TREAT HER AS A PARTNER

Africa is one continent where it is believed a woman should be seen and not heard. Women are seen by a good number of men as just existing to complement a man. A good number of men treat their wives as just a woman who should be seen only, not heard.
I once threw a question on my Facebook wall due to a comment a man made after reading my article. This ignorant man (so I called him) said a woman is not important as a man and any woman who has just female children shouldn’t be seen as a woman with children. This is one of the most painful comments I have received from my readers. I couldn’t help thinking about the wife of this man; what will she be going through in the hands of this wicked man? What kind of treatment will his female children be receiving from him?
The problem is that a lot of African men get married for the wrong reasons. The moment a man is approaching 30; pressure comes from his mother asking for a grandchild. Even when the man is not ready for marriage, he is made to feel miserable without a child as his mates are all getting close to being grandfathers.
The man then looks around for any available woman who will pass his test. What are those tests, you may ask? A man wants to be sure she can still have children; he wants to know how beautiful she is and how well she can take care of his house and cooking. These things are good, but should never be the reason for marriage.
The number one reason for marriage is companionship. It is very wrong to have men and the society see women as just baby making factories. This is why many married couples don’t know what honeymoon is. Honeymoon is actually a time to get bonded with your spouse and plan ahead for the new family. Ideally, honeymoon should last for a period of one year, but this is not so in Africa.
Left for me, I would advise couples to avoid anything like pregnancy before one year of marriage. This, if done, will make the man to see the wife as what she really is to him — a companion and partner. There is this unusual bonding it brings into the home and a special kind of friendship is also seen if the couple really understand the reason for honeymoon. Parents should be reminded that we are not married just for us to make babies.
It is sad how some men don’t even make their wives to have a feel of being married newly. I once attended a wedding where the woman was being shouted on by the man inside the wedding hall. This is why I always tell ladies to take their time to check the background of the man they want to marry. It is like the culture for the man’s family to carry out very extensive investigation of the woman’s background while the woman’s family just fold their hands and wait for them to finish their investigation. The girl’s family should please start doing their own investigations, not just on the family, but the life of the man in question.
I don’t know who you are as you read this article today, but I believe that the grace and power to change has been made available to you by God. Many people have their wives relate with them as their house helps. In fact, a good number of men place more value on their children than their wives. Sir, if you are guilty of this act, please make a u-turn for the better.

A woman shared this with me once, "I remember always going into my office to weep whenever it’s time to go home. I always missed my children and wanted to be with them at all times, but I was filled with fear of the unknown in a house I called mine. The obsession was so bad that if I had a client sitting in front of me during consultation, I must run out with my phone whenever I saw his call. I knew this is something against the ethics of my practice, but I couldn’t help not picking the calls because that would mean a night in front of the gate.
My clients sometimes got offended by my actions, I knew it, but I was helpless. I remember losing so many male clients just because I was more of a slave to someone I called a husband. A male client had to open up to tell me why they stopped coming and that was the day I knew people were aware of my pain."
I know a lot of African men are still guilty of this very act. A pastor’s wife called me after reading one of my articles and told me how much of a slave she is in her marriage. This is a pastor who goes on the pulpit to preach to people, but he can’t even keep his home. Another lady whose husband works in one of the top oil companies told me how bitter her life has been since marriage. This very man rendered her useless, a lady who has both first and second university degrees. The man has a car, but doesn’t want to give her a car. This woman has to beg him for everything including money to buy her sanitary towel. According to her, the husband does every shopping for the house on his way from work and yet this same man won’t stop professing love to her.
It is time Nigerian men released their women to fulfil their purpose in life and become what God created them to be. It is time you stopped making her your maid and start seeing her as your wife. It is time you stopped hitting her from the back when it is time for sex; she is a human being like you with emotions.
Stop that your style of being nice to your woman when you are alone with her only to be very nasty with her once your relations and friends are around. Any relation or friend that encourages you to be that nasty to your wife is an enemy of your soul. You do that because you want them to know you are the man of the house, they may appear to be happy with you, but the truth is that they talk negatively about you.
I know some of you grew up in a home where you saw your mother maltreat your father and turn him to a slave right before your eyes. A friend told me what his son said to him the day he asked to see his girlfriend. The boy told his dad that he had dumped the girl the week before. He told the dad that he is not ready to take, from any girl, the rubbish he takes from his mum.
The truth is that you may not even be aware you are being affected by what you saw your father go through in the hand of your mum, but it is there draining your relationship of every sweetness and fulfilment. Please deal with that unconscious fear and pain, stop allowing the innocent girl you married go through pain for what she knows nothing about. Stop talking to your wife as a slave, stop treating her like a sex hawker.
Get her involved in your business and all that concerns you. It is wrong to use your brother as your next of kin or as a director in your business when your wife is the right person to protect the interest of your children in case of any eventuality. Don’t just jump into things after talking to friends without first listening to and then concluding with her. She is your partner; treat her as one.

