SYNOPSIS
In a warm conversational approach, Okeleke addresses biting issues contemporary Christian ladies of marriage age confront in their desire to navigate the dating phase of their lives in winning ways which ultimately lead to blissful marriages without tears and compromise.
To bring this home, he tackles questions like;
What is true love and how to tell it from lust?
What are the dangerous red flags to look out for in a man?
What should the right man look or act like?
What makes you desirable for this right man?
All these, including realistic and practical discussions on financial independence for young girls, handling sexual pressures and peer pressures, what submission means for a modern woman, as well as the understandably complex psychology of church dating.
This is a book to read and share with any godly young woman you love.
UNDERSTANDING LOVE
It is imperative that we begin this journey by first and foremost getting a clear understanding of what love actually is. In my experience with working with young people in ministry, I find that the root of a majority of relationship and marriage sorrows arise from a skewed understand of what love is. Women often interpret a bunch of kind gestures from men as a sign that he loves them when in reality, he’s just doing stuff he feels like doing to impress.
This is the reason you hear sad stories that go thus; "He use to love me at the beginning, but he has changed." No, aunty. He never loved you, you just misinterpreted some of his actions as love at the beginning and now you know better.
Or, "Never mind that he's being mean, he truly loves me deep down." My sister, love does not settle at the bottom of a man's heart, it floats all over his expressions towards you.
This confusion about love arose from a number of cultural, social and even religious factors and anecdotes. All of which are unfair and unjust to the modern day woman.
Take for instance, there a several cultures that have the belief that when a man loves a woman, he disciplines her. That is plain abusive. A woman to love in a relationship is not a child you're raising. But as horrific as it is, there are marriage age girls who have accepted that belief to be valid. You ask yourself why it's so. This thing called culture and tradition can be a powerful master. They are only lesser than religion when it comes to mass human control system and tools.
In order to be as vivid as I can ever be on this subject, I will begin by discussing on the things that love isn't before I finally get to what love is. May I make it clear that for the sake of this book and this chapter in particular, the love we are talking about is no other love than a man's love towards his woman. There has been too many sermons and teachings classifying different kinds of love into Agape; Gods love, Philia; man's love and Eros; romantic love. Not that I totally disagree with such classification, I however believe certain love overlaps across these classifications and there has to be an element of Agape in every kind of love for it to be called love. This is because when you look closely at every relationship demanding love, if the unconditional love exemplified by God isn't there, then Philia is nothing but likeness for someone cool and Eros is nothing but being horny (aka Konji).
So, for all I care, there's only one kind of love, Agape. God’s love. Because God is Love, according to the disciple that Jesus loves.
Love isn't Discipline
Who the father loves, he chastises, right? Wrong. This saying has nothing to do with a man and wife love. Times people apply this to marital love are the vilest of humanity's misogyny. Chastisement on account of love indicates a superior party dishing out discipline on a lesser party who's the subject of their love. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this when it's between a father and child figure relationship or a God and human relationship. However, there's everything wrong with a husband imposing deliberately imposing physical, emotional or mental pain and distress on his wife in the name of discipline. This is not a proof of love. It's abusive and toxic for anyone to consider this a show of love. Remember, perfect love casts out all fears.
Love isn't Control
It's understandable that someone who loves you would also look out for you for when you're taking a wrong turn. It's perfectly fine that a man guides you through an important life decision. What is a crime is when he tries to insist you do only what he says all the time. This is even alarming when the decision in question doesn't affect him in any direct way. Like always dictating what you must wear or which friends you must associate with. Like I said, there's no problem with someone suggesting any of these things to a partner or advising. But they need to understand you are ultimately going to have the final say and they must not punish you of feel bad when you don't take their advice. It doesn't even matter that his advice is what is best for you, what matter is that he respects that you're a fully grown adult who has the right take decisions for herself and bear the consequences of the wrong ones.
A man could be like, "I would like you to spend your recent savings on this important professional course instead of the new trending human hair." Beautiful suggestion, right? He should be totally fine with it if you disagree and come home with a truck load of bone straight instead. He should bear no grudge or try to punish you for it. You say, but he's only looking out for her good, I say this notion that the man knows best what's good for a woman is where several forms of abuses arise from.
