know what Mark (not the actual name) wants from me” Like you will imagine, there was complete silence in the studio. You could hear a pin drop.
Well, this article is not about marriage but read on because I should tell you the end of the story and how the “experts” handled the “young” woman’s question.
First, the topic of this article is “Marriage, Sex and Babies” but my emphasis is more on the order rather than the three key issues. When I was young that was the due order; you married before having sex and making babies. We started life dreaming about what we would be in the future. I remember telling my teacher once in elementary school that when I grow up I would like to be a professor. I didn’t know what that meant but as a kid three things really appealed to me: I like to teach, travel and write stories. “Well,” said my teacher Mrs. Iriele. (I wonder where she is right now. If anyone ever knows how to reach her, tell her I say her prophesy is coming to pass) “yes you can be a professor but you have to read hard, know a lot about many things and stay focused…you can be what you want to be” She concluded. For many years the words of my teacher reverberated on my mind. I stayed focus on my studies and did not let anything distract me. In high school they taught about sex but the teacher added “…but sex is better experienced in marriage”. I kept that in my heart and did not allow anything drag me into experimenting before the right time. I cannot say it was easy, but I had decided to wait and I was not the only one; several other young people chose the same path-the path of abstinence.
But these days I have seen the reverse of what we believed and practiced in the 90s. These days, people have sex and sometimes have babies before marriage. Is it just me or is there something wrong with this generation?
Sexperimentation
So, they want us to believe that the world is better off with sexual exploration as long as protection is used huh? Well, that really worries me and several other observers; how does “protection” protect the heart of several young girls broken every hour? How does “protection” erase the shame and embarrassment that accompany these uncontrolled passions and experiments? Tell me how “protection” restores the dignity of the people involved!? And when the so called protection fails what happens when the repercussions that come with pre-marital sex starts. Has anybody discovered how to protect the mouth yet? So they want us to believe that one can use protection to prevent infections and yet people kiss everyday without oral protection!? Why can’t we just tell young people the truth about condom and stop giving them false impressions and false hopes? We are raising a generation of “mini prostitutes”, a generation without discipline or self dignity, a generation without control and we call it what, Sexual exploration?
In those days people end up having one sex partner in their lifetime and if for any reason you had two you felt ashamed about it. A few days ago I was talking to an 18 year old boy who was talking about his ex and I went “you already have an ‘ex’ at 18?” Most of his colleagues present at that time laughed and one of them said “…no, he doesn’t have an ‘ex’, he has several ‘exes’. At 18 he has been naked before more than one woman, how many women would he have been naked before when he is in his 40s? Well, that is if he makes it to 40.
I used to think that when you see a man and a woman (Boy or girl) getting intimate they are either married or planning to marry but it seems that I’m wrong. Boys see girls as “objects of relaxation” and girls seem to enjoy it until they get tired of playing around. Then after all the games the girl thinks she should settle down and the boy finds a reason to end it and he moves on to find another “fool” And we call this “information age”? I thought people who live in this age should have access to information? Why can’t people read and learn from the mistakes of others. Freedom seems to be killing us so maybe, just maybe we should revert to those days when sex was kept for one person alone. Let’s revert to those days when people were rewarded because they kept themselves until marriage. There were fewer diseases, less heart breaks, less divorces and more fun. Sex is a lot like driving; you need to be trained, and you need a license.
…after the baby then what?
I have also observed that many people have children and then begin to wonder what to do with them. These days we hear people say things like “since I had this kid I have lost my life, I wish I know what to do with this child” It’s a shame. If you are not ready for a baby, should you make one? Should you be having sex? If you cannot stand heat, what are you doing in the kitchen, why are you looking into the oven? I do not see the sense in having a child when you are not ready for the responsibility, when you’re unprepared for the commitment to care and nurture. What more can I say? It is foolish to put the cart before the Horse; no one gets anywhere that way! It only brings frustrations and disorder. Let’s have our priorities in proper perspective. When things are done right it saves everyone involved pain and misery. A child born at the wrong time will upset a whole family. But what worries me is when they tell you the first one was a mistake, you wonder what the second and third is. And the shame in many cases is that the kids have different fathers. This is a shame indeed but worse still a complicated and confused childhood for innocent children.
The phone rang and the caller goes “good afternoon gentlemen…” and the men, including the presenter who is also a man , responded “good afternoon”. She went straight to the point; she didn’t want to waste their time as she knows that there are other callers waiting. Her question was direct “what do men want from their wives? That sounded easy for the “experts” but in order to get further clarification the presenter asked the caller if she was married. “Yes” was her answer. He went on to ask how old she was, how long she had been married, is it her first marriage and etc. The caller answered “I am 65 years old and have been married for 40 years to the same man but I still do not know what Mark (not the actual name) wants from me” Like you will imagine, there was complete silence in the studio. You could hear a pin drop.
