Overcoming the Challenge of feeling un-loved and rejected in your relationships --- Part 1

Challenges are unavoidable in our daily lives, especially in our relationships. All challenges must have their ultimate purpose and benefit of shaping our character, teaching us new and vital lessons of life, toughening us, drawing us closer to God for godliness, and humbling us to be more repentant, kind, and compassionate. But we must live in such a wise and godly way that we can avoid unnecessary and destructive challenges due to recklessness, pride, laziness, stubbornness, disobedience, foolishness, immature decisions, and unwise choices. Today, many of us face the huge challenge of feeling un-loved and un-accepted, and feeling rejected in our marriages, courtships, homes, and families, which are all transferred to churches, institutions, and the workplace. Women in particular are the chief victims. To deal with the challenges of love and acceptance, and to also avoid rejection, I will offer a few suggestions:

1) Begin Your Relationship In The Right Way

Do not start your relationship with a faulty start of negative factors such as immorality, rebellion against parental authority (or authority of your elders), and lightheartedness, and settle in marriage or the love relationship with that weak or poor foundation. In many of such instances, pregnancy and intense sexual activity results, which is then converted into marriage, without careful consideration of future implications, and in-built conviction and desire to sacrificially love and accept the partner without dependence on mere feelings and emotional decisions.

2) Let Your Relationship Be Based On True Knowledge

Make all the necessary inquiries that will enable you to ensure that you know very well, the person you are going to share your life with. Gather as much information and important knowledge as you can, about his past life, his present lifestyle, his personality, and his character. Be fully aware that you fall in love with a personality, but you finally live with a character Knowledge is what we really use to live with people Therefore, pray to the Lord to show you all that you need to know, and use all the means available to you to gather essential information about the person before you make a commitment. Beware also of false or distorted knowledge about the person, which could cause you to start or continue the relationship with doubts, suspicion, and fear. If you allow yourself to be fed by wrong advice and information from family members and friends, or become rooted in old-fashioned cultural and traditional beliefs that do not promote meaningful relationships, then you can set the pace for behavior and acts that would breed rejection, due to conditions that would not permit genuine love to be established between the two of you.

3) Check Your Motives; Be Sincere, And Have Insight

Examine yourself critically and find out if a habit, an offence, or fault of yours is not contributing towards the other person’s un-loving attitude towards you. If you discover any negative factor on your part, then make the necessary changes (including real repentance and apologies for offences), and allow your new behavior and lifestyle to build fresh love and acceptance in your mate or friend. It is common to also discover that people marry their partners or pick lovers and other partners for because of business advantages, beauty, fame, financial position, talents and gifts, desire to use the woman to bear children for him (or the woman simply wanting a man who can make her pregnant), and other forms of riches and gains as the overriding motive. Although several men deceive and take advantage of women, there have been cases where a man sincerely loves a woman, but it is rather the woman who camouflages her true motives, and creates a false bond with him merely to use him and gain from his efforts and resources. After a while the man discovers it and begins to pull away until all of his love and acceptance of the woman erodes away completely.

It is important to examine your true motives and deal with any insincerity in your mind and heart. Even when you are wrong in any area or wrong at any time, do the best you can to ensure that you are sincerely wrong and not deceitful or mischievous.

If you realize, that the word “love” is used in the “love affair” as a term more than a definition of things practiced in the relationship, then both of you must thoroughly address the issue. Sometimes the person has not really opened his heart to accept you, but “loves some things of yours” or “some things about you”, but does not genuinely love you as a person. In such cases you should know that you have already set the stage for future rejection and absence of love in the relationship. If you do business, engage in ministry, or run an organization with someone whose motive is to simply use you for his selfish ambitions, then you must be sure that in the end the man will not treat you fairly, and will not exhibit the love and acceptance you deserve or expect from him.

4) Engage In Open Communication And Dialogue

Communication is the blood of all relationships, and your relationship will therefore be anemic or lifeless if communication does not flow from both sides of the couple or lovers in the love affair, marriage, or relationship. Open and sincere communication is the foundation for true and total knowledge that will be synthesized by the mind and heart to generate and build true love that is enthusiastic, satisfying, and sustaining. Learn to be a good listener in order to ask intelligent and necessary questions, and offer good answers Every person who is a poor listener is always a very poor communicator as well. If God wanted you to talk more than to listen, He would have given you two mouths and one ear! Please, learn to listen to people, if you are ever going to understand them, agree to work with them in unity, and be of a blessing to them.

By Dr. Samuel Kisseadoo, Professor of Biology in Virginia. Ordained Licensed Minister, International Evangelist, and Author. Relationships Marriage & Family Counselor. E-mail: kisseadoo@ msn.com. Website for resources: www. fruitfulministriesint.com. Tune in to JOY 99.7 FM in Accra, Ghana to listen to Dr. Kisseadoo’s weekly broadcast “Hope For Your Family” on Sat. 5:30am-6am, Ghana time (1:30am-

2:00am, US Eastern Time in MarchNov.). Access the broadcast on the Internet with MYJOYONLINE.COM.

For free counseling, programs, prayer, messages, books, speaking engagements, call Dr. Kisseadoo in Virginia, USA, on 1-757-7289330 (or call 233-20-8126533 or 233-276322982 in Accra, or 233-275-353802 in Kumasi, Ghana). Ghana Fruitful Ministry E-mail is: fmighana.accra@ gmail.com. Call 233-20-8209567 in Ghana to obtain additional rich information from Dr. Kisseadoos’s books in Ghana. Use his name “Dr. Samuel Kisseadoo” to search: RedLeadBooks.com or Amazon. com for some of his books. He can personally mail some copies to you as well.

In Ghana, call Tigo or Airtel 545 and follow the prompts for daily inspirational messages of Dr. Kisseadoo. Permission granted to freely share but with acknowledgement.