Finding Mr Right

Mr Right. Many young ladies are looking for him! They call him The Perfect Man. Have you met him yet?

Many people say he is tall and handsome, others say he has a charming smile with blue eyes. Some others say he is rich, well educated and benevolent. But does he exist in reality? Cause it’s proving hard to find him anywhere!

A similar question was asked on a blog that I was reading the other day and somebody said (rather sarcastically), “Of course Mr Right lives only in harlequin romances.” Hmm! Very funny indeed!

It does seem though that despite the fact that many grown up girls have long discarded their Barbie and Ken dolls; the notion of a perfect partner still however remains a fixed state of consciousness to some. So much so that some married women are said to still be waiting for their prince-charming to one day show up and whisk them away to love island. But this is a false expectation that’s supposedly created by these women’s obsession with simulated relationships that they see on TV and movies.

But it’s not just TV and the movies that’s created this unrealistic expectation of Mr Right in the minds of many ladies. Dating sites and social media has also contributed largely to it.

Sometime ago, a prominent dating site in the UK asked about 40,000 of their female subscribers to produce a wish list of who Mr Right is. And they came up with the following:

1.     He’s tall (at least 5ft 10in)

2.     He’s dark

3.     He’s handsome

4.     He has money

5.     He has blue eyes

6.     He owns his own property

7.     He has a university degree

8.     He drives a silver Mercedes

9.     He doesn't smoke

10.  He likes eating out

11.  He likes the cinema

12.  He hates football

13.  He's clean-shaven

14.  He likes pets

15.  He has never been married but has had three serious relationships (and no more than six sexual partners)

16.  He won't have any children

17.  He’s medium build

18.  He weighs about 12st 7lb

19.  He calls his mum several times a day

20.  He’s a good listener

21.  He’s well mannered

That. Ladies and gentlemen is who these 40,000 women believe Mr Right is. Little wonder then that he is very hard to come by. And it’s no surprise that many of these dating sites do not provide real answers for the needs of a lot of the ladies that use their services.

If you find a good guy who will treat you right, value and respect you, then that’s him right there. He may not tick every item on your wish list just like the shoe that’s most comfortable for your feet isn’t always the prettiest one in the shop, but is a good shoe for your legs. It fits you, works for you and doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable when you put it on.

Men are not a list. They are people, and people come in all shapes and sizes, with one imperfection or the other. Hence, you’ve got to realise that love in real life is different to the one in your fantasy world.  

I am yet to meet the woman who married the perfect man (maybe one day I will), but I know a lot of happily married couples who are good together because they’ve learnt to love each other.

The Perfect Man or Mr Right is nothing more than fiction. He doesn’t exist anywhere. If you want to be much happier, look for ‘Mr Good for ME’ not Mr Perfect, or Mr Right. 

“When you stop trying to find the right man and start becoming the right woman, the right man will find his way to you.”

                     Unknown Author

Settle with someone who shares your values, respects you and is willing to go on life’s adventure with you.

One good man, one good man,

it ain’t much – it’s only everything.

                                                             Deborah Kerr

The Marriage Workshop

Can’t Grow If You Keep Looking Back

I teach my children that time is the currency of life. That if well utilised, time will give them abundant yields in life. Because the conditions we see today comes from yesterday’s enterprise, and whatever conditions we’ll see tomorrow will surely proceed from our actions today. In other words, tomorrow (time future) is produced by today (time present), which was produced by yesterday (time past). However, since yesterday is gone, wisdom demands that we should not allow whatever happened in the past to hold us back from devoting our current time towards a brighter and more fulfilling future life with our family.

Earl Nightingale, one of my favourite author wrote something very profound. He said, “Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don't wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it's at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savoured.”

There are things that we cannot control in life, and sometimes these things happen out of no fault of ours. But that’s the more reason why we should learn not to beat ourselves up about it by allowing that disappointment to dictate our attitude. Because that could potentially ruin the future of our family. Come to think of it! Everyone alive is going through one challenge or another, but the difference perhaps is in how they’ve chosen to react to it. Some tend to take a more optimistic view of their problems, which I call a ‘response’, whilst others tend to take a more pessimistic view of their problems, which I call a ‘reaction’.

Here’s what I mean by that!

