Before You Get Hitched! by Ekene Agabu

Hello Dear Ones,

It's time for me to share my usual "weekend" post and this time I decided to  share an article written by my Cousin (Ekene Agabu).

 

The article focuses on things to look out for before you get hitched (self explanatory title yeah). 

Some people may not agree with his "points" but I think they make sense and is worth reading.

So check it out:

I am at that point in life where if I am not at a wedding, I am either coming from one or going to one. Most of my peers have supposedly found their life partners and are ready to make it legit, in other words, legitimize their union religiously and legally. Everything leading up to the wedding day is usually exciting, but many at times there’s  that  3a.m phone call I get 6 months after the wedding that tells me we might be closer to the courthouse than we were to the church.

I’m sure you’ve heard phrases like, ‘He’s the one’ or ‘I’ve found my soul mate.’  Ok, if that’s true, why are you looking for a way out from ‘the one?’ Don’t get me wrong, I believe in love and finding the ONE, but more so, I am a bigger believer in the path that leads you to the ONE. You’ll come to realize that as individuals, we have more control over the path we take than the actual destination. Most times, the path has a way of revealing what the eventual destination will be like. You must understand that there is only one ONE, and that ONE is YOU. Until you become the one, this process of finding the other one may lead to quite a number of errors, and in some cases, fatal errors.

There are 5 things you must consider before you get to the altar or courthouse especially if you want to make it your last trip.

Marry someone you are totally Crazy about

Being crazy about someone is a feeling that makes your heart beat twice as hard at the mention of this person’s name. Your heart skips a beat when they walk into the room. There is something in you that responds to their presence. It’s a feeling only you can understand but never articulate. It’s a feeling that transcends any bad day or tragic event. 

No matter how horrible your day might have been, nothing gives you more comfort than knowing that in a matter of minutes, at the end of a long and hectic day, you will be seeing the person that brings the most joy to your heart – not because of anything they have done, but simply because of who they are. 

Go back with me if you will to grade school, say the 5th Grade; Do you remember those crushes you had? Do you remember how you felt when the boy you secretly admired asked if he could use your pen? Do you remember when that girl you were always drooling about said ‘Bless you’ after you sneezed? I know, her ‘Bless you’ sounded different, right? And you went home thinking, ‘she likes me’ not knowing she had said ‘Bless you’ to 5 other guys that day. 

I referred to the 5th grade when we must have been about 10 or 11 before the unset of puberty (now if you were older, you’ve got some explaining to do). There were no butts or boobies to look at. It was a sincere attraction to who the person was and not what they had or didn’t have. This craziness I speak of is a loving attraction that will exist between you and this person and as silly as it may sound, should be the foundation of any relationship you plan on getting into. Now remember, if you are not crazy about him or her, you will eventually get attracted to someone you are crazy about even after you are married. That wedding band around your finger only tells the world that you are married to someone, it can’t make you love them or better yet – it can’t make you crazy about them.

Marry someone whom you have reverential respect for

We all know what respect means. This is deeper than that. Growing up in high school, I respected my teachers. Now to some of you, I know that might sound strange, but we greeted them first, addressed them politely and followed their instructions provided it was within educational ramifications. You see, I’m not talking about that. I respected them but I wasn’t in awe of them. I wasn’t amazed and intrigued by who they were or what they were. I respected them because they were older than me and probably because they had the power to decide whether I would be class of ’92 or class of ’02. Some of us are in relationships where we show respect because he is providing a good life for the family or because she is the mother of your kids. But besides what they are, there is really no reason to respect them.

This reverential respect has nothing to do with what this person is to you or what they do for you but more so, it’s about who they were even before you met them. It’s the thing that intrigues you about them. It could be their character, their vision, their personal discipline, their intelligence or their immense contribution to society. One thing is for sure; it’s usually something about them that you have nothing to do with but rather reminds you daily that this person is a gift to you. It’s almost impossible to abuse or mistreat someone you are in awe of.

In marriage, we get to see the best and worst of each other and it’s that awe factor that keeps us from just seeing people at the level of their mistakes or short comings – and you’ll have to admit, we all have them.

