Wedding Is A Day's Show, Marriage Is For Life - Receive Wisdom!

"Dad, can you loan me Four Hundred Thousand Naira?" Kola asked his father.
"What for son?"His father asked."For my wedding.
By our calculations, we're falling short meeting the cost"
Kola had come to meet his parents with his fiancé.
"Your wedding? How much is the total cost of the wedding?" His father asked.
"3.6 million. We're thinking of starting the committee next week. We can together give about eight hundred thousand and expect our friends to help us raise about two million. I remember you told me if ever I need help I can come to you" Kola answered.
His father held him by the shoulder and said "Go get your wife and come meet me in my study room"
"Yes dad" Kola obliged.

Minutes later, Kola and his fiancé, Tomilayo walked into his father's study room.
"Having a good time my daughter?" Kola's father asked.
"Yes I am. You and your wife are so hospitable. I pray that Kola and I can emulate your marriage. You are an admirable couple" answered Kola's fiance.
"Thank you. I am delighted to have you as my daughter. This is your home, you're welcome anytime" said father.
They sat down.
"Thank you dad"

"So, I hear you want to spend 3.6 million for your wedding and you need me to help with four hundred thousand?" Asked father.
"Yes, we will greatly appreciate that Sir" said the fiancé.
"The wedding will be at the Total Garden Ibadan in about six months time" said Kola.
"Why do you want to have a big wedding?" father asked.
"Well, it's our big day. She's always dreamt of a big wedding" Kola replied.
"Have you dreamt of a big wedding or a strong marriage?" The father asked the fiancé.
"When you put it that way, it's more of a strong marriage" said the fiancé.
"Good. You've answered wisely. So who do you expect to come for your wedding?" Asked the Father.

"Friends and relatives. About seven hundred people" answered Kola.

"How many true friends do you really have? I mean friends who have been tried and tested to be there for you through thick and thin?" Asked the father.
Kola and Tomilayo looked at each other."Countable" The fiancé answered.

"So who are these other people who will come to your wedding?" Asked the father.
Silence.

"OK. Let's go to the relatives. I know you love your relatives, but how many are really close to you? You barely talk with the many relatives you have" said the father.

"What are you trying to say dad?" asked Kola.

"My son, my daughter; why do you want to spend 3.6 million on a wedding, a one day event yet you need the money in your marriage?

Look, you are actually coming to ask me for money, you will form a committee to ask people for money; all to show off and please people who will not even matter in your marriage"
Silence.
The father continued, "Let me share with you my experience. When I married your mother, we spent about a million for the wedding. That was a lot of money then. We fed people, got stressed by service providers, just so that we put up a wedding that will win the applause of a crowd. But as soon as we got married, the crowd disappeared.

All the issues that your mother and I went through, no one cared, even family couldn't do much. Everyone is busy living their life. When things got tough, the crowd gossiped about us, some even seemed happy that our marriage was in trouble"
Silence.

"I have seen this script repeated over and over. Brides get stressed on their wedding day, they can't even enjoy, couples being angry at friends who don't support them financially, the worst part is starting marriage in debt or struggling financially. Do you know a wedding doesn't have to cost so much, it doesn't have to be stressful, it doesn't have to be full of people who perhaps will never talk to you again?" added the father.

"But dad, what will people think if we do a small wedding or we don't invite them?" Asked the fiancé.

"Are you getting married for people? If you have a small wedding with only the witnesses who matter, will you two not be married? What is all this competition of who has a grand wedding for? People are competing on Facebook, in weddings; why this need to show off? You know that money you are about to blow in one day, you can use it to invest in your marriage, you can start the process of buying or building a home, you can save up for the needs of the children you will have because you need money to raise a family. Why not start your marriage financially healthy and not in debt? Marriage is what is more important than a wedding" continued the father.

"Dad, if you don't want to support us it's OK" said Kola.
The fiancé stopped him saying, "No my love, dad has a point. I actually find the idea of a small wedding not just wise and economical, but also intimate. Marriage is just you and me, not people"

The father spoke, "My son, in all the years you have been a man, you have never come to me asking for money, but now you are asking for money to put up a show? I look further, I look at your marriage. I admire how people come together in a wedding committee to raise money and I wonder, what if couples and people use that same energy to put up a business that will uplift families. Those members who will be part of your wedding committee, imagine if they become your investors, imagine if you build a company where you can make profit and feed your homes. Something sustainable."

Kola and his fiancé nodded.

"My son, I have longed for the day you would come and ask me to invest in your business idea. But today I will make the first move" the father said taking his cheque book from his drawer.

He wrote on the cheque then gave it to the fiancé.

