Cheers to 2025
January 5, 2025
Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of
“This is a spanking new blog series that would amuse and delight you” Olatoye Omotolani Joy Ojo
The other day K and I were gisting, obviously not our first time, but this particular topic is the regular couples’ dreaded talk. No normal couple will allow their conversation travel to that extreme.
We were conversing about death, afterlife and remarrying.
Oh!! I should inform you that K is my lawfully wedded husband of 2 years and my best friend of 12 years.
We started the relationship in my last year as a teenager, while he was barely half-way into his 20’s.
We practically had all our firsts together and we’ve grown to accept each other into our core.
So imagine why despite still being in our early 30’s we were conversing about who should die first?
This is how the conversation went;
K: (discussion about an unrelated topic) you know that it would be nice to build our retirement home right?
Me: Yea, it will be a great place to finally rest and die with you in.
K: You must be crazy to think I’ll allow you die and leave me on earth, trust me to scabash(pray in tongues) you back.
T: Tah!!!! I’ll tell the angels not to carry the request, just hold it there. So you’ll prefer you die first ni? No now!!
K: Yes now, we both know you are the crazy one, which means you’ll perform better than I would if alone.
Me: Relax young man, I won’t die on you early. I’ll ensure I don’t leave till we’ve welcomed our great grand children, so we would just be months apart or at most a year or two. Meanwhile if you consider remarrying penren, I will kuku come and carry you immediately then.
K: if you know you wouldn’t allow me transition to the great beyond first, then kill this topic now.
Me: Just free me ooo.
This is often how our conversations go; we agree to disagree, then disagree to agree.
When we first decided to set out on this marital journey, many of the realities that followed weren’t planned nor prepared for, but our total commitment to our friendship and believe in each other has helped us scale through the many life’s hurdles.
Our individual learnings from marriages around us wasn’t enough preparation for some of the realities either, yet our consistent need to communicate did the magic many times over.
This journey called marriage will never be peculiar to all, we shall all travel on different road map, yet, many authors have submitted that marrying one’s friend has a beautiful way of making the journey even more desirable.
Yet, it won’t be possible for everyone to marry their friends, so what then happens to such new found love that is already set on the marital journey.
First, they must be willing to understand their inadequacies, especially that they may not know their partners fully. It’s quite tricky that spending eternity with a fellow may not literary translate into knowing that person.
We can only trust that time will reveal all of the person’s behaviour and personality. This is because, with time, a pretender may forget to keep up the act, thereby exposing his/her true nature.
The smartest way to find this out would be to see the person when they are angry and losing steam. This is when you would get to know how much of themselves they can’t control because of seething anger.
Another will be to see them when they are happy. This is because, it’s a proven fact that many can’t control what they say when they are excited. They would inadvertently be exposing their secret in the place of happiness.
Yet another will be to see them when they are hurting.
I personally believe it’s a dangerous adventure for anyone to travel the marital journey with a partner who can’t be vulnerable with them. The reason isn’t far fetched, we all have our low moments, isn’t this what King Solomon sounded to us heavily in his book, how disastrous will it then be, if my partner can’t be satisfied with my shoulder alone during his moment of hurt.
The second important point is that the two parties must work in unison to keep their communication line open. This will measure the individual effort and willingness to bring stability into the union.
Love itself is in the effort we put into it, this means that the couples must constantly attempt to communicate their individual needs, which could be very numerous allowing their partners the opportunity to satisfy them.
To achieve this second phase, I will always disagree with the view point that every woman wants this or that, or the popular lines people use to sell their products, “buy this and make him happy’.
The very best gift you can give your spouse is to meet them where they want to be met. What this means is, if attention is what I need from my partner, if he turns up with only material gifts without the commensurate attention, it’s a NO!!
That won’t satisfy my needs at that very moment. Should I also crave for any act of service, he shouldn’t then come sit with me, thinking every woman wants attention every time. NO sir!
What I need is for you to be busy for me doing stuffs around the house, no sitting pretty man!
Even during revered bed fellowship, no man should assume that the same G sport exist for every woman and women shouldn’t compare notes too.
We all deserve a new page you know, a page we can both commune and commit fully to discovering the many talents that exist within our mortal body.
Allow me hide my pen for now, but know that certainly, love isn’t meant to be so hard. We can have fun while in love.
Related Posts
The Constructive Generalist: How Akin Akingbogun is Engineering Africa’s Future and Writing Its Stories
May 8, 2026
In an era that increasingly demands hyper-specialization, Akin Akingbogun stands out as a refreshing anomaly. He is a man who refuses to be confined to a single box.
I Parked My Car Five Minutes Away: So the Kids Wouldn’t See It.
May 5, 2026
There is a particular kind of silence that falls on a man when the phone stops ringing, the proposals go unanswered, and the diary that once groaned under the weight of appointments sits quietly — almost mockingly — open. If you have ever been there, you know it.