WHAT TO CONSIDER BEFORE ENDING A LONG TERM RELATIONSHIP

This can be a very difficult time in the life of anyone who has been involved with someone else in a long term relationship. Breaking up with someone you have loved and cared about over a period of time is not easy but often times you might discover that you are better off without that person in your life. However, it is important to know whether to give a struggling relationship some time to heal itself, how much time you should give to it and when exactly to call it quit.
With that said, we should realise that most relationships are often in a state of lull and all that it might just need is a little more attention to get it back on track and not necessarily calling it quit. However, a lot people remain in unpleasant relationship because breaking up is just too difficult an issue to bring up and tackle.
Howbeit, there are times when we get to the point that there is no other option left to us except for both parties to go their separate ways due to irreconcilable differences. How to handle ending a long term relationship is the focus of this piece.
Firstly, it is very important that we put ourselves in the shoes of our partner and ask how we will feel about the way we intend carrying out this breakup exercise if the scenario was reversed. Except where distance is really a big issue, phone calls and text messages should never be used when ending any relationship at all. By all means avoid the blame game and be as civil as you can be.
You should by now have come to a clear cut reason why you want the relationship to end and be able to effectively explain this to your partner. Be thorough about this as in most cases the immediate reasons you might be thinking of might be just trivial and the main reasons still lie uncovered. In presenting your reasons you should strive to be as honest as possible with your partner. Think through what you are going to say and your possible responses.
part 2 coming soon

Tis just Life

I will not attempt to argue with those who are of the opinion that life is unfair and those who probably see the creator as a administrator who cares less and hence deserves all the blames for their misfortunes.
I refuse to argue,not because I agree with their proposition but because life presents itself as unfair attimes.

However,let me lend the spectacles of ingenuity and try to find illumination to this often less travelled dark path.
Hence the proposition that,''Life is a factor of man's perception and understanding''
The picture of life reflected in reality is a factor of that cast on the tablets of man's heart and his perception and/or understanding of the picture.
Perhaps a little digression will aid our quest.
It's said that 'beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder'. It means that an individual adjudged as beautiful by one fellow may be considered otherwise by another.
Hence,it will be deduced that perception offers a sense of direction.Every facet of existence requires ample understanding.We'll however,x-ray a few areas of personal interest.
Tighten your seat belts.Enjy the flight.

Defy the distance-Make your relationship work

Relationships are tough, especially at a distance. However, there are some ways to make it work for you. Being separated by distance should not make you stop loving your partner or renege on the love you had professed. What could be done in keeping the flame alive in this kind of relationship?

- Ask the important questions at the outset:

Set parameters and be sure you are both clear on them. Define your relationship — are you dating? Or just seeing each other? Are you just boyfriend-girlfriend? Or you are engaged? Though these could be difficult and awkward questions to ask go ahead and save yourself the future heartache of not asking.

- Consider text messaging, phone calls and emails daily. It is important to maintain contact and to be in each other’s daily lives as much as possible. Employing e-mail is a great idea, especially if long-distance phone calls put a strain on your budget. Ensure the e-mails are substantive and detailed.

- Defy the distance and do things together. As a long distance couple, it’s important to do other things together besides the usual phone call. Interaction over the phone could become dull in the long run, so try other methods. It’s amusing to know that couples in short-distance relationships do not spend the majority of their time talking. Rather, they do things with each other. Try to replicate this by watching a television shows or movies simultaneously.

- Establish and maintain an emotional connection. These don’t always have to be long, in-depth conversations. Tell each other about your little triumphs and tragedies.

- Take advantage of the benefits a long distance relationship offers — more time with friends and/or family, no arguments over anything, the pleasure of seeing each other again after a long absence, time to mull your options (rather than snapping at your partner impulsively) before you respond to that email he wrote that seemed so rude the first time you read it.

- Pursue common interests, even if it means pursuing them apart — Read a certain book at the same time, set your watches to go off at the same time every day, and synchronise your alarm with that of your partner. Make it a point to think of each other when your watch goes off, and - Talk about your future together. Assuming that ultimately you’d want to get married, discussing how you’re going to get to that point is a boost.

- Time spent together is important, so try to make visiting time as often as possible or as often as your budget permits you to. A relationship cannot thrive if the only thing you have is the phone call. Get up close and personal at every chance.

- One of the easiest ways to destroy a perfectly healthy relationship is to poison it with jealousy and drama. When you start a long distance relationship, you must be realistic of the difficulties ahead. Don’t fall in the trap of interrogating your partner every time he/she decides to go out for a drink with people you haven’t met or he/she didn’t get back to you right away when you called and left a message.

- Staying positive by utilising the opportunity of personal time to pursue your interests and hobbies as well as your career objectives.

- Let him/her have a personal object of to hold on to when lonely. It provides comfort, happiness, and the thought of being with you.

- Remember that you’re still in a relationship, so be there for your partner. If your partner is ever in trouble, or hurt, you have to be there for them. Make sure you are available to them so that they can reach you if they need you. If they end up dealing with everything alone, they will eventually not need you.

