True love: how do I make the choice?

The biblical recommendation that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength shows us that for love to be complete, genuine, real… and for love to thrive between two beings, we must have a connection in all those dimensions.

We must not only have emotional (heart) connection with someone to know it is love and that it is true…but we must also have spiritual (soul) connection, intellectual (mind) connection and physical or bodily (strength) connection.

I think those are the complete dimensions of love we must watch and exercise…and also ensure that they are all present and that there’s a good balance and interplay.

Many times when people are confused about their choice of love or lover, they are often instructed to “follow your heart” or by extension, to focus on your emotions. Though the heart is important and should be at the core of every decision, we must not always only follow our heart; we must follow as well the other three “determinants of love”. The heart is desperately wicked and deceptive says the Bible. Hearts do deceive, even more so because what’s in the heart is not always seen on the face.

People also advice when it comes to finding true love that you “use your heart and your head“, in trying to say don’t love blindly. Meaning whatever your heart tells you, give it good thought before acting. Don’t just act on your feelings, do some critical thinking as well. This is great but must we leave out the spirit?

Choosing a life partner or entering into a love relationship is as much a spiritual exercise as it is a physical one. It’s a matter of your soul.

Remember we are not to be unequally yoked per biblical instructions? How do we do that when we don’t wait to determine first if there’s a spiritual connection between us and the ones we are going to give our heart, emotions and body to? Would you want to blindly (without careful considerations) fall in love with someone who will sell your soul to the devil and lead you down the path of ungodliness? Your decision to love someone (choose them as a life partner) is not complete without you weighing in on your spiritual connection or compatibility with the person.

Physical attraction, the fourth dimension or determinant of love is also a good ingredient. I know some over-spiritual brothers and sisters always downplay this…and then find themselves hooked to some unattractive guy/lady only to keep fighting for the rest of their lives some temptations coming their way from some very fine babes/dudes.

You see, I believe that somebody you are not physically attracted to, you cannot be sexually attracted to. Unless you are one of those not so normal people who would sleep with just anything that bears the name female or male.

The sexual lives of countless of marriages are in red zone just because either one of the couples have gone out of shape or more bluntly have become ‘unattractive”. He saw many ‘fat’ women but decided on a person of your figure because that is where the attraction was and so when you let yourself go too much and you become too ‘fat’, you know what might happen? Similarly, he saw many slim ladies but his attraction never was tickled until he saw the big fat you and so when you overdo that slimming course and become as thin as a stick, you might just be making yourself an attraction for another man who has got that taste, not him.

Body image means a lot to many people when it comes to love and you must always have that open discussion so that you know you can always have his or her support and love when those times come that you need some motivation to get back into shape.

That thing we say sometimes that you must love me just the way I am so that you can just let yourself go from say slim to obese after choking down all the junk foods in the world may just not work out for you sometimes. Perhaps s/he will still love you alright, but you may just not be sexually attractive enough for him/her again as you used to…and sometimes you just have to live with that or get back to work!

So there you have it. If we agree that love is not just a feeling but much more a choice, then we must be holistic in the choices we make. We must not be only feelings driven; we must exercise all the four dimensions in determining true, genuine, complete, compatible love that lasts…I think.

Mark Gadogbe (McApple)

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Complaints

Complains should not take the place of prayer in your marriage and love relationship. Learn to call God into every situation.

Pray about everything…including sex.

Many couples don’t get it when you say pray about sex. They are like…how? They never ask why because I believe they already know all the reasons why they ought to. I bet they just don’t know how to go about the prayers. Lol

Well, God already knows what you want when it comes to sex…so pray that! It can feel like a weird or awkward thing to do, I know, especially when praying together…but if it helps, you can think about it as fun. Lol

Be a praying spouse! A lot in marriage and relationships depend on it. Marital success is not always about what you know, “for by strength shall no man prevail” (1 Samuel 2:9).

BUILD A PERSONAL MARRIAGE LIBRARY

I realized very early in my life that one very important ingredient for a strong and successful relationship/marriage is a good resource base of knowledge and reference. Every marriage I believe must have something to draw upon for new knowledge once a while. On that ground I began building my marriage library even before the thought of starting a love relationship with someone’s “innocent” daughter crossed my mind.