Love isn't Affection
This might shock you but, wanting to be with or date a woman isn't the same thing as loving a woman. Let me break down further. A man could like the way a girl talks. He could fancy how she dresses or be moved by how other guys talk about her. All these could make him like the idea of him being her man, but it says nothing about whether he would love every bit of her.
Love isn't Lust
You probably heard this a million times by now but let me add to it. Sexual attraction or what it drives a man to do for a woman isn't the same thing as love. This probably presents the most confusing situation for girls. Lust can drive just as fiercely as love. Lust can make a man pull out the sun for a woman just as love would. But what makes it different? Love lasts forever, lust lasts only a few orgasms. So how does one pick out the male interest driven by lust from the one driven by love? This as a matter of fact presents a complex issue for youth counselors. The go to advice had always been, don't do sex. The wisdom follows that if a girl rules out premarital sex and stands firmly by that, then, only suitors who genuinely love her would stay while those who had come for the lust of the flesh would be frustrated.
I wish this is always true. In reality however, we've seen men whose primary attraction to a girl is entirely physical stick around long enough to convince themselves they want to marry her, go through the whole wedding and get their sex. But at the process of doing actual marriage is where it begins to dawn on them that aside the physical attraction, there's nothing much they came for. Things often fall apart when the toll of pregnancy and childbirth begins to weigh on the woman's body. The man starts talking about how she is no longer the woman he married. Don't get me wrong, I'm not disregarding the value of abstinence, neither am I saying physical attraction is not important, my point is, it shouldn't be the core attraction for marriage and it is not love.
If love isn't all these, what then is love?
Love is Sacrifice
Love is a number of things, but chief among them is that love is sacrifice. As a young Christian, I had been in dozens of relationship programs organized by churches where a speaker would say - especially to the sisters- that giving is how to know a man that loves them. They would often quote John 3:16. For God so loved the world and he gave...
I had believed them too till much later in my 20s when I began to get a better understanding of the entire concept of God's love. You see, this doctrine or teaching is utterly understating the core essence of the gospel in a disturbing way. More to our point, it has led a lot of young girls into wrong marriages. See, giving is not a big deal for a man towards a girl. If you go judging true love by who gives you the most, you're heading for some interesting shocker down the road.
Giving is not a proof of love, rather sacrifice is. When God gave us his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life, what he was doing was sacrifice. As a matter of fact, that passage is essentially describing sacrifice, offering a precious gift to gain something of greater value. When a man makes sacrifices for you, what it tells you is that he considers you more valuable to whatever precious asset he's letting go. Whereas, when a man merely gives, he's not considering any tangible value exchange.
So what's the difference between giving and sacrifice? Let's say you are going through a difficult period and you're in need of company. You reach out to two friends. Friend A is currently unemployed and has a lot of time in his hands. So he comes around and spends six hours with you. Friend B has a tedious nine to five and runs a barber shop on the side after work. But he stops by on his way from office to spend an hour before heading to his barber shop. Friend A has given you six hours from his free 24. Friend B has sacrificed one hour from nothing. This is not to say friend A doesn't love you or his six hours is worthless. This is to say friend B has proven his love.
Sacrifice as a proof of love has nothing to do with your valuation of the gesture but more about what it means to the heart it came from. Because sacrifice is such a painful gesture, it is nearly impossible to do without love. There are a hundred reasons someone would give to you. Sometimes it's because they have it in excess, sometimes because they want something from you, sometimes it's to gain your approval and some people give just to show off. But the only reason someone would make a sacrifice for you is because they love you.
Love is Selfless
True love puts the subject first. Don't confuse this for putting yourself in danger to satisfy a loved one. That's stupidity. Only Christ had the mandate to trade his life for the people he loves. The whole idea of selfless love is, getting into a relationship with someone you love, not thinking of what you're going to be getting from that person, rather, what you want to offer them. A man that loves a woman thinks first about how he can make her life better, not what he's going to profit from being with her. Does it mean he isn't going to get anything from her? No. But it's not relevant to his love whether he does or not.
Anytime you hear men ask women what they bring to the table, that's the sign, right there. A husband as the lover-in-chief of his home doesn't demand for what the wife brings to the table. This is mechanically transactional and love is not a transaction. It's not a give and take. Love is a give and give.
