A discuss that ensued between me and a dear friend after I initially announced the book launch made me realize just how much more there is to learn about relationships. I was in fact tempted to go back and include some more lessons that I’ve learned since I completed the book. For instance, I realized I did not write about how some men deceive and use women in their youthful days, only to suffer the repercussions of it in their future marriages, because you after all reap what you sow. So be careful how you treat people, you’ll get it back eventually.

However, I did mention that we should not build a wall of unforgiveness and suspicion around ourselves that prevents us from connecting with other well-meaning people. I for one know how difficult it is to trust again after a broken heart. My emphasis was on people who have been hurt by past relationships not the perpetrators. I wished I had elaborated more on that, but I also realized that if I keep adding on to the book, I’ll never finish it.

There are just so many aspects to relationships, one book cannot cover it all. However, my upcoming book covers a lot of basics singles and young married couples need to know about this beautiful thing between a man and woman called love.

Love is a continuous process that keeps evolving as we grow and get to know the other person better. We can never learn it all. There’s no such thing as an expert on love. Just when you think you know enough, something else comes up that forces you to admit just how little you know. That has been my experience of late. I want to know more!

But I’m glad to have written a book I can recommend to anyone who is seeking more knowledge on love, relationships and marriage. And I mean absolutely anyone, including married folks who have been married for ages or divorced folks who are still trying to understand where things went wrong and especially singles out there looking for true love. This book is for you.

As a single woman myself, I understand what the journey can be like for we single folks. Nobody knows your experience as you do. Nobody fully gets it. Most of the time, they just want to see us get married. But they don’t understand the struggle. This book is my special gift to you.

If you believe you’ve found the one, that’s even better! Let this book be your gift to each other. Learn and grow together. Make your love stronger each day through self-development. The better you are as a person, the more capacity you have for love.

Thank you to all my readers who have stayed with me these past years. Next month is anniversary! Two whole years of writing about marriage and love. May we continue to reach more milestones together!

Contact me for more information about the book launch.

The post Give It A Chance appeared first on Rachael Sade's Blog.

Ìwà lẹwà, is a very common saying among Yorubas. It literally means character is beauty, and is used to speak well of women who are not facially attractive, but have a good character or to speak ill of women who are beautiful, but have an evil character. Being a woman born and raised in Yoruba land, I understood the literal meaning of the words, but the wisdom of it eluded me until recently.

I was having a very candid exchange with a Nigerian male friend. He’s the kind I would refer to as matured, exposed and full of wisdom based on experience, and several years of learning. I have known him for quite a while and have engaged in many intellectual dialogues with him, so I trusted his wisdom and judgement. I don’t recall exactly how we came around to discussing the topic of women and beauty, but I rememeber telling him how I thought it was not fair that it is still socially unacceptable for women to propose. Being the feminist that I am, I can hardly converse with the opposite sex without introducing the subject of gender roles. But he disagreed with me and in fact made a statement that I thought radical. He said, not only can and do women propose, it has always been a woman’s call.

And so, on a cold winter night, sitting on our respective couches enjoying a late-night banter as we wait for sleep to envelope us, we began our didactic explication of the intricate relationship between a man and a woman. Like a leaved tree, the conversation branched off into different directions one of which is the concept of women, character and beauty.

I remember my friend saying something to the effect of, “I’m going to be very raw with you right now.” Having spent so much time in engaging with men, I understood this was a code for giving away some male secrets that women aren’t often aware of. Therefore, I knew to sit up and pay close attention. I’m a bit of an enthusiast when it comes to learning, particularly when the subject involves the opposite sex, their peculiar ways and how they think in relations to women. While, I do not entirely endorse the idea of thinking like a man, I do believe it is critical to understand how men think. So, with my ears perked up like an eager pupil ready to learn, my dear friend began his insightful lecture.

Women are responsible for initiating the proposal process. While they may not overtly go on one knee to pop the question as men do, a woman proposes to the man that she wants to marry him by investing her character into the union. A woman who has no interest in settling down with a man will not invest her moral qualities into the relationship. Let’s take for instance, a side chick. She is in the affair for the money and the pleasure. She has no reason to behave in a wifely manner. A side chick who begins to act like a wife is getting ready to take over.

When a woman demonstrates through her disposition that she is interested in building a home with a man, then he goes down on one knee and proposes. But a woman in which he does not perceive a good character (or as some will say, a wife material), he may play around with, but will never commit to. Because once a man gets past the sex phase of the relationship, whether or not he sleeps with the woman, the only thing keeping him is her character.

The first thing that attracts a man is a woman’s physical appeal. Don’t be deceived, no matter how “holy” he claims to be, all men are drawn to the same thing, the looks, the butt, and the boobs. When a man sees a woman he fancies, the first thing that comes to mind is sex. Not her intellect, success, moral standard or personality. If he succeeds in getting her to bed before any real attachment is formed, he’s bound to lose interest. If we cover up the faces of all women and expose their nakedness, underneath the clothing, vaginas are all the same. So, what keeps a man is not a woman’s sexual allure, there’s always a woman more beautiful than the current one. Men who do not act on their natural impulse mostly hold back for four reasons; self-control, respect for their spouses, love for their children and their personal convictions. Take those four away and all men will cheat. Don’t you ever think you can keep a man with your physical beauty. The true charm lies in your character.

