You are not your parent's choices! - Keeping Marriage Alive Initiative

You are not your parent’s choices! “Do not date this person, they are known to be more slippery than snakes”. We accept this without verifying the facts, and we share with our children this truth or lie, and it continues from generation to generation. We believe strongly that it’s time to make a well informed choice, do you?

Having been in the family counselling space for some while now, a pattern seems to play in almost all counselling sessions. Children who are now parents, are repeating their parent’s mistakes and assuming that it is the right way.

Sometimes, we realize that those before us have influenced our story positively or negatively. While some refuse to see beyond their nose; only interested in regurgitating what someone thought and passed down, while some begin the journey of finding the truth for themselves.

Someone may ask, “Are you saying that passing/handing over of culture is wrong?” The answer is no, it is not wrong, but we must ask ‘why’ before imbibing all that we have been told.

Imagine being handed over the culture that the camel is the best and only means of transportation. Preposterous you might say! But is that not how some of us are living our lives? What should be handed over in this scenario? The importance of transportation in connectivity, business, and family.

Rich says…

We all must challenge and review the thoughts and beliefs handed over to us by our parents and our environment.

We must also remember that the times and seasons we live in are very different from that which our parents lived and hence the conversations and dynamics of life vary widely.

So what are your thoughts and on which principles do you run your life?

Now look at your marriage, career, conversations; what has been handed over to you that is no longer realistic? But you are holding on to it tightly, and damaging all that is around you.

To identify why we are proactive with our life choices, or just a product of our parent’s choices, let’s take the quiz below:

Should a good woman be trained for life, or for her husband to be?
Is the kitchen a place for the woman, or for both genders?
Should we build the family around one person; husband or God?
Is leadership about making all the decisions, or about considering other’s inputs before making decisions?
My tribe is better than any other, or that any human being has the capacity to be good or bad, depending on training, environment and much more.
Are men created to have multiple partners? Or are human beings capable of having multiple sexual partners, but only self control and choice make the difference.
The man should earn more for the marriage to work, or both should earn to improve their financial status of the family?
Parenting is for the woman, or co-parenting is the way to build a wholesome child?

Having taken this quiz, where do you fall into? How do you plan to counter the choices that you have imbibed as truth? Or have you accepted your parents choices?

We might not be able to change the narrative of our past, but we have the capacity to make a choice to change tomorrow, by asking ‘why’ before making choices. Reformation begins with you and I, and the catalyst is information.

Love,
Ngee and Rich
(Dr. Richard and Ngozi Okonkwo)
Relationship Coach/Habit Instructors
Founders – Keeping Marriage Alive Initiative

“Will two people walk together unless they have agreed to do so?” Amos 3:3.