5th wedding anniversary; The joys & the lessons

Hiiiiiii blog fam! Happy 2022! Hope you are having an amazing January already and I pray that you see the goodness of God all throughout your YEAR.  This year, I am going to be much more consistent on here and that’s a promise. So help me God.

I am really excited about today’s topicccc because—drum rolls, hubs & I recently celebrated our 5 years anniversary and we are really over the moon at how far we have come. guys… I won’t even sugarcoat this or try to be humble about this: It’s been AWESOME. The dynamic of our relationship has changed from time to time through parenting & adulting but at the core?… we are still just those two young people who fell in love with each over 6 years ago & wanted to be build a life together.

One major highlight for me at our anniversary date was reviewing our last 5 years, planning the next one & filling up our bucket lists. It is honestly the BEST DATE ever. I literally just wanted time to still so we could be in the moment forever. And leaving that place that night- one thing I proposed was to share some lessons we have learned in the last 5 years of our marriage and so here goes;

Before we dive in though: a short back story on how my hubs & I met.

Girl & Guy attended the same church &were in the same choir unit. She crushed on him for a bit, but soon realize she wasn’t the only one. So she willed away her crush. Years later, Guy asked girl out—out of the blue, girl of course said YES and their love story began. She was 19 at the time.

2 years later, just before her final year exam in Unilorin. Guy proposed to girl. Girl says YES. Although girl was hopelessly in love & wanted to get married to guy asap *winks*, she was a bit worried about getting married on the brick of adulthood not haven experienced the world, she poured herself into marriage books & learnt as much she could theoretically… and in 3 months after her convocation, Girl marries Guy and real-life practical began.

5 years later? She would do it all over again!

Now, what are the lessons or major things that has helped us in the last five years— brace up ooo. LONG POST ALERT

1. Leaving & cleaving completely; There is a reason I added completely to this point and it’s because it is easily misunderstood. In God’s perfect design, you have to leave and cleave before you can become one flesh.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall become united andcleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:24 AMPC

And while the leaving part is usually quite easy… The cleaving is where the work is.. because it requires continuously telling yourself that this new person you just said “I do” to is to be one flesh with you and then working towards the physical, emotional, relational and spiritual reality of that oneness.

The marriage counselling classes we attended & all those books we read keyed in on CLEAVING as the most important thing in the first year especially. So we were determined to do it right. And ironically, it involved the simplest things such as;

Developing our own lifestyle & dependence on each other.

Sharing our feelings and heart’s desires with each other rather than parents/friends

Keeping personal issues between ourselves

Learning to say no to excessive demands outside our marriage relationship

Being intentional about putting each other first

Weaving our lives around each other etc

These things may appear super easy except for people who like me thrive on people relationships & conversations. I am a talker & I love people so… cleaving wasn’t the easiest thing for me. I enjoy talking & sharing a lot with my mum, my sisters & friends… and so in that first year, I had to consciously take a break and really zero in on my marriage. It was the best decision ever, because today, hubs & I are best friends…. And one hot gist–we talk a lot, I think it’s a lil too much even… haha 😂 . We know the tiniest things about each other and I love love it. This has indirectly made our relationship richer.

Caveat; This is not to say ditch your other friends & relationships when you get married oo pls, cause I know there is a lot of conversation around this, it is however to reiterate that the most important relationship in your life should remain your spouse’s. And I don’t know about anybody but— if something very significant happens to me right now & I call my best friend/sister to talk about it, the likelihood of the second person I intend to tell (my husband) getting all the details & knowing how significant it was to me when it happened as mostly likely reduced. And the effect of this grows over the years. I hope y’all get it.

2. Evolving together as a whole, but first growing individual; This is a game changer honestly. And for me who married at 21 and has evolved a lot in the period of our 5 year marriage, I would give the credit here to my husband. He understood the assignment of support as one evolves and this was really helpful. Becoming a mom changed me in a lot of ways- I almost forgot my personal goals as some point, but he was there to remind me- when I am about to turn down on an opportunity because of our child. And this required him not being selfish, because he had to hold the ball, if that opportunity he encouraged me to take has me dropping the ball in any area. And it was just really sweet to watch… So if you are a man here reading this—take note. Having someone remind you of your goals and aspirations when a beautiful lil human being made you lose sight of them for a bit— that’s gold.