Some women at the beginning of the romance pulls the man in with a good character, and then later flips on him by displaying a bad one. This often results in the man cheating or the relationship falling apart. A woman who cannot hold her man with her good conduct, is no different from every other woman out there batting their false lashes at him. This is the true meaning of Ìwà lẹwà.

However, some men will still cheat regardless of how good the woman is. This is because it’s a natural impulse and he has not learned to have self-control. Or simply because he is a jerk. But the point is a woman’s character is more attractive than her physical beauty.

I was pleased with this response. I like the idea of subtly proposing to a man. Many of us have too much female pride to begin with. We do not really want to go down on one knee and ask a man to marry us, no matter how crazy we are about him.

If we pride ourselves on our outer beauty, there’s always a woman more seductive around the corner and there’s no guarantee that if you got him by your beauty, another woman cannot take him away by hers. A real man sees past the outer covering, the make-up and the false lashes to the soul within which is revealed by our character either good or bad. While, it is essential to beautify the outside, we must not fail to build our character as well. This is our true beauty as women.

Ìwà lẹwà

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Why does my generation seem to always struggle at the most important institution on earth? Marriage. This question I pondered upon as I lay on my cradle one night waiting for sleep to engulf me. I had just had a lengthy heart to heart with a friend who was considering marriage. She is one of those friends you speak to once in a blue moon, but you can so easily converse with like you’ve lived together all your life. Her boyfriend of 2 year had recently proposed to her, she had said yes but she wasn’t sure she was ready for marriage, she intimated. My forthright doppelgänger wanted to ask, why in the world did you accept the man’s proposal when you knew you weren’t ready to be married. You’ve been with the man for two years! Isn’t 730 days more than enough time to figure out if you wanted to be married to him or not? But my nicer alter ego had been sympathetic enough to hear her out. It is comprehensible to have premarital jitters, after all marriage is a life time commitment, and looking at the number of failed marriages that surrounds one is enough reason to question if marriage is worth the risk of heartbreak, not to mention being labeled a failure after it crashes. I stated in a previous post that no couple enter into holy matrimony expecting to come out of it but the reality is that it happens, too often for comfort. So I understood my friend’s anxiety. But this made me wonder why? Why do half of marriages end in divorce? Why are the chances of a successful marriage in this day and age so low? Why are people like my dear friend hesitant about walking into marriage? These questions I ruminated over there in my bed waiting for the elusive sleep to embrace me. And then like a fast lightning bolt it struck me! My generation is not equipped for marriage! This was a sad revelation indeed, but it is true. This crucial aspect of our lives has been overlooked by the society. We have many institutions, schools, and colleges teaching people how to get a job, build a career, own a business and so on, but there are no academies for how to be a good wife or how to be a good husband. Now one may say, such schools never existed to begin with. Well, that is because such lectures are expected to come from our parents, families and the community that encompass us. Our model of how to be good spouses are supposed to come from the people around us, but if we look around us today almost every single marriage is struggling! So as a young person how am I supposed to know how this marriage thing works when nobody is teaching me or showing me by example? My generation is filled with the wrong ideas about marriage! In fact we are full of erroneous beliefs when it comes to this sacred institution. These wrong ideas we bring into our marriages only to see them fail because the marriage could not conform to our ideas! Marriages will continue to fail until we set out minds right about what it is really all about.

Marriage is about love! Yes love, but not the kind of love that we have in mind. It is about relationship, but a different kind of relationship. A marriage is as good as the two people involved. I cannot say this enough. The quality of your relationship with your spouse is determined by the quality of your relationship with yourself. We are too hasty to go into a romantic merger with someone without first of all being a unit, one complete whole individual. If you cannot stand on your own two feet mentally, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and financially, do not enter into that union. You’ll end up being a liability instead of a blessing.

“I love you” No you don’t because you cannot give what you don’t have. Brother do you love yourself? Because some things about you are telling me otherwise. Your self-orientation, the way you present yourself, the kind of things you get involved with are telling me something about you. You don’t love yourself! If you do not have a good relationship with yourself then how in the world do you intend to have one with me? You can’t even take some time to read a book to improve yourself and you are here talking about you loving me. What do you have to offer me sister? These are the questions we are supposed to be asking! Self-love is the most vital kind of love and an intrapersonal relationship is the most essential kind of relationship. Unfortunately, many of us lack this and we enter into an alliance with somebody only for all of our baggage to be exposed. Now the thing is some of us are good at attracting people because we are so good at makeup, and hair and Gucci, and boy does he look good? Boy is she beautiful? But when the right person comes closer, there is nothing to hold onto. Our outer facade has succeeded in attracting them, but we really have nothing to offer! So they leave. Show me you love yourself by being good to you, treat yourself better, cultivate yourself, read some books, learn some vital skills, pay your bills, stop accumulating debts, present yourself in a nice way, be all of that and a bag of chips, and don’t just look good on the outside, be full of goodness on the inside. Change your mind, reorient yourself! Forgive yourself.