Well, this article is not about marriage but read on because I should tell you the end of the story and how the “experts” handled the “young” woman’s question.
First, the topic of this article is “Marriage, Sex and Babies” but my emphasis is more on the order rather than the three key issues. When I was young that was the due order; you married before having sex and making babies. We started life dreaming about what we would be in the future. I remember telling my teacher once in elementary school that when I grow up I would like to be a professor. I didn’t know what that meant but as a kid three things really appealed to me: I like to teach, travel and write stories. “Well,” said my teacher Mrs. Iriele. (I wonder where she is right now. If anyone ever knows how to reach her, tell her I say her prophesy is coming to pass) “yes you can be a professor but you have to read hard, know a lot about many things and stay focused…you can be what you want to be” She concluded. For many years the words of my teacher reverberated on my mind. I stayed focus on my studies and did not let anything distract me. In high school they taught about sex but the teacher added “…but sex is better experienced in marriage”. I kept that in my heart and did not allow anything drag me into experimenting before the right time. I cannot say it was easy, but I had decided to wait and I was not the only one; several other young people chose the same path-the path of abstinence.
But these days I have seen the reverse of what we believed and practiced in the 90s. These days, people have sex and sometimes have babies before marriage. Is it just me or is there something wrong with this generation?
Sexperimentation
So, they want us to believe that the world is better off with sexual exploration as long as protection is used huh? Well, that really worries me and several other observers; how does “protection” protect the heart of several young girls broken every hour? How does “protection” erase the shame and embarrassment that accompany these uncontrolled passions and experiments? Tell me how “protection” restores the dignity of the people involved!? And when the so called protection fails what happens when the repercussions that come with pre-marital sex starts. Has anybody discovered how to protect the mouth yet? So they want us to believe that one can use protection to prevent infections and yet people kiss everyday without oral protection!? Why can’t we just tell young people the truth about condom and stop giving them false impressions and false hopes? We are raising a generation of “mini prostitutes”, a generation without discipline or self dignity, a generation without control and we call it what, Sexual exploration?
In those days people end up having one sex partner in their lifetime and if for any reason you had two you felt ashamed about it. A few days ago I was talking to an 18 year old boy who was talking about his ex and I went “you already have an ‘ex’ at 18?” Most of his colleagues present at that time laughed and one of them said “…no, he doesn’t have an ‘ex’, he has several ‘exes’. At 18 he has been naked before more than one woman, how many women would he have been naked before when he is in his 40s? Well, that is if he makes it to 40.
I used to think that when you see a man and a woman (Boy or girl) getting intimate they are either married or planning to marry but it seems that I’m wrong. Boys see girls as “objects of relaxation” and girls seem to enjoy it until they get tired of playing around. Then after all the games the girl thinks she should settle down and the boy finds a reason to end it and he moves on to find another “fool” And we call this “information age”? I thought people who live in this age should have access to information? Why can’t people read and learn from the mistakes of others. Freedom seems to be killing us so maybe, just maybe we should revert to those days when sex was kept for one person alone. Let’s revert to those days when people were rewarded because they kept themselves until marriage. There were fewer diseases, less heart breaks, less divorces and more fun. Sex is a lot like driving; you need to be trained, and you need a license.
…after the baby then what?
I have also observed that many people have children and then begin to wonder what to do with them. These days we hear people say things like “since I had this kid I have lost my life, I wish I know what to do with this child” It’s a shame. If you are not ready for a baby, should you make one? Should you be having sex? If you cannot stand heat, what are you doing in the kitchen, why are you looking into the oven? I do not see the sense in having a child when you are not ready for the responsibility, when you’re unprepared for the commitment to care and nurture. What more can I say? It is foolish to put the cart before the Horse; no one gets anywhere that way! It only brings frustrations and disorder. Let’s have our priorities in proper perspective. When things are done right it saves everyone involved pain and misery. A child born at the wrong time will upset a whole family. But what worries me is when they tell you the first one was a mistake, you wonder what the second and third is. And the shame in many cases is that the kids have different fathers. This is a shame indeed but worse still a complicated and confused childhood for innocent children.
I know you want to know how the young experts handled the callers question; well, the story, as it were, may not have any correlation to this article, I used it because some people claim to have “complete” knowledge about men. No one can fully understand the heart of man or woman; it has been described as “desperately wicked”. The human thought pattern is hardly comprehensible and even though we might learn a bit of it, yet we cannot lay claim to full or perfect understanding of any humankind. Anyway, the “experts” couldn’t help her, at least not in my opinion. After a brief silence, they asked her a few more questions and when he realized that the caller had survived 40 years without their counsel, the presenter told her “whatever you have done that has kept the two of you together all this while, keep doing it.” Well, that is good enough although I guess she knew that before she called.
I can’t say I know what men want or what women crave for, but I know that everyone desires a good life; so I suggest that we, the people of the 21st century, re-arrange our priorities, plan for the future and live according to the God ordained order. We will be better off.
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