When Paul says in 1 Cor. 13:5 that, "Charity seeketh not its own," he's basically saying love is not bent of taking, rather focused on giving. As a lady, one sign you need to look out for in judging love is when he's quick to make demands on you on what you must do for him to please him or prove your love.
Don't get me wrong, this is not to say a woman shouldn't make sacrifices for her husband. All I'm saying is, she's not obligated to sacrifice herself the way Paul instructs men to do for their wives in Eph. 5:25. She is obligated to honour him and submit, not sacrifice herself.
Love is Unconditional
Ever hear young men say things like, the reason I love my wife is because bla bla bla and yadda yadda yadda. Oh nice. Sir, the only reason you need to love your wife is because she's a part of you. It's like trying to explain why you love your right arm. Or saying if your leg doesn't let you do a triple jump you will stop washing it when you bathe. I want to believe when people say things like why they love their spouses; they are confusing it for like. Sure, you can have a have a hundred reasons why you like your wife. It's even okay to have things you don't like about her. But your love is non-negotiable. You love her like yourself and that's on period. Christ didn't die for the church on any condition. He didn't wash the church and presented it perfect before him on any gaddanmed condition. He just did.
Unconditional love is why you will be having a fight with your wife and still look out for her good, defend her from anything that could potentially harm her, be kind to her, help her when you notice she's struggling and be Keen to make her life easier. These are what you do out of love, not likeness.
You hear some men say they can't love a wife who's not submissive. It's a nice joke though. But these are not connected in any way. A man should love his wife all the same, irrespective of her level of submission. One could be more romantic with a submissive wife and struggle to be physically attracted to a non submissive wife. I can confirm there's nothing sexier than a submissive wife in the eyes of her husband. If you're wondering why he's hardly noticing you in bed, try some submission. But this has nothing to do with love. A man must love his wife anyway. I laugh at men who go on and on about submission as if it's their biggest problem in life. Truth is, the submi5of a wife does not add or subtract from a man. Submission is 100% for the benefit of the woman. So in my opinion, a man shouldn't be giving his wife grief over her submission.
Love is Deliberate and Intentional
It might go without saying at this point but just in case it's not obvious yet, here goes, love is not an overwhelming feeling on a man that he just can't help. That's from romcoms and soaps marketing lust as love. Love of a man for his wife is an instruction from his maker which he is totally capable of executing if he puts his mind to it. When a man doesn't love his wife, it's because he has chosen not to. Not because some forces left him or refuse to overtake him.
I think this point was better understood by the ancient generation when marriages were arranged, often times as betrothals from childhood. The man grows up or meets his wife and decides to love her. Not because she did anything special. But because he knows it's his duty to love her and he has enough sense and disciplines to make himself love her. These days, you will find a man dating a woman for half his adult life, not intending to marry her and if she by error or scheme gets pregnant where he is now forced to marry her, you hear him say things like, "I don't love her. She tied me down with pregnancy." Sorry about how it happened, but now that she's called our wife, bro, you have to love her. It's a duty. Nobody asks you if you wished to marry her or not, as long as she's identified as yours, nature demands that you love her. It is the least a man can do. Forget that society makes it sound like such a big task, loving a wife is actually the easiest act for a man. A man is naturally designed to love his wife. Not just men, most male animal species are designed that way. So a man that struggles to love his wife is just being lazy and irresponsible.
There remains a whole lot I would like to write on this subject of love but it is becoming apparent this isn't the book to write them in. But we need to begin to reprogram the men folk and womenfolk alike on the rudiments of love. Our modern society has so much monetized and materialized love to the extent we excuse men and let them off the hook from the burden of love. We see the upside down trend of wives carrying the love responsibility meant for the man as long as he is bringing money. We raise boys that think giving women money is how you love them. These boys grow into men who do not get the memo of Eph. 5. Men who think his duty is to make a shit load of money, throw it at the wife and kids and get on with his life. And what happens when he struggles with making that money, he starts thinking he's worthless and embarrassing. But while love would drive you to provide for your family, providing is only one of many duties of love. You could be deficient with one part but there are dozens more important roles under the husband office that doesn't require money.
It has to be understood that what a husband is is the chief lover of a home. It's okay for the wife to out earn the husband, especially in this modern age of female economic freedom. It's okay for the wife to out-provide the man, it's okay to cover more bills than the man. But it's a taboo for a wife to out-love a husband. Yet, that's what we have in society today.