Bo Answers! Part Two

I'm sorry I've kept the second part of Bo's answers to your questions. They've been answered for some quite some time now but other things have gotten in my the way of my posting it. Either way, here it is now. I can't even remember the answers he gave but do enjoy reading!

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5. How did you know you met the one? Where there other ladies you felt could also become your potential wife before meeting /choosing Kemi? How did you know Kemi was the one for you?
a. How did your christian faith inform your interactions with Kemi?

b. Culturally, what makes you different from the other men in your culture? Is it easy for you to go against the grain?

I don’t believe in ‘the one’. I believe that for any person, there is a small set of people with whom a marriage relationship can work. I also believe that this set probably changes over time. Were there other ladies that I felt could also be my wife? Yes, there were other friendships that I considered. Why Kemi? She was my best friend at the time when the prospect of being married started to sound ‘cool’. A little mundane perhaps but I didn’t have the ‘this is my wife’ moment.

I believe my faith informs all my friendships (I continue to pray that it does) Regarding a mate (btw I hate that expression), in my single days, when dining alone I always prayed for the person who would share the meal with me as my wife (if I got married), that God would prepare us. When I dated, the prayer would be a little more specific to the person I was dating but also with a caveat in case my wife was still out there. When I had decided on Kemi as my wife, I dropped the caveat and started praying about our life together.

What makes me different from others in my culture? I’m not sure that I’m really different. I hope I am but I fear that I’m not. I live in a deeply patriarchal society in which men really do have it all. Despite this, I try to stand against what I think is unfair and in all my dealings (within or without my marriage) I try to not be patriarchal and to treat women truly as equals. My conviction in this regard also includes speaking up whenever you see inequality anywhere but I fear in this regard I’m not doing as good a job as I should.


6. How do you feel about your wife gaining weight or having stretchmarks after having a baby? Is there pressure to lose the weight?
a. Your wife works, but would you ever want her to stay at home? Does her working affect you in anyway?

This is a hard one because I know how particular Kemi is about always being physically fit so irrespective of what I think I believe I would just have to bite my tongue when it comes to that. Also I feel part of the baby weight gain would obviously be my fault, since I’m part of it all so I just see it as part of the sacrifices we both have to make to be parents, and there are many sacrifices on both parts, and weight gain is not the biggest one. So no, I don’t think there’s pressure from me for her to loose weight because I’m sure she would already be putting herself under a lot of pressure to loose weight.

I’m not that fussed about her staying at home right now. I would hope that we can reach an understanding later on what’s best for our children especially in their earlier years but that’s a conversation I’m willing to have as it comes up since our needs and our situation may be different then. Right now her working affects me positively: money in the bank! And also negatively because her work can get highly stressful and that is something we both have to share.

7. How do you resolve conflicts?
a. Jealousy in marriages, from both sexes, is it good or bad? Also can it be dealt with & how, from your perspective?

We resolve conflicts with difficulty but ultimately by talking and talking. And it’s not always easy because sometimes you just don’t want to talk or you don’t to hear what the other person has to say. But what I’m learning is that the best results are achieved when we talk with reduced emotional hit, so when the emotions are not running high and we’ve both taken time to separate from it.

I don’t think jealousy in a relationship is good because I think it breeds mistrust and/or suspicion, which can lead to saying things that you really don’t mean. It can be dealt with sometimes but it has to be two ways, because there’s dealing with what makes the jealous party jealous, and also making sure that you don’t engage in behaviour that makes the other person jealous.

8. I always thought that guys who were always talking about sex and being very shallow about it were just immature and I sort of labeled them as the bad guys. I've recently come to find out that about 98% of all males think this way, some of them just do a better job at hiding their thoughts. Could you talk about this? Hopefully this isn't too out there for you.

This is an interesting question. I mean yes, guys have sex on the brain. But that said, depending on your relationship with the guy, he would handle it maturely or immaturely but make no mistakes about it, it’s on the brain. So whether he says it or not, he’s thinking it.

9. Your wife sounds like a hopeless romantic from her posts and someone with a lot of expectations of love and marriage as well! Honestly, are there days you feel overwhelmed and not up -to meeting up with her expectations. How do you cope with instances where you just want to be left alone and do not feel up to the “us” thing.

More often than not I do feel overwhelmed, but it is something I knew about before I got married so I prepared myself mentally for it. Yes I do get times where, not that I don’t enjoy her company I do, but there are times I want to be more mundane and not romantic even though I know Kemi likes romance. It’s all a learning process. I cope with it in a mix of ways. Sometimes I put myself through the discipline of being romantic even if I don’t feel it, and other times, I try to make up for my being unromantic by just showering her with kisses. And she loves kisses, so that helps many times. Haha.

