The play presented in Dallas for Mother’s Day weekend. I was blessed enough to be able to see the play on opening night thanks to my mentor. My cousin, Monika Teague, and I had a great night out. The play was at TBAAL and started a little after 8 PM. Directed by Laterras R. Whitfield and written by Kendrick D. Young’s.
They had a star studded cast from Chico De Barge, Elise Neal, Shirley Murdock, Toya Wright, and Clifton Powell. One Dallas native, Kyndal Robertson, just to name a few.
It hits on so many areas that need to be looked at for marriage. The title says so much and it iisn’t necessarily about paying the bills. It is more about learning to build a solid foundation for your relationships from friendships to marriages. So many of us that are married or in a serious relationships have found ourselves focused on the appearance of the relationship. I am not sure why this is so important, but it is. I found myself doing this in my last serious relationship and focused on keeping the appearance up that it was perfect versus being transparent to a certain extent. Believe me, you don’t want to share everything. You need to learn to work things out with your mate, without taking in a lot of outside noise. Yep, I said noise. Folks, learn who to talk to for what things. The play hits on hard levels of marriage due financial challenges and the concern for barring kids. I don’t want to spoil this for everyone that may see this in other areas. I will say I think they did a magnificent job of balancing the religion, realistic approaches, laughter, and some ooh moments.
You know… I have never been married. However, I have heard these same issues time and time barreling through marriages. After researching, many sites brought up top three marital issues are money, sex, communication; in no particular order. However, I would have to say the breakdown of communication will start the breakdown of others. Or the lack of honesty about money or lack of reaching your sexual pleasure can start the breakdown of communication. I could see them all being reciprocal. It is a vicious cycle. The play hits on all of these.
I think many times people start to forget over time why they decided to marry the person in the first place. We know not all people marry for the same reason. However, if you are marrying based on love and feeling that this is who God had for you… I think these are all issues that will come up at some point. You may want to understand before entering a marriage, if the other person takes their vows and marriage seriously. Don’t skip the hard discussions as it leads to more turmoil later in the relationship. Now do know, there is a time and place for these conversations. As things get more serious and you two are discussing seeing a life together, it may be a good idea to know how that party views marriage, what they want in a marriage, what are deal breakers, religious views. You just want to know you have opened the door for discussion and have a healthy flow of communication with your mate. In many times, this also has some to deal with knowing yourself. It is excruciatingly hard to explain to your mate what you want or need, if you don’t know yourself first. Please don’t put unrealistic expectations on your mate to know things about you or what you prefer if you keep the lid on communication. Take time to get to know one another and be willing to discuss strengths, weaknesses, what cheating means to you, if family is a priority. The additional thing that comes with that is just keeping your eyes open and realizing if what they are saying to you doesn’t add up… don’t make up why it doesn’t, discuss it.
If you enjoyed the blog on the play, take a look and see when it is coming to your area. Feel free to also check out the blog called 3 Core Values of a Relationship.