When you go to see a doctor for checkup and the doctor, after giving a diagnosis of your condition, will usually follow this up with a form of medication or another. Now! During the course of your medication, the doctor will ask to see you again to determine if there’s been an improvement in your condition. If when they reexamine you and you seem not to be getting better, but the condition has maybe gone worse because you’ve developed a side effect to the medication. You are said to be ‘reacting’ to treatment. In other words, there’s a downturn in your condition. On the contrary, if after reexamining you the doctor determines that the medication has worked and there’s an improvement in your condition. You are said to be ‘responding’ to treatment. In other words, there’s an upturn in your condition.

In the same way, you will either have a reaction or a response to the events that happen in your life depending on your disposition. You will either be an initiator or a reactor.

10 steps to help YOU grow!

1.     Put things in perspective: Owen Feltham, the English writer said, “Meditation is the soul’s perspective glass.” Wow! That is so true! After the waves have calmed, and the boisterous winds cease, we pause to see that it wasn’t all that bad after all. Hence, when we take that time to think deeply (in a positive way) about the causes of our disappointments, we find that as sure as night and day is, we are all the more wiser for having been through it. And knowing this affirms our hope for the future.

2.     Be thankful: Brian Tracey said, “Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.” With the waking of every morning comes sunshine, and being alive can only truly be celebrated with the heart of thankfulness. Don’t allow the things you’ve lost in the past to murk your sight of the things that are yet to come. For hope is by far the greatest assurance we have that tomorrow will be better than yesterday.

3.     Rethink your expectations: Not only do we have expectations of ourselves, we tend also to have certain expectations of others like our spouse and children. More often than not, these people fall short of some of the high standards that we demand of them, and this causes us huge disappointments at times. But sometimes, we’ve got to weigh and appropriate the demands we place on others vis their ability to supply those demands. I don’t know why Antonio Banderas said, “Expectation is the mother of all frustration”, but it strikes me that he may be right about that.

4.     Set your mind on higher things: Occasionally, in our time of most vulnerability, we can get so subservient to our feelings of dejection that we become almost paralysed by the negative emotions it brings. However, if we learn to focus on things outside of ourselves – on higher things. For example, the promise of a fulfilling marriage that we share with our spouse, or the thrill of seeing our children do well in life. They can reignite our appetite to grow out of our frustration. The American nun, artist and educator Corita Kent said, “Flowers grow out of dark moments.”

5.     Bottom down your mistakes: True progress can only begin when we take responsibility for our attitudes and stop blaming someone else for what happened to us. Recognize that you could have done better and this would help you to be smarter and more effective the next time. “The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.” – John Maxwell.

6.     Arrest your dominant pessimistic thought: “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.” – Helen Keller. If anybody should know this, it would be Helen. The first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts Degree. Although, she wasn’t born blind or deaf, however, she suffered what was thought to be meningitis when she was 19 months old and it was this infection that made her blind and deaf. Nonetheless, it didn’t stop her from becoming a history maker.  

7.     Change what you can about you: They say that change is a constant thing in life. It’s true! We cannot solve tomorrows problems or challenges with the failed solutions of yesterday. To be ready for the challenges ahead, we must be willing to change our approach to things. No point in making excuses for your weaknesses, go to work and see what you can do to reform yourself. If you don’t change, nothing else will. And you might end up getting the same outcomes all of the time.

8.     Accept the things you cannot change about your past: Every time you think about what’s happened in the past, does it fill you with acrimony, bitterness and miff? It could be a sign that you’ve not yet let go of the past. And your future growth will stay stunted if you fail to gain control of your emotions. Yesterday is gone, so let it go! Move on from what happened, and take control of your future. Don’t be a slave to your past. Accept that you cannot change your past, and allow the fresh wind of hope to overflow your horizon.

9.     Remember someone cares about you: It is tempting to sometimes be submerged into your own little world of pain and misery, where it seems no one truly understands what you are passing through. But far from it; family, friends, colleagues and neighbour’s do really care about you. Pope John Paul II said, “Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church.” Your family is your greatest support unit, reach out to them in your darkest hour and they will help you through it all. Like Bill Withers song goes, “Lean on me, when you’re not strong. I’ll be our friend. I’ll help you carry on…”

10.  Fortify yourself against future disappointments: Remain watchful and vigilant of yourself and other so that whatever makes you vulnerable to disappointing situations does not keep reoccurring. Lessen the returning of unwanted situations by taking charge. It’s your life, your time, your future; so protect yourself from the pitfalls of habitual setbacks. William Arthur Ward said, “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

Now! Let me wrap this up with a powerful statement from Florence Nightingale, in which she said, “Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God's law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.” 

