Love Yourself

Vlogging is my newest passion, but I do not want to lose my first love, writing. Besides, there are some thoughts that can only be expressed through written words. But I’m having a lot of fun experimenting with both spoken and written words and figuring out which is more effective in getting my message across. For most readers who have been following my blog, by now you already know that I’m quite passionate about this particular area of our lives, relationships. Therefore, my vlog and most of my blog posts are about relationships. I am invested in seeing people get it right.

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!