All Letters

My dear Jack, my letters to you are designed to cause a paradigm shift. If you don’t change your thinking you can’t produce different results. Some of the philosophies we subscribe to are deleterious to matrimonial peace and conjugal harmony. The unified assault on matrimony can only be affronted by a counter-philosophic vanguard. Marriage ought to be joy, it ought to be happiness. It’s not supposed to be full of difficulty and pain. You now have total access to the one you love, the one you don’t want to do without. Why should that become sorrow! If you don’t jettison the idea of marriage as difficulty your faith will keep generating that product. Continue reading →

My dear Jil, the heart is not conceptually fashioned from a viscous material. It’s rather like porcelain. It’s why it gets “broken.” That’s the impression conveyed to our understanding when we meet major disappointment. Emotions are rather powerful. When the heart is disappointed it becomes sick. Solomon alluded to this when he made this powerful statement: Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Your heart can’t afford this on again, off again relationship. You’ll do major damage to yourself. Continue reading →

My dear Jack, sometimes we think we can use matrimony to force-convert a bad relationship. We imagine bolting the door with a matrimonial padlock. We want to use fait accompli to tame the wild beast inside. We imagine proceeding a relationship – in which the parties are constantly bickering – to marriage will force accommodation. But life’s numerous case studies say otherwise – that we’re only incubating the evil day. The destructive forces locked up in that relationship will eventually blow the door of the matrimony to splinters. If at all, marriage only makes such relationships worse. It locks up two disagreeable people in an intimate space. That’s a recipe for disaster. Continue reading →

My dear Jil, waoh! You managed to break every rule in the book on how to have a happy marriage! The genesis was of course the pregnancy out of wedlock; but then you compounded it like a banker compounding interest. You went on to marry a man you’d only known for two months, just to rehabilitate out-of-wedlock pregnancy. That’s a mistake families keep insisting on. And they think it’s the way to hang responsibility for pregnancy on a guy. Continue reading →

My dear Jack, you don’t even know yourself though you think you do. You have no idea who you are. You just think you have self-knowledge. Young men can be that way – so confident and full of hubris. Only the confidence is vacuous. It’s what makes them prone to mistakes of choice of marriage partner – the confidence of ignorance.  Continue reading →

My dear Jil, I’m a little concerned about this relationship with this older gentleman. The age gap is considerable no doubt but that’s not really my concern. It’s him, what he wants. I’m not sure this gentleman wants you, or even loves you. I think he just wants to procreate through you. He has not been able to father children from his previous marriage. He has no offspring, hence you. And that’s the nerve of my concern – that he went for your youth as guarantee of feasibility of biological procreation. And so you’re both approaching the relationship from disparate perspectives. You’re genuinely in love; and his maturity and relative attainment give you security. He’s not in love, he’s looking for kids. It’s why your delay in taking in has given him concern. Continue reading →

Dear Jack, if you study the pattern of my missives you’ll discover two things: One, I’m trying to make sure that subsisting marriages work out, that they’re imbued with love, joy and happiness. But more critically, I’m trying to prevent intending marriages from becoming incubators of pain and sorrow. 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. When partners don’t gel, or come from incongruent dimensions, it can lead to disinterest and frustration. And a marriage created in the crucible of compulsion is a recipe for disaster and unhappiness.  Continue reading →

My dear Jil, look, you’ll ruin your marriage with all these third party contractors you’ve imported. If history is any guide these third parties are sympathetic undertakers. They’re constructing the coffin for your marriage. And you’re not wise subjecting your marriage to the dictates and approval of these third parties. If you want to succeed in marriage you must become a student ofthe marital institution  Continue reading →

Dear Jack,

You’re not a chipmunk are you? The memory of chipmunks lasts only three days. Unfortunately they like to store and hide food. After three days they don’t know where the food is hidden! You’re behaving like a chipmunk. You’re exhibiting short memory, which is rather painful considering all the trauma this lady has put you through. Seems you’ve forgotten the pain, including your hospitalization and near full-blown mental breakdown. You can’t afford to break down again Jack. Stop playing with your mental health.  Continue reading →

My dear Jil,

You can only eat your cake and have it if you’re a magician. And since you’re no magician it means you’re dedicating yourself to an impossible quest. You may actually be trying hard to fool yourself and that’s not something you should pursue. Self-deception is an act of self-delusion, and facts don’t change because we choose to delude ourselves. I really don’t understand how you can want to have a faithful and committed boyfriend if the scheme is friends with benefits. It’s a contradiction in terms isn’t it? And if you believe you can accomplish it then you must be a magician.  Continue reading →