Wired for Me
May 5, 2026
Let me tell you something uncomfortable: the most generous person you know — the one who volunteers every weekend, donates quietly, never asks for anything in return — is probably getting something out of it. Not money. Maybe not even recognition. But something.
When the Burnt Toast Saves Your Life
May 1, 2026
Adaeze had been awake since 4 a.m.
Not because she was anxious — though she was — but because this trip felt different. After eighteen months of follow-ups, phone calls, and PowerPoint presentations polished to a mirror shine, the deal was finally ready to close. An investor meeting in Abuja. A partnership that would change the trajectory of her small but gutsy consulting firm. She had triple-checked her flight, her documents, her outfit. She had prayed. She was ready.
The Loudest Person in Every Room Is Often the Most Afraid
April 28, 2026
When he told his father, Dare’s first response was a sigh. Then: “I told you to practice more. I told you months ago. You don’t listen. You never listen.”
There was no “I’m sorry, son.” No pause to let the boy simply feel the loss of the thing he wanted. Just a swift, seamless pivot to what Temi had done wrong — and, by extension, how Temi’s failure was evidence of Temi’s failure to take his father’s wisdom seriously.
You Only Heard One Side. That’s the Problem
April 28, 2026
I want to tell you something that took me embarrassingly long to learn. Not because the idea is complicated — it is not. But because it cuts against something deeply wired in us, something we are rarely honest enough to admit.
Everything You Were Too Embarrassed to Google About Mid-Life Crisis
April 28, 2026
You are somewhere between forty and fifty-five. You looked in the mirror recently and had a thought you immediately dismissed. Maybe you googled something at 2am that you would never say out loud. Maybe you bought something expensive and impractical and told everyone it was an investment. Or maybe you just feel — quietly, persistently — like the life you built was supposed to feel better than this by now.
Chekhov’s Gun
April 28, 2026
Anton Chekhov was a Russian physician and playwright — a man trained in the discipline of diagnosis before he became one of the most precise storytellers in the history of world literature. That combination of sensibilities matters, because the principle he articulated in the late nineteenth century was not merely a rule of dramatic craft. It was an observation about the nature of significance itself. About what it means for something to be present. About the relationship between introduction and consequence.
Fear Is a Prison with Invisible Walls
April 28, 2026
There is a prison that has no concrete walls, no iron bars, no guards posted at the gate. Nobody built it for you. Nobody sentenced you to it. And yet, for many people, it is the place they spend the better part of their lives — circling its perimeter, brushing their fingers against its invisible boundaries, and quietly retreating each time they feel the edge of something that might require more of them than they believe they can give.
The Closed Fist
April 25, 2026
Picture a hand holding sand. The tighter the grip, the faster the grains escape between the fingers. Ease the grip — open the palm, allow the hand to become a vessel rather than a vice — and the sand stays. This is one of the oldest paradoxes of leadership, and one of the least learned: that control, pursued too aggressively, produces the very loss of control it was designed to prevent.
The Growth Trap
April 25, 2026
There is a version of ambition that builds. And there is a version of ambition that consumes. From a distance — and especially from inside it — they look almost identical. Both are energetic. Both are forward-moving. Both speak the language of vision and possibility. The difference only becomes visible later, usually at the point of fracture, when what was built begins to come apart under the weight of what was promised.
The Frontline Disconnect
April 25, 2026
There is a particular kind of organisational absurdity that most people who have ever worked in a company will recognise immediately. It is the policy that was clearly designed by someone who has never had to implement it. The restructuring that looked elegant on a slide deck and chaotic on the ground. The customer-facing process that was overhauled by a committee that has not spoken to a customer in years. The directive that arrives from above, fully formed and non-negotiable, that causes the people closest to the work to exchange a look — the kind of look that says, without words: they have no idea what we actually do here.
Burnout Is a Leadership Failure
April 23, 2026
We have built an entire mythology around exhaustion. In boardrooms and business culture — perhaps nowhere more so than in the high-pressure, always-on professional culture many of us inhabit — busyness has become a currency. To be tired is to be serious. To be overwhelmed is to be important. To be burning out, quietly, is somehow proof that you are fully committed.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Discover more from Akin Akingbogun
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
7 thoughts on “Musings of a Sassy Lady – Love shouldn’t be that hard”
Thank you for this piece Tolani, hope to read more from you
Thanks for the post, very awakening. A long-lasting relationship is built on effective communication and a collaborative effort from both partners
This is an interesting piece but the ending keeps one in suspense.
Interesting, looking forward to read more.
Everyone needs attention. It makes you happy. Children cry when they are not getting desired attention from parents. Husband and wive need attention of each other. Love will make husband to pay attention to his wife while submission will make wife to pay attention to her husband. The result is joy and happy family’s life.
Pingback: Musings of a Sassy Lady – Love is a choice – Akin Akingbogun
I agree with your submissions, it comes with learning, to unlearn and relearning