ade, Author at Ade & Olu

How to make your marriage sweeter – men

This is an article I prepared some time ago for a magazine. The article is targeted for men, but a lot of women can benefit from it too. In this article, my aim was to give men some tips on how to keep a good relationship going and to take it to a new level. I appeal to my female readers to bear with my overly masculine undertone. I wanted the men to wake up and make their women happy. Enjoy and give me your feedback.

Take Charge – The Man must be willing to take control of the home, he must be willing to create an atmosphere in which the woman is comfortable to follow him. She wants to be able to relax as if her protector, friend or guide is in charge. It’s the kind of feeling you have when a trusted person is handling your vehicle. You are able to sleep, knowing fully well that you will arrive at the destination safely. How can this be done practically? By being patient, by reassuring your wife all the time and I guess you can come up with more.

Learn to be Kind – A woman will do anything in the world for you if you put them at ease about their faults; build up their strong points. You need to reach the high level of kindness that says, I love you for who you are. I love you the way you are and I am ever so glad to have you in my life. What I believe most people want, is someone that is willing to take time to know them and after knowing them is willing to accept them just like they are able to accept themselves. If you make it your business to know your wife, and you make up your mind that no matter what you discover, you will help her to be what she wants to be, you will discover a world of happiness and joy known only to few men. What are some of the things your wife does so well? Tell her you notice and you appreciate them.

Start at the Mirror – You must start by working on yourself. If you try to make your spouse better, you will only fail. Can You say 3 or 4 things you plan to do better this week? It is fast becoming common knowledge that if you want to change someone, you change yourself. Always learn to ask this question – What can I change in me, that will help my darling to be better at _______? Place whatever you want her to be better at in the blank.

Ask her to help you grow – Be honest with your wife, accept that you are not perfect, ask her to help you be a good husband. And most importantly – MEAN IT. BE READY TO TRY OUT HER ADVICE. The same applies to the wife. It is possible that what she would say will knock you off your feet; However if you are a strong man ready to make your home a paradise on earth, make up your mind that your first reaction to her advice will be thank you. You must not defend yourself or retaliate. Your wife needs to feel that she is needed in your life. She wants to feel indispensable.

Communicate all the time – It’s important that you speak honestly to each other about your inner feelings. Not just things that happen outside but how you feel inside. The way you evaluate the depth of a relationship is how much of the inner thoughts, feelings, fears, ambitions, ideas are being shared. Aim never to have someone closer to you than your spouse. You must learn to listen to your wife. I personally have learnt that my wife does not always say exactly what she wants so I also read her body language. That is why most women always want you to look at them when they are talking. Give her time to express her self and have your undivided attention. Do not be afraid to say your mind about issues. Don’t assume that it is better to lie to her so that she will not be hurt. She will eventually find out and she will be more hurt. Aim at being totally honest with your spouse. Communicate often – Be creative and use technology. You don’t need to spend lots of money. I find that spending too much can spoil things sometimes.

If you like it say so – 3 things a husband must do everyday. Tell her you love her, do something nice for her and pay her a compliment. Tell her how beautiful she looks. Remind her about the part of her body that you love (the fact that you are married does not mean that you are blind!). Always look for opportunities to make your wife happy.

The Power of Faith – Keep saying good things about your babe. Even when she is not yet perfect in some things, say what you believe she will be. Tell her I believe you will be the best employee at your work this month. I see that you don’t get upset as often as you used to. I see that you are looking more beautiful everyday. Isee that you are such a great wife.

How to tell her what you don’t like? – Begin by telling her what you do like. If you have mastered the habit of telling her what you like, she will expect you to be honest with her about the things you don’t like as well. I suggest however that you always think of a positive way to say what you have to say.

Winning by loosing – Sometimes you need to give in – you will get a better result later. You cannot afford to win every argument. When you learn to loose some and let your wife save face, she will accept later that you were right and she will end up asking for your opinion. If you try to prove to her that you are smarter than her, she will keep trying to out smart you and that’s not as much fun as having her support and she having yours.

Never miss an opportunity to say I love you – Make the special days special. Get an organizer and plug in all the special days. The day you proposed to her (if you remember), your wedding anniversary (check the marriage certificate), Her Birthday (check her drivers license), and any other special days, the day you bought your first home and so on.

I can hardly wait to see you – Let her know you want to have her around you. If you discover that you don’t feel like this, think more about her and the feelings will come back. Spend time talking on the bed at night, be romantic. Be creative, Have fun and let your spouse tell you what fun means to her. Enjoy.