GOALS-MANAGING PRIORITIES!

GOALS- Managing Priorities
If you are always majoring in

minor things, you’re majorly a minor person; if you’re always minoring in major things, you are a minorly major person.. Your priorities go a long way in determining your productivity and profit. If you spend too much of your time on less important and less consequential things at the expense of a really important and consequential one, you’ll soon be journeying on a downward spiral towards becoming unimportant and inconsequential.
Actually, you’ll jeopardize whatever you don’t prioritize. Olsen Martin said, “Setting the cart before the horse is letting the cart and the horse be both destroyed”. Misplacement of priority is a greater impediment to success than lack of ability. Ability becomes wasted when inappropriately discharged. It no more matters what you can do, if you fail to do what you had to do.
You need to give more attention to priorities than to ability. If you’re busy doing the wrong things, you’re idle. It is good to be busy but it is better to be busy doing the right thing.
Your first priority should be to set your goals in order of priority. Lacking a sense of priority is most improper. A random approach to the achievement of goals is tantamount to lingering in the doldrums. When goals fall in line, we achieve them in time. A proper scanning and planning yields very huge benefits. The reason most goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first, observed Robert J. Mckwin. Most resources are wasted when goals aren’t aligned in order. Although excessive calculation is unwise, inorderly articulation of anticipation is nonetheless an indispensable tear to great achievement.
Priority is a very cogent element of prosperity. Prior to working on your goals, work on arranging them in order of priority. Priority should have a priority over activity. All goes well when all is well planned. Impatience is the part of soil in which the seed of failure grows. The hasty says, things go too slow, because he is too fast. If you cook your soup in haste it will have no good taste. You’ll always rush out of whatever you rush into, and that is if you even survive the rush. Life is more a matter of sense (wisdom) than a matter of speed. It’s alright to run but don’t rush. A steady race ends in victory. A hasty race ends with injures.
There is no road too long for the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste, No honour is too distant to the man that prepares himself for them with patience. If you learn to tarry, you’ll always end up achieving your goals happily; wait for the end, it will appear in the end. If you move with a rush, you’ll end with a crush. Danger lurks carefully for those who don’t run steadily. You may move with extra swoop only to end up with a hook. He, who runs too fast, has even more to loose than he who runs too slow. The haste of a fool is the slowest thing in this world. A greater percentage of forgetful people are hasty people. Why get to the door of success too early, only to discover you forgot the key a thousand miles away. Don’t become too cognizant of tomorrow, to the extent of failing to attend to today. Take good care of your today and tomorrow will take good care of you. There is much to begin by those who learn to wait. A hasty man spends an hour trying to do a day’s job and spends a week trying to correct the errors. If you don’t live your life in peace, you’ll leave it in pieces. No matter what you still have to achieve, you’ve achieved something; no matter what you still have to become, you’ve become something.
Give your adrenal glands some rest. It’s alright to be conscious of tomorrow but don’t be anxious about it. There is no peace for the wicked and for the hasty. It is bad to worry, maybe worse to hurry if you don’t want to make any more blunders, rush no longer.
Don’t confuse ability with productivity. Diffused light has limited impact but when it is focused like a laser, it can cut through steel. Are you the one who is famous doing too many things but never finishing any? It’s high time you changed. Why lay the foundation of six houses without roofing any? If you’re doing too many things, then you’re doing nothing. The more your activities, the less your activeness. A divided attention births a multiplied confusion. Most people gloat when things don’t work for them. Maybe the reason is just because they’re working on too many things. Why get yourself trapped in polygamous labours? When you indulge in multiple labour, you get fractional results. People, who get easily distracted, get easily dissuaded. Don’t settle for many things, otherwise you won’t be settled at all. There can be many things to do but there will always, at the same time, be one right thing to do. Most times we have to make difficult choices between two and more relevant things, but a man has found one thing to do, he can achieve almost anything. Stop flying from pillar to post. Stay with the pillar or stay with the post. Stay somewhere!
Hovering with activities is not diversity but catastrophe. A life of peace is more to be desired to a life of pieces. You could be good at many things, but you certainly are best at something. Choose that best one. Mark Twain said, “Behold the fool said, put not all thine eggs in one basket, which is just a way of something scatter your money and your attention; but the wise man said, put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.
Too many things is nothing!

THE SAGE'S MEMOIR: OPPORTUNITIESSome time back,I read an article po...

THE SAGE'S MEMOIR: OPPORTUNITIES

Some time back,I read an article po...: OPPORTUNITIES Some time back,I read an article posted by my friend Prince Emmanuel Essien on his blogspot, http://emmanuelessien.blogspot....

THE SAGE'S MEMOIR: THE DAY CALLED TODAY

THE SAGE'S MEMOIR: THE DAY CALLED TODAY: THE DAY CALLED TODAY It has never come before And it will never come again The seeds I planted yesterday Produce their fruits today...