Relationship Pattern and Spread of HIV/AIDS
s we have happily entered the New Year, we are grateful to God almighty for preserving our lives and those of our loved ones. This is also a time for sober reflection, looking back into our actions in the year that has ended to find out where we got things right and where we got them wrong. It is this deep reflection that eventually contributes to our ability to sufficiently understand where we have to make necessary improvements to ensure greater yields in the current year.
Considering that life itself is a continuous journey that has to go beyond us, it remains binding on us to live a healthy and fruitful lifestyle that should transcend the present.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is a global occurrence that has mutilated or even cutshort many brilliant lives. The severity of occurrence of the pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa makes it imperative on us to examine in detail some of our everyday lifestyle that contribute to rendering us vulnerable to the infection.
One fundamental area that deserves apposite review remains the relationship formula we adopt within our family unit. We cannot continue to relate with ourselves in the archaic pattern we inherited from our ancestral family system without making basic modifications to reflect present day reality. The choice of relationship pattern in today world is a determinant factor in the context of the spread of HIV/AIDS. In human life, the family upbringing remains the foundation that influences in one way or the other our subsequent associations as we grow older.
As we analyze the various forms of relationship formulae as within the family unit and between married couples we shall attempt to identify some silent issues that can prevent or promote the spread of HIV/ AIDS epidemic.
In the case of family units, close relation- ship between the parents and children at their early age is vital to cultivate extended dialogue between them as they grow older. This is needed to create trust and intimate rapport that will inspire the child to tell his/her parent everything that he/she does without fear of persecution.
Unfortunately this is not a common practice in this part of the world as it is in the western world. Unreserved communication between the child and parent is a continuous process that is extremely beneficial to the family unit and the society in general. Unfortunately most African parents still haven’t realized sufficiently the obvious influence the digital revolution has on the child today.
This is why some parents frown at the fact that their child that has attained the age of 16 years has a boy or girl friend. Wholehearted communication between the parents and their children if encouraged is a positive development that helps to eliminate avoidable mistakes the child could make in early relationship sometimes with harsh consequences.
If the child is encouraged to liberally discuss his/her relationships with his/her parent then they will offer him/her proper guidance that will help him/her make the right choice of companion and relationship pattern. But if as in most cases here, the child is denied intimate dialogue with her/ his parent he/she will then depend on what other people tell him/her to make the choice of partner and relationship formula. This regrettably may lead the innocent child to make avoidable mistakes that might take a long time and in some serious cases resources to correct.
The same can be said of intending couples who pretend to be saints and refuse to frankly discuss every aspect of their past life experience with their would be partner. By the time the cheated partner discovers the concealed facts, he/she becomes so enraged that it will take divine intervention to save their relationship. On the contrary, if one had already known the good, the bad and the ugly sides of his/her intending partner he/she wouldn’t get furious beyond limits if the partner puts up some character he/ she had already been aware of. In this case, sincere and far-reaching dialogue between them comes in to aid them effect necessary amendments.
The maturity of the mind which in the first place made them open up to each other then play vital role in making them to easily understand what had gone wrong and thus leads them to effect the required fine-tuning.
Call it intimate communication or continuous dialogue; the process remains a driving factor in keeping some couples happily together in the face of ups and downs of life that baffles their relations and neighbours who had known their objectionable past.
It is this spirit of far-reaching dialogue that makes it possible for one to freely disclose his/her HIV status to his/her partner early thereby save the partner from getting avoidably infected. Matured relationship formula nurtured by dialogue also helps to zero stigmatization of the infected partner thereby leading them to a better and longer marriage life.
When the opposite becomes the case, the couples infect themselves and each claim innocence and separation and divorce set in sadly and both go their ways to infect other non suspecting citizens in their quest to respond to their sexual desire.
As the case now is that HIV/AIDS is not over but can be, let us all embrace a matureminded relationship formula within the family unit and employ whole-hearted dialogue in relating with our loved ones and the society to further reduce the spread of the epidemic.