Real Love by Dr. Greg Baer

Real Love: The Truth About Finding Unconditional Love & Fulfilling Relationshipsis a must read for anyone. Dr Baer does an excellent job of articulating what needs to be done to change one’s relationships from being self-centered and frustrating to “other focused” and fulfilling. When I first read this book a few years ago, I immediately ordered a copy for Olu. There are many principles in this book that you may already know or even are practicing but just reading about them and getting them organised will really move you along on your path towards a more fulfilling relationship.

Three things that stood out for me from this book:

Everyone needs unconditional love and they are willing to do anything to get it. If you learn how to love unconditionally you will not only be happy, you will become a source of happiness for the people around you.
If you are not happy in your marriage or other relationship, the problem is not the other. The problem is you! You don’t need others to make you happy
We try to “buy” love by becoming angry, withdrawing, lying or complaining. These actions only get us “imitation love” which is never satisfactory.

Other books by Dr Baer

33 Life Principles that have helped me

How you can make maximum impact. Here are some of the principles that I have been developing for my life over the years. Some of the principles listed here are still work in progress but I believe you will be able to pick one or two things from here. I have just written these straight from my heart and I know it would need some explanations and editing but I just feel like presenting the raw form of it for now.

Every person must aim to live at the peak of their potentials. It is important to make sure that once you discover a way of living that will make you more useful that you follow that path as soon as possible.
The World needs real, authentic people who will show that even though all humans have weaknesses, God has made a way to restore humans to Gods original plan for us.
It takes courage to face the challenges of life, face the criticisms of the skeptics and yet keep focused on the word of God and be adamant that you will make a difference in your community.
If you do not determine to make a difference, you will struggle all your life to be fulfilled and you may not be fulfilled. Lots of money may help you to make some difference but what the world needs is not more money but more love. More of God’s kind of unconditional love.
Money, fame, power would come your way if you determine to make a difference, but you must never allow any of these to become the goal. The goal is to show the world that God loves them and to to show this perfecting love in action.
But first you must re-position yourself for maximum impact
You must move from a position of little or negative impact to a position of maximum impact.
You can only make maximum impact in your domain. Your domain is your primary area of greatness and positive influence. It seems to be programmed in your DNA.
If you locate your area of influence and work hard on it without truly connecting with God, you will make an impact but the impact may not be the maximum impact.
There are millions of people all over the world who have never discovered their area of maximum impact and have lived far below their maximum potentials.
Millions of people leave their homes everyday to work at jobs that limit them. I have made up my mind never to add to this number.
Jesus says you (Christians) are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. You have a lot to offer. However, if you are not well positioned, your light will not make the necessary impact.
Proverbs says that a poor man’s wisdom is despised. You need to realize that if you don’t seem to be benefiting from this relationship with God, people will wonder why they should listen to you.
Having faith in God through Jesus Christ may be hard at times but you must stay committed to what you have discovered to be true.
Determine that you will never turn back.
Locate your area of strength.
Develop your area of strength and find people who are strong in your area of weakness to help you.
Be committed to helping other people develop their strengths.
If you fall today, rise up and try again.
Always be objective. If its dead, bury it and go on.
If it’s not dead – don’t give up.
Cultivate solid relationships that compliment your purpose and that help your purpose.
Discard anything in your life that has a negative impact on your life and the life of other people.
Replace bad habits with good ones.
Make the people around you feel like kings and queens by celebrating their strengths and complimenting their weaknesses.
Learn to receive help from people who want to help you. Accepting help enables people around you to shine and to contribute to your success.
Try never to leave people the way you met them. Endeavor to pray for everyone that you meet (in your heart) and let them see the love of God in you.
Never blame anyone for your failures. Always think of a better way to do things to avoid similar results. I find that if you think clearly, you will always learn from your failures. Once you learn from it, it’s no longer a failure but a learning experience.
Do not be in a hurry to get to the “promised land”. Celebrate every progress and continue to move forward. Never look back. Remember Mrs Lot.
Always evaluate. Check over and over to see if you are still moving forward or moving in circles. Many people start out well but then they end up badly because they lost focus on the way.
Be brutally honest with yourself. If you are a thief say “.. I am a thief. it’s bad to be a thief. I will stop being a thief from now on.” Do not engage in the folly of deceiving yourself. If you are a complete failure in music, admit it and find what you are excellent in. The earlier you start looking the better.
Don’t spend all your time trying to be excellent at what you are naturally poor at. Rather improve on your strengths and do the best to find people who will complement you.
Always enjoy your life as it is now, and as life gets better with you, enjoy the more.

Honest Talk about Life, Love, Relationships, Marriage…

Welcome to Ade & Olu.com! Thanks for taking the time to visit. What we aim to do with this site is to share our lives with the world. We are two people who love one another very much and we believe that everyone can and should have this kind of love in their lives.