Do you want your marriage to work? You make it work! Never stop giving it your 100, never stop improving yourself. If you cannot find a good role model, be the role model! Start with loving yourself and then sharing all of that love with your partner. Don’t worry about if the love dies, it ain’t gonna die because it comes from you! So keep watering it by continuously building your own self. The more self-improved you are, the more confidence you gain, the more you feel good about yourself and the more you’re willing to give of yourself to somebody. The key to a successful marriage is to give love and you can only give love when you have love. Love yourself!

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• Do not compromise your values for love. Just don’t do it. Do not amend what you believe is right for anyone. You believe in God, he or she doesn’t, what are you doing with that person? You respect family and want them to be a part of your life, he or she doesn’t even have a decent relationship with his or her family, what are you doing with that person?  It’s all about values baby. If you don’t hold the same sets of principles, how is the relationship supposed to work?
• Do not fall in love before you get all the right answers. How are you supposed to get all the right answers? Ask all the right questions! People reveal themselves through their words, even liars. Ask the important questions, including how much he or she has in the bank, why, how much they intend to have and how. Let’s stop deceiving ourselves about these things, money is important! Both parties should be equally good with their finances.
• Do not change for anybody. If you change for someone, it’s only a matter of time before your revert to who you were. So he likes women who wear dresses, eats daintily and speaks softly and I’m the jeans and sneakers kind of person. My dear stick to who you are, he either accepts you for who you are or takes a hike. If you do intend to change, that choice should come from within.
• Do not expect him or her to change for you. I believe people can change and do change, but I do not ignore those who say, “if he’s always been cheating, he’s going to keep on doing it even after marriage.” Women especially like to think they’ll be the magic that turns things around. He’s gonna fall in love with me and he’s gonna be a different person. He’s gonna stop drinking, he’s gonna stop cheating, he’ll become brand new! News flash, it doesn’t work that way. I repeat change has to come from within. It has to be that person’s decision to change.
• Do not fall in love! Oh yes I said it. Don’t fall in love. If you fall in love, you’ll fall out of it. Love with a purpose, love intentionally. Know what you’re getting yourself into. Don’t be swept away by some emotions and a rush of chemicals and end up with the wrong person! Some of us are lucky that we fall for the right person, but many of us are not so lucky. People tend to be more cautious after the first or second time around, but we could have avoided the heartbreak in the first place if we had been more careful. Instead of falling in love, why not walk into love? That’s implies that you have your faculties in place and you’re making a deliberate decision to be with this person.
• Do not lay your burdens on someone else.  Ladies and gentlemen, get your act together. Understandably, life happens and there are certain situations that we can’t help, but try as much as possible not to be a burden to your spouse. Don’t enter into a relationship being an emotional mess, sort that situation out first. Don’t be a financial burden either.
• Do not pretend to be what you’re not. What’s the point? Won’t you rather be loved for who you are than the fake version you’re putting out there? If you pretend to be what you’re not, your true self will never feel loved because you know the person is not loving the real you but the facade. And if you think the real you is not good enough to offer to someone, then do something about it. Fix your character issue or fix your confidence issue, or whatever issue it is that is making you feel unworthy, because you are worthy of love. The real deal.
• Do not equate sex with love. They are two entirely different things that have almost no correlation. It’s crazy how people still use sex as a weapon. If you love me you’ll have sex with me or I want to sleep with you because I love you. Dude seriously? In fact, the ability to restrain or abstain for the sake of making it seem precious in a world where sex is treated so casually, is an expression of deep love.
• Do not assume. I am that type of person that wants to hear you say the words before I believe. I want to see the actions. Don’t assume things about your partner, it will only lead to frustrations. Don’t make assumptions about how he or she feels about a certain situation or about you. Don’t make assumptions about what they will or won’t do.
• Don’t take the other person for granted. This tends to happen after the relationship has lasted for a while and we believe that person ain’t going no where. We begin to treat them with less care and intensity than we used to when the relationship began. This could be the most annoying thing. I have witnessed how as time goes on, the respect begins to dwindle, the care and affection begin to decrease, and couples begin to take each other for granted. This could be the beginning of the end of a relationship.

Now we already know that relationships are a whole lot of fun and could be very enjoyable and fulfilling. There are many information out there already about the joy and bliss of love, we see it in romantic movies, read it in romance novels, envy it in some of the couples we know. But there is a need to counterbalance that glamorized image of a romantic relationship as well, because for it to be rosy, it takes a lot. Now are we willing to put in the effort?

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