Is your Marriage a Transaction?

I know you’ve heard that marriage is 50/50. It’s a give-and-take business🤝. It’s “showing up for each other equally”, hand-in-hand, facing the world together.
…and sometimes, it is those things.
But other times, it is anything but hand-in-hand… Many seasons of marriage, things are not 50/50. (If you’re married long enough, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) Sometimes, there’s just give, give, give, and no receiving. Your expectations won’t be met all the time, and that’s part of the package. 🤷‍♀️

I was quite sick right after giving birth to our second daughter , in a lot of pain, and had to get an emergency operation. A few days after a miraculous recovery, the nurses were telling me how I have such a wonderful husband 💕. He is so gentle, patient, and understanding. He never once left my bedside, rubbing my back, massaging my legs, changing pillows. He moved into the hospital with me, bathing the new baby, staying up with the baby when I was knocked out by pain medicine — he was there for me. I never once experienced discomfort that he did not try to relieve.

The part of the nurse’s story that I didn’t like to hear, though, was when they described my behavior 😬. Apparently, I was a brat, yoh. I was whining the whole time. I was asking him to “press me here, no here, no you’re doing it wrong, come back, give me this, give me that, I want water, give me the gown, lower my bed – no, not like that, do this, do that”. I was so entitled, and very ungrateful. I guess, in my mind, my rude behavior was justified, being sick and all.

…But my husband was receiving nothing from my side 😶. No love, no ‘thank you’, no smiles, nothing. He was doing all the giving, and I was doing all the taking. He was showing up, serving, rubbing, feeding. There was no 50/50. There was my 10% and his 90%. And I am so grateful to him, but he wasn’t doing it it for my gratefulness. He was just loving me, even when it did not feel nice to do so.

That’s an example of a season in marriage life. It’s a continuous cycle of 90/10, 60/40, and sometimes, it’s 50/50. When you go into marriage, you don’t go in for the 50/50; you go in to give more than you receive. To show up, even when your partner is giving zero. That’s what makes it unconditional love ❤️. It’s giving, without reimbursement. That’s what you have to do during the months when your partner is not showing up as the best version of themselves, they are being lazy, inconsiderate, messy, rude, or whatever…

And some seasons are longer than others, but friend, that’s marriage. You do your part. You don’t wait for your wife to be very demure and very cutesy, before you do the right thing. You don’t wait for your man to be “husband of the year”, before you do your job. You’re not entitled to a push-gift, baby, you just push because that’s your job. If you get a gift for it, yay, but if you don’t, boo, keep it demure, keep it moving ✌️!

Is your marriage a transaction?
“I will only do this, if you do that. I will be nice if you’re nice. I will be good to you and you have to pay me back with goodness. I will tie your tie if you tie my tie. If you don’t do A, I won’t do B. I will only tolerate you until this point” Colleagues, what is that?? Marriage is not a transaction. We are very business-minded mbela, of hoe 🤔? The expectations are high, and the willingness to give is low. We want to receive as much as we give; sometimes, we even want to receive more than we give 🤦‍♀️. That’s not realistic. Marriage is not a contract, it’s not a give and take. On the altar that day, you vowed to give and to show up, you did not vow “to take and to receive”. Just show up and stop your childishness 🤡.

The problem is, you believed that girl that said, “True love doesn’t hurt” (I’m convinced it’s a girl that spoke such nonsense). Askies mamie, love hurts, of course it does. It hurts to consider the other person’s well-being before your own. It hurts to forgive someone over and over again 🫤, to overlook someone’s flaws. It hurts to be submissive (yoh). It hurts to be selfless and be the bigger person all the time. It hurts to swallow your pride when you know you’re right, and your partner is wrong 😤. It hurts, and it’s called ‘sacrificial love’. Marriage is not “You tie my tie, I tie your tie. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. If you do your job, I’ll do mine.”

Marriage is “I will tie your tie. I will scratch your back. I will do my job.” That’s marriage. That’s the beauty of it, because your partner commits to do the same thing for you. But it sucks, of course, if you married someone who thinks “transactionally” just like you. 🙂

Insert your partner’s name in the dotted line, and say it with me: “…………………., I will tie your tie. I will scratch your back. I will do my job.”

…until next time, and with so much love for you, this is…