"Here my son, this is a cheque of five million naira, not for your wedding but as start up capital for a business of your choice. I am giving the cheque to your wife because as the Proverbs 31 woman said,She is to walk with you in building an empire for your family. Focus on your family, give your family the best; forget about the public and opinions of people who don't matter. Build a future for your family. Build your family on a foundation of surplus not debt"

"Thank you so much" said the fiancé.

Kola stood up with tears in his eyes. His father stood up too.

The father and son hugged.

"Thank you dad for being a great figure and your counsel. I don't know what to say. You have challenged me not to merely get married but to have a vision, a vision for my family. I don't know what to say" he spoke.

The father held his shoulder, "You will make a great husband and father. I wish I had the same counsel when I was getting married, all those people I fed on my wedding day didn't add value to my marriage. In fact, if I was to organize an event and feed multitudes, I would do so for the less fortunate and those in need. Marriage is not for show.

To Stay Married, Embrace Change

Written by Ada Calhoun

A couple of years ago, it seemed as if everyone I knew was on the verge of divorce.

“He’s not the man I married,” one friend told me.

“She didn’t change, and I did,” said another.

And then there was the no-fault version: “We grew apart.”

Emotional and physical abuse are clear-cut grounds for divorce, but they aren’t the most common causes of failing marriages, at least the ones I hear about. What’s the more typical villain? Change.

Feeling oppressed by change or lack of change; it’s a tale as old as time. Yet at some point in any long-term relationship, each partner is likely to evolve from the person we fell in love with into someone new — and not always into someone cuter or smarter or more fun.

Each goes from rock climber to couch potato, from rebel to middle manager, and from sex crazed to sleep obsessed.

Sometimes people feel betrayed by this change. They fell in love with one person, and when that person doesn’t seem familiar anymore, they decide he or she violated the marriage contract.

I have begun to wonder if perhaps the problem isn’t change itself but our susceptibility to what has been called the “end of history” illusion.

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished,” the Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert said in a 2014 TED talk called “The Psychology of Your Future Self.”

He described research that he and his colleagues had done in 2013: Study subjects (ranging from 18 to 68 years old) reported changing much more over a decade than they expected to.

In 2015, I published a book about where I grew up, St. Marks Place in the East Village of Manhattan.

In doing research, I listened to one person after another claim that the street was a shadow of its former self, that all the good businesses had closed and all the good people had left.

This sentiment held true even though people disagreed about which were the good businesses and who were the good people.

Nostalgia, which fuels our resentment toward change, is a natural human impulse. And yet being forever content with a spouse, or a street, requires finding ways to be happy with different versions of that person or neighborhood.

Because I like to fix broken things quickly and shoddily (my husband, Neal, calls my renovation aesthetic “Little Rascals Clubhouse”), I frequently receive the advice: “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

Such underreacting may also be the best stance when confronted by too much or too little change. Whether or not we want people to stay the same, time will bring change in abundance.

A year and a half ago, Neal and I bought a place in the country. We hadn’t been in the market for a house, but our city apartment is only 500 square feet, and we kept admiring this lovely blue house we drove by every time we visited my parents. It turned out to be shockingly affordable.

So now we own a house. We bought furniture, framed pictures and put up a badminton net. We marveled at the change that had come over us. Who were these backyard-grilling, property-tax-paying, shuttlecock-batting people we had become?

When we met in our 20s, Neal wasn’t a man who would delight in lawn care, and I wasn’t a woman who would find such a man appealing. And yet here we were, avidly refilling our bird feeder and remarking on all the cardinals.

Neal, who hadn’t hammered a nail in all the years I’d known him, now had opinions on bookshelves and curtains, and loved going to the hardware store. He whistled while he mowed. He was like an alien. But in this new situation, I was an alien, too — one who knew when to plant bulbs and how to use a Crock-Pot, and who, newly armed with CPR and first aid certification, volunteered at a local camp. Our alien selves were remarkably compatible.

Several long-married people I know have said this exact line: “I’ve had at least three marriages. They’ve just all been with the same person.” I’d say Neal and I have had at least three marriages: Our partying 20s, child-centric 30s and home-owning 40s.

Then there’s my abbreviated first marriage. Nick and I met in college and dated for a few months before dropping out and driving cross-country. Over the next few years, we worked a series of low-wage jobs.

On the rare occasions when we discussed our future, he said he wasn’t ready to settle down because one day, he claimed, he would probably need to “sow” his “wild oats” — a saying I found tacky and a concept I found ridiculous.

When I told Neal about this years later, he said, “Maybe you found it ridiculous because you’d already done it.”