It seems that having a happy marriage or relationship is becoming more and more difficult as the years go by. We believe that one of the reasons for this is that we try to work out a healthy, loving and fulfiling relationship in isolation. When we share our lives with one another, and we build quality frienships, our significant relationships are not as strained. As a result, on this blog you will read about our personal experiences as we Pastor a Church in Canada and our daily lives as individuals in the community. You will also read about our thoughts on various issues of life with a definite focus on love. As a couple we believe that the missing link in many lives is LOVE. So this blog will be about love and how we live our daily lives in the light of LOVe – Unconditional love.

A good way to see this blog is that it will be informative, and also honest and practical. We will try to be as honest as we can without being rude. We know that there are may people who will not agree with what we will write, however our goal is to be of help to those who need help and find this blog useful. We don’t claim that we know it all, but we will try be as informative as possible.

Enjoy

Top 3 Non-Negotiable Qualities of your Potential Husband

As you begin to ponder on the type of husband you are hoping to find, one principle that helps would be to have a list of 3 non-negotiable qualities that you are looking for in your potential husband. Having these qualities will save you a lot of time, emotional energy, heartbreaks and aborted relationships. Having this list can be beneficial for the following reasons:

You would know right away wether to invest in a relationship or not: If one of your non-negotiable qualites is that your potential husband must be of the same or similar faith or religious background as yours, you will find that you will not spend much time or resources in pursuing relationships with men who are not open to the teachings of your particular faith background. Or for a woman who already has children, it will be a waste of time and resources to pursue a relationship with a man who is not interested in her children.

The woman becomes more confident because she assumes the stance of a person screening potential men for a relationship as opposed to being desperate for a man. Most men are attracted to confident women; they look much more beautiful because they are more attentive to their looks, they are more attractive, because they look at people in the eyes, they are able to focus on what is going on around them since they do not focus on how they are being assessed by the people around them. It is important that every woman who wants to get a husband, develop a healthy view of herself.

3 qualities is enough – It is quite important that a woman does not have more than three non-negotiables. When one has more than 3, she becomes quite picky and may loose out on potential matches. So work hard on your previous list and take the top 3 qualities. I find that most people can compromise on many things but not on everything. Here is a sample list of a ladies top 3

He must be a growing and passionate Christian
He must love my children
He must be able and willing to work (should have worked if recently out of job)

What do you want in a husband?

When going shopping, it is usually a good idea to have a shopping list. Why is this? Because you could spend much longer in the grocery store than you originally planned. You could also get back home late, tired and maybe upset because your family mambers are upset that you have messed up thier plans only to realise that you forgot one of the ingredients you need to prepare a special meal. Needless to say – take that extra 5 mins to write a shopping list. It will still be useful even if you forget to take it along to the grocery store because the exercise of writing it has already helped to reinforce the list to your memory.

You need a shopping list for your husband – Because of my work and my interest in marriage relationships, I have had the opportunity to ask several women about what they want in a husband. And many times, I have heard them say things like – “He should be cute” followed by a giggle. Or something in the line of “I just want whoever God wants for me”. Or “I want a man who will be there for me”. Now all these statements are good but they fall short. They are like going to the grocery store and saying I want to buy good food and good thing to use at home. Almost every thing in the store are good for food and using at home.

Ladies you need to be more specific – What do you mean by cute? Tall, short, gentle… what you consider cute in one person may not be cute in another person. Yes of course we assume that you should be attracted to him. I always encourage people to simply desire a person that they are attracted to. Fixating on physical attraction may cloud your ability to discover the beauty in a man whom you may not consider “cute” or physically appealing at first contact. What do you mean by whoever God wants for you? How will you know who God wants for you? In the gospel according to John, we are told that John the Baptizer was told that the messiah is the one upon whom he sees the spirit descending. What are the qualities that you would look for in your potential husband?

Tips on drawing a husband shopping list – My intention is this post is to encourage to draw up a list of things you want in a husband. Start by writing all that comes to mind. At this point, you do not need to filter your thoughts. Whatever comes to your mind just keep on writing. I will encourage you to write at list 30 things. You can write more if you like. The more you write the better because then you will see clearly what you have be unconsciously looking for and you will be able to make any necessary adjustments.Here is an example of a list – these are actual things that women have mentioned over the years

He should be taller than me
He should be working or at least has worked consistently for a few years
He should love my kids or should love Kids
He should be willing to accept that I don’t want kinds
Patient
Not a drinker of alcohol
Love parties
be willing to try new things
love travelling
love God
not too religious
good sense of dressing and colours
be a good cook
be comfortable around my friends and family
same religious affiliations
be willing to live in Africa
not abusive
laugh at my jokes – good sense of humor
make me laugh
interested in business

Streamline your list – once you have dumped all your thoughts on paper, you have written at least 30 thing you think you want in a husband. You can now begin to arrange them in order of preference. You can start by crossing out the last 10 that you can do without and then another 2 and on an on until you are left with 10. I will encourage you to write these 10 0n another sheet of paper then grade them on a scale of 1 – 10 with 1 being the most important and 10 being the least important. This is your final list.