10. What advice do you have for some of us women that are like your wife, in the sense that we crave for attention from our better half, in the reality of marriage?

There’s nothing wrong with craving attention. So don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. You just have to understand that there are some times that your other half may not be forthcoming with the attention you want in the way that you want it but you’ve got to roll with it.

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I think some of the answers are directed to me! *wink. Lol.

Re-falling in Love

This is something I've mentioned before but not sure I've done a full blog post on it. You see, from my perspective, one of the best and absolute glorious things about marriage is the unexpected "re-falling in love" with your spouse. This is something I've never thought about before and certainly I don't recall anybody talking about it within my hearing. As Bo and I are steadily moving towards 2 years of marriage, there have been several instances where I've caught myself falling in love with my husband all over again. The feeling is like the first time. That moment when you look up at the other person and just realize that to you, they are just the best creation God ever created, and you're just in awe, or you just think that other person is just...the best ever! I catch myself looking at Bo with new eyes, filled with adoration anew, feeling so lucky and so blessed.

This all sounds good but the process of 're-falling in love' with your spouse is not a pretty one. I'm now in that phase and this morning started wondering, well wait a minute, what brings this feeling on? I think I experience this "re-falling" in the days, weeks, months after Bo & I have had a mid to serious disagreement/falling out/fight. About two weeks ago we experience what I would term the biggest falling out we've EVER had. There were tears, there were hours of talks, it lasted a few days, yes days (though whenever we fight we still tend to cuddle together at night, nothing should get in the way of a good cuddle! lol). There were threats of "this just isn't working out for me", oh yes, the whole she-bang. As a side note, friends are always amazed when they're hanging out with us and make a quip about how cute and perfect we are and I tell them well we had a big fight this morning. For some reason no one ever believes us! I count this as a blessing really. But continuing on with the story, it was REALLY bad. I have to say even right in the middle of one of the many outbursts during the few days of the "fight", I had promised a friend I would cater for her birthday party so I was cooking in the kitchen. Even though we were going at it as I was cooking, Bo still said "what do you need help with?" and then started to chop up veggies etc. And even though we were both upset to the point of exhaustion, I remember thanking God that we still worked together as partners and got things done. I know it sounds like we maybe were just having a little tiff when this happened, but believe me we were having the LOWEST moment in our relationship and marriage. Yet my husband rolled up his sleeves and we got to working together in accomplishing a task. This is amazing to me.

After fighting for what seemed like constantly for about 3 days, both Bo and I were just exhausted. We gave each other breaks but we were still constantly talking. Then during one of these talks, for some reason the communication finally clicked, we both felt we were being heard and we both understood each other. I had started praying fervently, fervently for God to really give me the Spirit of Forgiveness. I did share with Bo that I was struggling with letting my anger go and that I need help with that because I was ready to let it go. He just nodded his head and said he understood and hugged me. God worked in us, he really did. When you go through arguments with your spouse, for some reason we always come out feeling stronger and more melded together than ever. Like Bo & I agreed, when you share all your ups and all your downs with a single person, no one else has those very shared experiences, just you two, that's the magic of marriage, of two becoming one. You start to forget the lines that separate you two as individuals because you are now experiencing life in the same way, in the same prism. Your good days are also their good days and your bad days are also their bad days. Maybe it's the romanticism of this that creates that feeling of falling in love over again.

Last week Bo & I were visiting with a friend of our who's is single but just frustrated about relationships etc. Bo started talking to him about what he believes about relationships: communication, validating the other person, respect, etc. Everything that was coming out of his mouth sounded like such wisdom I had to actually look back at him half-amazed. My husband is SMART! I was really impressed and said out loud "see, this is why I married this man". Swoon. AND he tells me at least once a week that I'm gorgeous. Swoon. AND he still showers me with "million kisses" every single morning....SWOON. :-)

Overheard in the BoKem Household

Bit of background: while I love our flat where we live, we have been here for a few years and quite frankly I'm getting tired of it and I've been itching to move to a bigger place. Bo knows this. Also we have empty land in Ikoyi.

Bo: What do you think? So it seems we should be able to start building our own place on that land next year, but the catch is that we would have to stay in this flat for two more years {taking us to 4th quarter 2014}

Me: Well that's great hon but you know we can't have any babies in this flat.

Bo: Uhm, okay maybe just another year then. {taking us to 4th qtr 2013}.

Me: silence.