It’s true that from ages 16 to 19 I had a lot of boyfriends. But with Nick,

I became happily domestic. We adopted cats. I had changed in such a way that I had no problem being with just one person. I was done changing and thought he should be, too. Certainly, I thought he should not change into a man who sows oats.

When we got married at the courthouse so he could get his green card (he was Canadian), I didn’t feel different the next day. We still fell asleep to “Politically Incorrect” with our cats at our feet as we always had.

We told anyone who asked that the marriage was no big deal, just a formality so the government wouldn’t break us up. But when pressed, it was hard to say what differentiated us from the truly married beyond the absence of a party.

When I grew depressed a few months later, I decided that he and our pseudo-marriage were part of the problem.

After three years of feeling like the more committed person, I was done and asked him to move out.

When he left, I felt sad but also thrilled by the prospect of dating again.

A couple of years later, I met Neal.

Recently, I asked Nick if we could talk. We hadn’t spoken in a decade. He lives in London now, so we Skyped. I saw that he looked almost exactly as he had at 22, though he’d grown a long beard.

We had a pleasant conversation. Finally, I asked him if he thought our marriage counted.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think it counts.”

We were married, just not very well. The marriage didn’t mean much to us, and so when things got rough, we broke up.

I had been too immature to know what I was getting into. I thought passion was the most important thing.

When my romantic feelings left, I followed them out the door. It was just like any breakup, but with extra paperwork.

Nick now works at a European arts venue. He’s unmarried. I wouldn’t have predicted his life or his facial hair. I don’t regret our split, but if we had stayed married, I think I would have liked this version of him.

My hair is long and blond now. When Neal and I met, it was dyed black and cut to my chin. When I took to bleaching it myself, it was often orange, because I didn’t know what I was doing.

Now I weigh about 160 pounds. When I left the hospital after being treated for a burst appendix, I weighed 140. When I was nine months pregnant and starving every second, I weighed 210. I have been everything from size 4 to 14. I have been the life of the party and a drag. I have been broke and loaded, clinically depressed and radiantly happy. Spread out over the years, I’m a harem.

How can we accept that when it comes to our bodies (and everything else, for that matter), the only inevitability is change?

And what is the key to caring less about change as a marriage evolves — things like how much sex we’re having and whether or not it’s the best sex possible?

One day in the country, Neal and I heard a chipmunk in distress. It had gotten inside the house and was hiding under the couch. Every few minutes, the creature let out a high-pitched squeak. I tried to sweep it out the door to safety with a broom, but it kept running back at my feet.

“Wow, you’re dumb,” I said to it.

“I got this,” Neal said, mysteriously carrying a plastic cereal bowl. “Shoo it out from under there.”

I did, and the chipmunk raced through the living room. Neal, like an ancient discus thrower, tossed the bowl in a beautiful arc, landing it perfectly atop the scampering creature. He then slid a piece of cardboard under the bowl and carried the chipmunk out into the bushes, where he set it free.

“That was really impressive,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

 To feel awed by a man I thought I knew completely: It’s a shock when that happens after so many years. And a boon.

That one fling of a bowl probably bought us another five years of marriage.

Source:     NY Times

Are You In A Relationship Now? Then Read This

My oldest daughter, Jenna, recently said to me, “My greatest fear as a child was that you and mom would get divorced. Then, when I was 12, I decided that you fought so much that maybe it would be better if you did.” Then she added with a smile. “I’m glad you guys figured things out.”

For years, my wife, Keri, and I struggled. 

Looking back, I’m not exactly sure what initially drew us together, but our personalities didn’t quite match up. 

And the longer we were married the more extreme the differences seemed. 

Encountering “fame and fortune” didn’t make our marriage any easier. In fact, it exacerbated our problems. 

The tension between us got so bad that going out on book tour became a relief, though it seems we always paid for it on re-entry. 

Our fighting became so constant that it was difficult to even imagine a peaceful relationship. 

We became perpetually defensive, building emotional fortresses around our hearts. We were on the edge of divorce and more than once we discussed it.

I was on book tour when things came to a head. We had just had another big fight on the phone and Keri had hung up on me. I was alone and lonely, frustrated and angry. I had reached my limit.

That’s when I turned to GOD. Or turned on GOD. I don’t know if you could call it prayer—maybe shouting at GOD isn’t prayer, maybe it is—but whatever I was engaged in I’ll never forget it. 

I was standing in the shower of the Buckhead, Atlanta, Ritz-Carlton yelling at GOD that marriage was wrong and I couldn’t do it anymore. 

As much as I hated the idea of divorce, the pain of being together was just too much. I was also confused. I couldn’t figure out why marriage with Keri was so hard. 