Top 3 non negotiable qualities – Now take a look at your list, if you have done a thorough job, you should have your top three non-negotiable qualities of your potential husband. They are usually the same for most women. I will discuss this in my next post.

Do you really want a husband?

In discussing how to find or get a husband, I think the first question to ask is, “Do you really want a husband’? Many ladies have been single for so long that they really would not want a husband. For those who are still in their twenties or even younger, they may really be thinking of a husband as a boyfriend. While all husbands are boyfriends, not all boyfriends are husbands.

So who is a husband?– A husband is a man who has decided to spend the rest of his life on earth loving his wife. It is a man who has decided that he will do all that is within his powers to see that his wife is the best woman that she can ever be. His priority in the relationship is to ensure that his wife knows God and enjoys all the blessings inherent in her unity with God through Christ Jesus. He supports her, loves her, challenges her, nurtures her, corrects her, leads her by example and is ready to make any amends when he is wrong. He does his best to provide whatever is lacking in her that he can provide and prays for her constantly so that she is always in tune with God her owner and lover. A husband is not just someone that acts as a male figure in the home. He is not just the one that has a deep voice. A husband is not just one that attracts you sexually, or one that makes you laugh. He should be all of these in addition to the definition in the previous paragraph. What does this mean to a woman? Well it means that if you want a husband you will need to forget about the independence and begin to think co-dependence. A husband would want his wife to be ready to work together as a team to build a solid and life changing relationship with God. A husband is ready to join with his wife to build God’s kingdom and as such the wife must be ready for such a level of commitment. Dear sisters, if you are looking for a movie partner, or a sex partner, or the father of your kids then, the things we will be discussing here may not apply to you. The strategies for getting a joker (one who is there to make you laugh), or a body guard (your protector) or a sex partner (someone to meet your sexual needs) are different from the strategies of getting a husband. If you try to get a husband with the wrong strategy, you will most likely attract the wrong people and keep wondering why husbands are not manifesting.Food for thought – Do you really want a husband? Then develop strategies necessary to get a husband. Stop looking for a boyfriend, a funny guy, a rich guy and look for someone who is committed to God and is interested in investing his life work in building the Kingdom of God with you. What do you want in a husband? Do the things you want in a husband tally with what a husband is? Why do you want a husband? What are the strategies necessary in getting a husband as opposed to getting a boyfriend, or any other modification of a husband? I will share some more thoughts on this next time.Please feel free to ask your questions or share your thought.

How to get a husband? The Discussion begins!

How does a man begin to share with women how to get a husband? What qualifies me to share with you on this sensitive topic other than that I am a husband? Well I must confess that I am not claiming to be an expert in the realm of dating or landing husbands. I have never tried to get a husband and as such this blog will not be about giving advice. Rather it would be more about opening up the discussion from a husband’s perspective.Is this blog for you? Well are you looking for a husband? Then take some time to read some of my musings and see if something resonates with you. Most articles on finding a husband (and I prefer the word finding but I chose to use the word getting because that is what most people think it is) are written by women. This is because like I mentioned previously, they are more qualified to speak as counsellors because they have been able to land at least one husband and maybe even helped a number of women to land husbands. However, a discussion such as this becomes even more interesting when you read the thoughts of an “unlikely” voice.I am that unlikely voice. I do not claim to represent the millions of husbands out there nor the millions of potential husbands looking for potential wives. I am simply a voice speaking out my thoughts with the hope that it will encourage, challenge or correct someone who is looking for a husband.My thoughts on this issue may not be in line with what many women are used to. It may go against your preconceived notions but I assure you that whatever I put here are thoughts that I have considered and I believe are true at least for me and if I they are true for one, they may be true for a few other men and husbands to be.All I ask my readers to be is open. Consider what you read and if you think it makes sense to you, try it. If you have tried it and it did not work for you, then forget it. Just don’t assume that the advice is bad simply because it is different from what you are used to.Finally, although I will try to make my discussions as general as possible, I am a follower of Christ and my thoughts will reflect my beliefs. However, I am sure that anyone regardless of your spiritual connections will find something to use here. If you are a follower of Christ however, this blog will be easier to understand and I pray that it helps you on your way to finding a husband.