SINGLES BEWARE!!!

I would like to lend my voice to the on-going discourse on battery in marriages. Wife-beating, husband-bashing and the like. My focus is not the married couples but the not yet married singles who are contemplating marriage any time in the future. The best way to avoid this problem is for singles to be vigilant and wary prior to marriage.

Seldom do people suddenly become physically abusive in marriage who had not shown such tendencies before marriage. In my experience with troubled marriages, most of the problems already existed in some form or degree during courtship, but most people just ignored or denied them, believing erroneously that the problems will disappear after marriage. Singles please wake up! Pay attention!

Whatever character tendencies you observe (especially repeatedly) in your 'beloved', are a sure indication of what you are going to live with for the rest of your life if you marry them. Someone who has not married you yet and is shoving, hitting or threatening to hit you is giving you a front-row sneak peek into the future that awaits you if you marry them. 'Well what if they apologize, shouldn't I forgive?' Of course you should! But that does not mean you should marry them, unless they make an EFFORT to seek help and actually, truly and genuinely change and overcome their abusive issues with TIME.

TIME! That is one word a lot of single people do not like to hear. They think that once you are in love with someone you should just go right ahead and marry them without 'wasting' time, especially if they have waited for long to get a marriage partner. Think again! Don't get burnt like some people who realized too late that they should have given their relationship a little more time in order to be sure who they were getting married to. Please note; what is inside a person, (that is who they truly are) is what comes out when they are under pressure. When they are angry. When they are not getting their way. When someone offends them. Watch out and do your life a great favour by not being blinded by 'love' to your friend's harmful foibles.

By the way, I am not referring to human weaknesses and tendencies to which we are all prone but which are not aimed at abusing anyone and which do not harm or injure anyone. A simple rule of thumb will be to do an HONEST, OBJECTIVE evaluation of your relationship and ask yourself 'if this person remains unchanged, am I willing to spend the rest of my life with their character'? Read my lips: The present tense of your relationship is the future tense of your marriage!

Enough said!