Both men and women have an inadequate understanding of gender roles and marriage. They are either unclear about how to act out their individual roles or have an inadequate image of what their roles should be. Such an image may be the illusion that the marriage covenant is simply to do with individuals working and living together; or it may derive from the illusion created by the mass media of roles that are either jokes, a soap opera, or so one dimensional that they are impossible in reality. Such images induce an individualistic approach such that each person attempts to fulfil his obligation to the covenant and to himself without reference to his partner, thus denying the whole meaning of covenantal relationship.