Romantic Relationships in Ethiopia (Still a Mystery to Me)
Monday, October 27th, 2008 | Uncategorized
My Bible Study group is mostly single people in their mid 20s to mid 30s so when we got into a long discussion about romantic relationships in Ethiopia I was all ears. People in Ethiopia tend to get married around the age that most people are in my Bible Study. It’s a bit later than it sometimes is in the states. This is because people (especially men) usually want to secure a job and maybe even a house before they can marry. This definitely takes time here. It also means that sometimes relationships last a long time before they turn into marriage (one extreme example was 8 years).
Also, sometimes people don’t bring home their girlfriend or boyfriend until they have already decided to marry them. One person said that someone they knew dated the same girl for 3-4 years before his family found out about her, and that was when he told his family that he was going to marry her.
A sad fact about marriages in Ethiopia is that over 75% of them have some form of domestic violence. The ironic thing is a lot of these marriages are founded in some form of Christianity. Did the husbands read Ephesians 5—that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her? If they did, maybe they missed what it means, because it certainly doesn’t mean to beat your wife!!
Interestingly enough, over half of my church population is made up of single people. I wonder why that is. As single people do we just particularly gravitate towards this church? Are we afraid to commit ourselves to more serious relationships? I don’t know, the possibilities are endless, but I’m still curious.
Aside from all this, I discovered that I might be from a different culture but when it comes to what women want in a man they hope to marry, we pretty much want the same things—romance, a man who is seriously committed to God, will adore us for who we are, we talked to us like a best friend would, etc. Across the world, women pretty much want the same things.
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