The Marriage Workshop

Adultery Is Stealing

The world we live in today has really advanced beyond comprehension. It is truly exciting to be able to stay in touch with people from far and near because of the magic of social media and other clever apps that most of us rely on today.

As much as these progresses we’ve seen in recent times are great (and I welcome them), I do sometimes stop to ask, ‘at what cost though’. For it sometimes feels like much evolution has brought about an unprecedented decline in both personal and societal moral values.

For example, instead of calling it adultery (it’s real name), we now call it ‘a fling’. Thus, you observe that people just carry on cheating (sometimes without much regard for their spouse) as if there’s no consequence for their actions. In many of these instances, the extramarital affair tends to continue until the person is caught in the act.

Now! Rather than repent and genuinely seek forgiveness from their spouse, they say ‘it was a mistake’. But, no! no! no! Adultery is not a mistake! A mistake is when you innocently forget someone’s name and call them James instead of Jane. A mistake is when you misunderstood your wife’s request for 2 sugars in her tea and you put 6 sugars instead. A mistake is when you unknowingly gave the cashier £5 more for the stuff you purchased because you had so many thing on your mind that afternoon. Adultery however, is not a mistake. It is a voluntary (intentional, deliberate, premeditated, planned, calculated and conscious) sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than his or her lawful spouse.

I mean, let’s just say it as it is! Implying therefore that adultery is like stealing.

Think of it! If you take something that doesn’t belong to you lawfully, you are said to have stolen that thing because it isn’t yours. Hence, if you are having an affair with a man that’s not your lawful husband or with a woman that’s not your lawful wife, you are basically stealing. And you need to stop it now!

Mike Pence said, “What is real is that adultery destroys tens of thousands of families every year across America. What is real is that adultery scars tens of thousands of children emotionally and psychologically every year. What is real is that adultery is an open wound in a relationship which more often than not overflows into domestic violence or worse.” Also, I believe it is for this reason that Natalie Ginzburg, the Italian author and expert on family and relationships said, “No adultery is bloodless.”

Too many marriages have ended in bitter divorce, too many hearts have been shattered and too many children have had their futures marred by the unfaithful acts of one or both parents.

Admittedly, people tend to have some sort of ecstasy from illicit sexual affairs, which is usually short lived. But the truth is that the consequences can be long lasting. To the extent that unfortunately, some people on the receiving end of it hardly ever recover from the pains and betrayal.

Our objective on The Marriage Workshop as always is to build intimate family relationships by highlighting issues in a way that our audiences can learn from. So, please read the next few lines objectively!

John Lennon! Remember him? The famous member of the Beatles band. At one point in his life, John Lennon sought to change the world through music and he succeeded in part because he commanded a lot of following at the time. His first marriage to Cynthia Powell produced a son, Julian Lennon.

In an interview with The Telegraph in 2011, Julian revealed that he’s been discouraged from starting a family of his own because of the very difficult relationship he had with his late father. Again, in a previous interview, he’s quoted to have said, “Mum was more about love than Dad. He sang about it, he spoke about, but he never really gave it, at least not to me as his son." Also, in another interview with the same newspaper, The Telegraph. Julian said something quite telling, and shocking. He said, "I have to say that, from my point of view, I felt he was a hypocrite. Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces - no communication, adultery, divorce? You can't do it, not if you're being true and honest with yourself.”

Jesus Christ once asked his disciples what people thought about him and His message. And when some of them responded with vague generalities, He pinned the question on them and asked directly – “… But who do you say that I am”? (Matthew 16:13-15).

Now, let me ask you this! Who do your children say you are? A faithful parent or an adulterous parent? More so, what will they say about you (long after you’re gone)? Will they praise you for your exemplary life or will they vilify you for your incontinency. Your choice no doubt! But if the truth be told, it really doesn’t matter what people on the outside say about you, what matters most is what your children say or will say about you – for they are the ones that knows you more than anyone else ever could.

So! Lets just say it as it is! Adultery is a sin. Adultery is stealing. Repent of it. Ask for forgiveness and work towards making it right with your spouse.

The Marriage Workshop