I determined early I was not going to build my relationship and marriage after that of my parents…not that they did not have a good marriage whist it lasted but somehow, I knew I was doomed to fail if that became my only reference aside the Bible or the scanty once a while marriage sermons from the pulpit. Bible knowledge alone to me is not enough. It remains the number one and most important reference for every good Christian marriage though but there’s a wealth of other resources (in variety of formats) out there, mainly born out of people’s rich experiences of the institution that one can also learn from and easily relate to. As must be expected, there are varied perspectives presented by people on marriage and some quite skewed from Bible principles but I find it’s always better to have a broad spectrum of knowledge and then filter out what is good for one’s purpose.

The Good Book says “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” as in Hosea 4:6 (RSV) and I believe by extension that, most marriages are becoming very mundane and stagnant (lacking growth) because they are not refreshed every now and then with new knowledge from good marriage resources. We must often review our relationships/marriages and ask the question “what’s new in my relationship/marriage?”. Why? Because whether you like it or not, every relationship/marriage needs constant renewal, creativity and attention to detail. And we need a great dose of knowledge to do that!

And like any successful business venture, one needs good preparation and grooming for both the start-up and operation. And that requires capacity for a lot of fresh updated knowledge to survive in a constantly changing business environment. And as long as the world keeps evolving, the dynamics of marriage will also keep changing from that of old age Bible day marriages. We must therefore acquire as much knowledge in order to adjust to and accommodate the changes as they come. And every passing moment people are publishing their experiences of the institution of marriage. But, somehow, I find many people just do not prepare enough for the marriage venture. All they believe there is to it is getting of age, locating just anyone, settling down with them and going through the motions. I find it a very pathetic way of going about something very important to all human survival as marriage. It’s important we acquire as much knowledge about things before we go into them. “Had I known” must not always come last.

Enough said. At this point, I think it is worth sharing just a few resources (books) that characterize my marriage library and wish to also recommend them as good materials for every relationship/marriage:

1. How to choose a life partner: 165 questions to ask (Pastor Bimbo Odukoya)
2. Are you the one for me? (Barbara De Angelis)
3. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus: A practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in your relationships (John Gray)
4. What every man wants in a woman: 10 essentials for growing deeper in love (John Hagee)
5. What every woman wants in a man: 10 qualities for nurturing intimacy (Diana Hagee)
6. The five love languages: how to express heartfelt commitment to your mate (Gary Chapman)
7. I love you but I’m not in love with you: seven steps to saving your relationship (Andrew G. Marshall)
8. Why you act the way you do (Tim LaHaye)
9. Help your partner say ‘yes’: seven steps to achieving better cooperation and communication (Andrew G. Marshall)
10. Before you plan your wedding plan your marriage (Dr. Greg Smalley & Erin Smalley)
11. His needs her needs: building an affair-proof marriage (Willard F. Harley)
12. Every woman: a gynaecological guide for life (Derek Llewellyn-Jones)
13. Marriage works: the ultimate guide to marriage (J. John)
14. Make or break: an introduction to marriage counseling (Jack Dominian)
15. Build a life-long love affair: Seven steps to revitalizing your relationship (Andrew G. Marshall)
16. The act of marriage: the beauty of sexual love (Tim & Beverly LaHaye)
17. At the heart of your long distance relationship: love deeply, live fully and grow closer together from near or far (Catherine Day)
18. For better or for worse: lessons from old testament couples (SDA Church)

There you have it: just a few good books in my store that I refer to every now and then.

So here’s how I wrap up: do make it a life goal to at LEAST every year of your relationship/marriage acquire a good book or any other resource material on marriage and inject some new fire based on the knowledge acquired into your marriage and see your marriage grow and glow. Certainly, growing a relationship/marriage is work and never comes easy. So get serious with your relationship and marriage now before you lose it!

“A word to a wise is enough” the saying goes but I like to put it this way: “a word to a wise is never enough unless it makes sense”. I trust that you do find some sense here!

Cheers!