Most importantly growing individually is DIAMOND (see what I did there? haha). In many ways, I am super different from the girl I was 5 years ago, and in some ways, I am still her, same applies to him as. Growing individually in different areas of our lives has nourished our marriage in ways I can’t even really explain. Admiration keeps love alive. When you are growing as an individual, you give room for admiration and this feeling works in tandem. We admire the person we are in love with, and we have a need for them to admire us, too. This self-perpetuating back and forth has nourished our relationship and propelled each person to be our best selves.

3. Talking: as simple as this sounds ehn, I realize it’s our biggest asset. We talk a lot. And so we rarely hide our feelings from each other. I think in fact this was one of the reasons I knew I was going to marry him. So I remember this one particular night at Unilorin car park where we sat & talked for over 6 hours. The initial reason was for me, a 200 level student who stayed on campus to keep him (a corp member who stayed off-campus) company while he waited for the popular long queue at the car park to come to minimal so he could get a comfortable transport to convey him. So we sat and waited, only that at some point, the park became a backdrop for one of the longest & important conversations we ever had- we decided the number of kids we were going to have that night ooo and we were only few months into dating each other! Likeee time just passed like wind & before we knew it, it was almost 12 midnight (from 6pm)— he had to then hurriedly go with the last cab leaving school just before the 12 midnight curfew when school gates will be locked. How the full car park became empty and we had no idea because we were talking? I can’t explain till today but I knew I went back to my hostel that night thinking “Life will never be boring with this one, I want to marry him!” LOL.

Talking for hours on end and losing track of time? – it’s still our favorite thing to do.

And in talking, we know each other better, learn about each other insecurities & together find ways to make it better. In talking, we have also learned to enjoy silence because when you communicate often & freely, silence becomes enjoyable.

Effective communication is key in any relationship and it is the foundation on which ours was built.

4. Not letting the kid affect the bond; Ok, so this is actually impossible to some extent. Kids will definitely change the dynamic of your relationship with your spouse especially if they came in as soon as you got married of which by the way, was our case. And although it took some intentionality on my part (as expected, women are more in control of this), this was something that we were able to hack.

Ever heard of the line “always together, but no longer alone?” … that’s what jumping from a twosome into a family does to you.

First, pregnancy is wired in such a way that men can easily feel detached…and then childbirth—with the natural tendency for you to revolve your life around the lil human being that is still so unbelievably yours, while almost FORGETTING the exact thing that resulted in the baby- the dynamic relationship you share.  Granted however that women feel different kind of emotions through this phase, men do as well with their own feelings more likened to—“a lil bit of loneliness and fear of the lil human snatching their wife’s attention & love”— and my own intentionality (as I mentioned earlier) was learning all I could about the circumstance, then determining right ahead that the baby wasn’t going to affect our dynamic, but like the saying goes … “It is not as easy as it sounds”  

It was a series of intentional steps from both of us- having alone time regularly, personal sacrifices for collective good etc. Looking back now though, the most important step I took, although inconsequential at the time was— making sure that as much as I could, Almond slept in her own room & not our bed— (hmmm…you will only understand the amount of work this requires if you are a new mom or have been there before) It was particularly stressful when she was a baby; nursing her in her room & then returning back to ours to sleep just to maintain that personal space for us both, – but today ? 2 lovely benefits: our unbreakable bond & an independent 4 year old. SO good!

This may not applicable to everyone, but like I said figure out what works for you.

5. God: if he doesn’t build a home who can? Our 5 year marriage testimony would be incomplete without the wisdom giver & home builder who has been our help.

If God doesn’t build the house,the builders only build shacks. If God doesn’t guard the city, the night watchman might as well nap

Psalm 127:1

All the 4 items above amount to nothing without His grace. Putting God first in a home works and our home is a testament.