Marry someone you are totally physically attracted to

In my years of observation, I have come to realize that people make deals with themselves based on what they think they can get instead of being honest with themselves and saying, ‘I don’t think she is fine’ or ‘He just doesn’t cut it for me.’ Dude! 50 years is a long time to be looking at a head that you think is too big or feet that are ugly. If you’re going to lie in my bed, you better be everything I dreamed of and if I’m going to lie in yours, I better be everything you desired. I’ll speak as a man: Looking at a beautiful woman, is like experiencing a 70 degree day in January. She brightens up the whole place. She attracts and commands attention. We may look calm and collected when we are talking with you for the first time, but trust me, we can’t hear a word you’re saying. We are mesmerized by your beauty. I didn’t say makeup – I said beauty.

If you are a guy and you know you love large breasts, please don’t marry someone with a B-cup and if you know you love a woman’s rear, please marry someone with a sizable butt. If you marry someone who is missing something you like, you’re going to hurt her. How? You ask. 

If you are not mesmerized by your wife’s physical beauty, you will find it difficult to give her the heartfelt compliments that she truly deserves. Women run on heartfelt compliments. You may not cheat on her but you will cheat her and rob her of loving words that she would love to hear on a daily basis. When a man is physically attracted to a woman, he can’t help but say it to someone. If he’s living with her, who do you think he will be saying to? When he’s married to a woman that he is hot for, his mouth will be a volcano for compliments anytime he sees her. It is close to impossible to keep your hands to yourself let alone your words around a woman you consider amazing.

Delay physical intimacy

This is where most people mess up a good thing. Physical intimacy should be the last stage discovered in a relationship. You must develop a mental and emotional connection over a period of time before embarking on the physical journey. How you build your relationship determines how you live in it. You want to make sure that your relationship is based on commitment and not attachment. A commitment to a person is; wanting to be with that individual void of any external forces. An attachment is; needing to be with the individual due to external forces. I’ll give you an example. Most of you go to work because you are attached – you need the money and in turn that pays your bills and helps you look like you are somebody in society. On the other hand, there are people who hold volunteer positions and don’t get paid a dime. These individuals are there because of a deep passion for the issue they are a part of. They are committed. They can walk away at anytime but the love for what they do keeps them there. They don’t need to be there, they want to be there.

Most ladies who have slept with guys too soon often try to make the relationship work because they do not want to lose what they have already lost, so they remain trying to recapture something that never existed. They’ve just given their apparent sense of self and worth to this guy and now they feel obligated to stay no matter how bad things get because they laid the sacrifice down too soon. Deep down, they know it was a mistake to have had sex too soon, so to recover the loss they work really hard to try to make something out of nothing. 

When you have a baby for a guy, you become attached. You want to have a baby for a guy who is committed to you. You don’t want to marry a guy who is committed to his baby and attached to you. An attachment means’ I’m stuck with you and I have to be with you’ while a commitment means ‘I want to be with you – not just in you.’ You can never get a commitment out of an attachment but you can always create an attachment within a commitment. Never let your bodies get attached to each other before your hearts are committed to each other.

Never marry someone you need – Marry someone you love

Never marry someone who needs you. Needs are some of the most deceptive things on earth. They are temporal and selfish. When someone needs you, you are not the Subject, but the object to getting that need fulfilled. Once that need has been fulfilled, you become a nuisance in that scenario. What am I talking about? If a lady has a need to be married because all her friends are married, she’ll get you and keep you, but once that need in her has been fulfilled, your relevance to her begins to diminish day by day. 

You see, in relationships, we desire a true loving connection with another human being and this cannot exist in the presence of any deception. If you are not with someone because you sincerely love them for who they are, you are using them and once their use over, you’ll focus elsewhere and you subconsciously become available to extra marital company without knowing it. For a guy, all its going to take is a lady outside to stroke his ego and for a lady it’s probably going to take that one guy at work who gives her a heartfelt compliment that she has truly yearned for but never received.

A lot of folks are still married and living in the same house but all the while their hearts are looking outside through separate windows. Marriage is not where your physical body is, it’s where you heart is. 

So if that’s the case; why not follow your heart? You never want to find yourself in a place of wonder – wondering what your life would have been like if you really married the person you truly loved. You owe it to yourself and the family you’ll create to be true to yourself when making this decision. Your kids will be blessed or scared by it. You life will be on track or derailed by it.

You must remember that divorce is not an issue for the Courts; it’s a matter of the heart. So before you make that decision to marry this person, consider these five things, so that first trip down the aisle of your heart also becomes the last one.

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Question: Do you agree with his point of view?

Feel free to share your opinion.