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Can I Get an Encore?

My dear Jack, I present 60 lessons from my letters to you in 2015. I hope you take them to heart as you enter the new year. Here they are: 

1. It’s not the beauty of a wife that keeps a man from straying. It is self-discipline.
2. You need discipline before marriage, and you need discipline after marriage.
3. Pray for a woman who cares about you, who sees your success as her success and her success as yours.
4. Pray for someone who wants you, who’ll be so identified with you she’s you. Two people, one life.
5. Love is a friendship of the heart.
6. In a marriage love matters. Affection maters. Attraction matters. Physical attributes matter. So does character.
7. If you don’t love her don’t marry her. If you’re not attracted to her leave her alone.
8. If you can’t afford a home of your own it just means you’re not ready for marriage. Get your own home.
9. A man without a mind of his own is not a man.
10. Learn to take responsibility for the natural consequences of your action. Be a man!
11. Stubbornness reads humility as humiliation.
12. Learn to sleep over things. Don’t be hasty of action if the answer is not clear to you.
13. She’s lonely and you’re lonely, hence relationship. There’s a danger to such matches.
14. Sex is a very powerful impulse, a very strong drive. Don’t let it drive you, it’s a bad driver.
15. The greatest danger about addiction to porn and masturbation is that it alienates intimacy.
16. If you want to stop your addiction to masturbation, cut off the accelerant and oxygen to the flame in your groin – porn!
17. Pay attention to your wife so she doesn’t feel you don’t really care about her.
18. You can’t approach marriage like you already know. It’s not accommodating and it’s arrogant.
19. Listen. Acknowledge. Adopt. Adapt. Make time. Make room. Make friends. Seven matrimonial virtues.
20. Put more resources into your marriage than your wedding.
21. Don’t marry what you can’t afford.
22. Nothing is as depressive as being locked up for eternity in a marriage with someone you don’t like.
23. If you want a truly loving and affectionate relationship, you and your partner must be sincere with each other. Sincerity is nakedness.
24. It is important your wife has a sense of security in your marriage. It’s why you need to keep affirming her, assuring her of your love.
25. Love needs to be expressed. You express love to build faith. Faith comes by hearing what is told.
26. If you do lose a good woman, go and beg her; woo her back, before another comes to take your place.
27. Romance is we. Romance is us. Romance is never me.
28. Balance things in your home. Pay attention to your wife and kids, or your home may not survive your ambition.
29. It’s important to have an honest relationship with your child. Sometimes that’s all children want.
30. Don’t allow your mum’s pursuit of the status of grandma turn your marriage into collateral damage.
31. For a marriage to break from external pressure there must be fissure within.
32. Loving takes effort. Loving is responsibility. Just try. That’s all it takes. Try.
33. Whatever you want in marriage you must be ready and willing to give.
34. When you want to choose a marriage partner, think of the future not just now. And certainly not just sex.
35. A bad marriage starts with a wrong choice of partner. And such partners are not necessarily bad people. They may just be bad for each other.
36. When our friends are in marital trouble what they need from us is not sermonizing. Just compassion. They’re in pain!
37. When values are shared, a marriage has a greater chance of success.
38. A friend is born for adversity. You know your friends when you’re in trouble.
39. If character can make someone beautiful, a deficiency of it can make someone patently ugly. Character is beauty.
40. A lonely man is vulnerable. A successful young man is a target. Don’t let the physical blind you to the obvious.
41. You’ve got to have a primary project every year – something momentous you’re pursuing for the year.
42. You have to become successful before you become successful. That’s the lesson from Joseph. Joseph was successful as a slave.
43. Tolerating in courtship what you can’t accommodate in marriage is a creative process for pain and anger.
44. These four things are important in marriage: love, peace, happiness, friendship.
45. If you proceed into a relationship knowing it will bring you sorrow, why, you’ve decided to crack coconut with your skull.
46. Manhood is not emotionlessness. It is not a lack of empathy. A man lacking in empathy is psychopathic.
47. If you’re going to have a shot at marital joy you’ll have to forbear, and learn to forbear, and choose to forbear.
48.  When there’s no money a marriage soon wakes from fairy tales of love. Love and responsibility are co-travellers.
49. Solomon said time and chance happen to all. That means your opportunity will come. But will you be ready?
50. It’s not where you start that matters. It’s your determination to keep going, to keep pushing, on the inside of you.
51. Whether we acknowledge such or not, your determination to succeed will impact your girlfriend’s love for you. Being real!
52. Don’t hate what you desire. Stop hating the successful. Not every successful person is crooked.
53. As per your wife, if you want to be the man who “hit it first”, tell me, the women you hit first who’ll marry those?
54. The woman you need is the one who believes in your future, believes in the potential of your greatness in life.
55. Forget all that stuff about opposites attracting. Are you a magnet?
56. If you can’t trust someone don’t marry the someone.
57. Men change as they make money, as they rise in life. Without groundedness, success can wreck a home.
58. Never cross the line of violence in your marriage. Or in anything for that matter.
59. Every line you cross in life becomes temptation to you.
60. Responsibility defines a man, not virility.

Your mentor, LA

© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com

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