By Bosede Ola-Samuel
One major issue at the heart of marital conflicts is emotional instability. It can be fingered as the root cause of divorce. When a partner is not emotionally stable, his relationships, including his or her marriage suffer from regular conflicts. I also see it as a mental health issue. An emotionally unstable person is unpredictable in his or her behaviour. Such a person is like a time bomb that can explode at any time.
We have discussed emotional intelligence on this platform as a process of understanding and managing one’s emotions and those of others in relationship with one. By way of definition, emotional intelligence is the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. That is, the ability to perceive, interpret, demonstrate, control, evaluate, and use emotions to communicate with and relate to others effectively and constructively. This means you have mastery in managing the emotions of anger, excitement, sadness, joy, etc both in your life and in others.
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Emotion is the degree of expression over what happens around you. When one is emotionally unstable, managing relationships becomes a herculean task. This is because such a person is given to unguarded emotional expressions at the slightest provocation. As emotional beings, we can get provoked by others in our relationships. Only an emotionally intelligent person can bring caution and self control to our lifestyle, thus managing our relationships effectively. An emotionally unstable person is not able to manage the emotions of anger, joy, etc.
In marriage, emotional instability will endanger the relationship through constant conflicts, which in the long run becomes its albatross. That’s, when the term irreconcilable differences comes to play, thus making divorce inevitable. The following three things will play out in the marriage of an emotionally unstable person, leading to its collapse.
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Anger outburst: This is the starting point of trouble in the marriage of an emotionally unstable person. He or she gets easily provoked. When food is not ready, he manifests anger. Or when the husband is late for a pick up for an outing or from office, she erupts like a volcano. When this happens constantly, the partner becomes irritated, and may be pushed to want out of the marriage.
Verbal outburst: When anger sets in, it will degenerate to verbal outburst such as, “stop being stupid, can’t you use your brain, I regret marrying you, I curse the day I met you, you are indeed a mistake in my life, I married a struggle” etc. One cannot escape outbursts like those mentioned above, when one’s spouse is suffering from emotional instability.
Action outburst: This is the end product of emotional instability. The person moves from anger through verbal outburst, and end up with actioned outburst. This is the point where physical abuse takes place. The person loses self control, and before one calls Jack Robinson, there’s a slap in the face and a kick in groan. The experience is better imagined than experienced.
If we understand emotional instability and its damaging consequences, we will give more attention to teaching emotional intelligence in our formal and informal educational institutions at the earliest possible period so that we can raise a generation high on the scale of emotional intelligence. Our society will be better for it, and the marriage institution will become highly effective in playing its role in the society.
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