Deep down I knew that Keri was a good person. And I was a good person. So why couldn’t we get along? Why had I married someone so different than me? Why wouldn’t she change?

Finally, hoarse and broken, I sat down in the shower and began to cry. 

In the depths of my despair powerful inspiration came to me. You can’t change her, Rick. You can only change yourself. 

At that moment I began to pray. If I can’t change her, GOD, then change me. I prayed late into the night. 

I prayed the next day on the flight home. 

I prayed as I walked in the door to a cold wife who barely even acknowledged me. 

That night, as we lay in our bed, inches from each other yet miles apart, the inspiration came. I knew what I had to do.

The next morning I rolled over in bed next to Keri and asked, “How can I make your day better?”

Keri looked at me angrily. “What?”

“How can I make your day better?”

“You can’t,” she said. “Why are you asking that?”

“Because I mean it,” I said. “I just want to know what I can do to make your day better.”

She looked at me cynically.

“You want to do something? Go clean the kitchen.”

She likely expected me to get mad. Instead I just nodded. “Okay.”

I got up and cleaned the kitchen.

The next day I asked the same thing. “What can I do to make your day better?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Clean the garage.”

I took a deep breath. I already had a busy day and I knew she had made the request in spite. I was tempted to blow up at her.

Instead I said, “Okay.” I got up and for the next two hours cleaned the garage. Keri wasn’t sure what to think. 

The next morning came.

“What can I do to make your day better?”

“Nothing!” she said. “You can’t do anything. Please stop saying that.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t.”

I made a commitment to myself. “What can I do to make your day better?” “Why are you doing this?” “Because I care about you,” I said.

“And our marriage.” 

The next morning I asked again. And the next. And the next. 

Then, during the second week, a miracle occurred. As I asked the question Keri’s eyes welled up with tears. 

Then she broke down crying. When she could speak she said, “Please stop asking me that. You’re not the problem. I am. I’m hard to live with. I don’t know why you stay with me.”

I gently lifted her chin until she was looking in my eyes. “It’s because I love you,” 

I said. “What can I do to make your day better?” “I should be asking you that.” “You should,” I said. “But not now. Right now, I need to be the change. You need to know how much you mean to me.” She put her head against my chest. “I’m sorry I’ve been so mean.” “I love you,” I said. “I love you,” she replied. “What can I do to make your day better?” She looked at me sweetly. “Can we maybe just spend some time together?” I smiled. “I’d like that.”

I continued asking for more than a month. And things did change. The fighting stopped. Then Keri began asking, “What do you need from me? How can I be a better wife?”

The walls between us fell. We began having meaningful discussions on what we wanted from life and how we could make each other happier. 

No, we didn’t solve all our problems. I can’t even say that we never fought again. But the nature of our fights changed. 

Not only were they becoming more and more rare, they lacked the energy they’d once had. We’d deprived them of oxygen. We just didn’t have it in us to hurt each other anymore.

Keri and I have now been married for more than 30 years. I not only love my wife, I like her. I like being with her. I crave her. I need her. 

Many of our differences have become strengths and the others don’t really matter. 

We’ve learned how to take care of each other, and, more importantly, we’ve gained the desire to do so. 

Marriage is hard. But so is parenthood and keeping fit and writing books and everything else important and worthwhile in my life. 

To have a partner in life is a remarkable gift. I’ve also learned that the institution of marriage can help heal us of our most unlovable parts. And we all have unlovable parts.

Through time I’ve learned that our experience was an illustration of a much larger lesson about marriage. 

The question everyone in a committed relationship should ask their significant other is, “What can I do to make your life better?” 

That is love. Romance novels (and I’ve written a few) are all about desire and happily-ever-after, but happily-ever-after doesn’t come from desire—at least not the kind portrayed in most pulp romances. 

Real love is not to desire a person, but to truly desire their happiness—sometimes, even, at the expense of our own happiness. 

Real love is not to make another person a carbon copy of one’s self. It is to expand our own capabilities of tolerance and caring, to actively seek another’s well being. All else is simply a charade of self-interest.

I’m not saying that what happened to Keri and me will work for everyone. I’m not even claiming that all marriages should be saved. 

But for me, I am incredibly grateful for the inspiration that came to me that day so long ago. 

I’m grateful that my family is still intact and that I still have my wife, my best friend, in bed next to me when I wake in the morning. 

And I’m grateful that even now, decades later, every now and then, one of us will still roll over and say, “What can I do to make your day better.”

Contributed

Are You Single And Living Alone? - Must Read

4 things single people should know about living alone

Back in the 1920s, only 5% of Americans lived alone. In 1970, it was still less than 6%.

By 2013, it was 23%.

Not getting married is even more widespread. Over 50% of American adults are now single, compared with 37% in 1976. 

But as as Kate Bolick, the author of "Spinster: Making A Life of One's Own," tells Business Insider, America remains obsessed with coupledom — meaning there's little in the way of advice out there for people who want to be contentedly single. 

"All of us grow up with the expectation that we'll get married," says Bolick, who's a contributing editor for the Atlantic. "Society is organized around marriage, and the expectation is more pronounced for women."

In "Spinster," out in hardcover this week, Bolick weaves together her own adventures in solitude with a history of single women in American culture, notably profiling New Yorker writer Maeve Brennan and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edith Wharton. 

Bolick shared with us some of her best advice about being single.

Be intentional.

"Living alone requires really getting to know yourself, figuring out what you need in order to feel strong and healthy and happy," Bolick says. "There's no set prescription for what each of us needs; we have to figure it out. For me, there was a process of learning to be more conscientious with my time, so that I was creating a more purposeful solitude that felt nourishing."

While that figuring it out is a very individual process, the research on well-being suggests two interrelated paths: experimenting with different pursuits and reflecting on what was helpful.  

Accept that there will be loneliness. 

"If you're living alone, loneliness is a real thing," Bolick says. "There's nothing shameful about it — some loneliness can and should be withstood, and it exists within couples as well. It's an emotional state like happiness or fear. It's temporary unless it's not addressed. Don't be afraid of loneliness, but also be mindful of what kind of balance you need between solitude and socializing."

As a Buddhist might say, loneliness is something that will almost certainly surface in your mind when you're living on your own — and will almost certainly depart. The key is to observe it rather than be upset by it. 

Be in a space that you love.

"For me, it's been so important to find a physical space that I love," Bolick says. "My apartment, I find it to be beautiful, though somebody else might not. It's very old, it doesn't have luxury conveniences, and I would not mind a washer-dryer or a dishwasher — but there is something about the space that is very beautiful and calming to me. It is a haven that I come home to."

In other words, find your own feng shui. 

Take care of your friendships. 

"The idea of the 'friend tribe' was first written about in the early '90s," Bolick says. "It was shown to us on 'Seinfeld' and 'Sex and the City' — it's the celebration and romanticization of adult friendship."

Social science has found friendship to be crucial for coupled up and single people alike.Everything from our self-reported levels of happiness to the size of our waistlines is associated with the friends we have. Taking care of those friendships requires making people feel like they matter — like by asking them for favors, for instance. 

"Since the age of marriage has been rising, friendship has taken on a more essential role," Bolick says. "Our friends have become a much more integral part of our well-being." 

Original:     How To Be Single

Marriage Is Not About All These Things -- Must Read

A Man's Advice To His Son Searching For A Wife

My son, I will be very raw and sincere with you.

Do not worry about the size of a woman buttock or breast but worry about the size of her heart and brain.

Worry about the size of her love and endurance. 

Because after 5 or 10 years, it will not be about the breast or buttock.

As you can see, your mum now has a flat chest and almost flat buttock but we still live together happily, I still love her and she still loves me. 

Be careful of a woman that loves money. I mean the woman that talks ‘every time’ about her hair, clothes, shoes, bags panties and make-ups. 

Marriage is not all about these things. 

Without make-up, clothes, shoes and panties a good marriage will still stand but without love, no marriage can stand. 

When I got married to your mum, I didn’t have a car or house of my own. I was not even educated. But I had dreams and she appreciated and supported me. 

Any woman that does not support your dream is not worth thinking-a-minute about. 

There are women that will see your dreams better than you, you are lucky if you find one.

My son, open your ears very well, there is a kind of woman you should avoid, do not make a mistake to marry this kind of woman or you will regret it. 

I mean a woman that always has bad things to say about everyone. If you see this kind of woman, run away. 

One of the worst kind of woman you can marry is the one that complains about everything. 

If you buy this, she says you should have bought that, if you do this, she said you should have done that. Please stay away!

Most women enjoy talking but the one who talks for two hours and listen for two minutes is a potential ‘bomb’. Be wise

Be very careful of a pretending partner. A pretending woman is not hard to know. She will always know everything about everything, she will be careful. 

Just close your eyes and open your heart and you will see!

No woman is perfect. If you see a woman who believes in your dream , who respects you who is committed and who is not all about herself alone then don’t let her go.

But remember, you must not be a wayward man. I have 

trained you!

If you find a good woman but you are a bad man, you wont have a good marriage!

I won’t pick a wife for you but I have given you my advice. When you find her, bring her for my blessings. 

May you find a woman that will increase you not decrease you in Jesus.