The Nation Newspaper

Tag: PILLOWTALK

  • PILLOWTALK

    SWEET romance! That is what is uppermost in her heart at the moment. For hours, Maureen stayed glued to the screen watching her best movie with rapt attention. At the centre of it all, was the story of two lovebirds; emotionally attached in spite of the pressures and family feuds around them.

    To be or not to be? was the big question. But, somehow, they never gave up, instead their love waxed stronger and the passion kept burning and it ended as they tied the knot and lived happily ever after. As she looked away from the screen, her mind wandered off back to reality zone.

    The story of the lovebirds compared to her personal love story and uppermost in her mind was the wish to capture this heart that seems so elusive in spite of all her emotional investments’. “I don’t think I can survive another disappointment. I just hope this relationship work out because I am not sure I can start all over again.”

    Yes, she has really seen it all. It’s been tales of emotional frustrations and disappointment for our dear friend. Falling and stumbling in the emotional corridor and now she seems to be at a crossroads, looking for options and trying to make a choice.

    Take a deep look and you find that it actually isn’t really her fault. She has had to make the necessary sacrifice and played her role very well. The only snag is that she has been unlucky with her choices.

    The crux of the matter here is that, sometimes, luck plays a big role in the final outcome of the love process. We all gamble making a choice, believing that the choices that we have made are going to match our expectations in the long run.

    Unfortunately, it does not work out this way for many.”My younger sister met this gentleman who appeared to be so unserious and she wasn’t looking forward to anything at all. To her utmost surprise, he turned her world around in a fabulous way and made her a great admiration to family and friends. They were married in less than a year and the relationship remains a great reference point to a lot of people till date.”

    Finding the heart for keeps can be complex indeed. What works for A, may not necessarily work for B. It is actually a make or mar situation for our dear friend at the moment and she just cannot afford to make any mistake at this stage of her emotional life.

    She takes you down memory lane and confesses that it’s been a tale of emotional frustrations indeed. Falling and stumbling in the emotional corridor and now she seems to be at crossroads. This is the last card and it just must work, she prays.

    For a lot of people, love, like life, comes with a lot of challenges. It has the highs and lows too and the best thing to do is to understand your emotional season and make a smart choice. If you fail to decode and move in the right direction, you may just discover that you have lost out of the game.

    Emotional champions are not necessarily those who got the best opportunity in the field, instead they make the best of the opportunities available, play the right emotional cards, thus winning trophies (hearts) that others ignored, abandoned or took for granted .

    Many, like a famous quote, believe that being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”

    To win and be successful, you must keep your eyes on the prize. So, the secret to emotional successes like everything in life involves dedication, determination and perseverance.

    One other secret is to stop all the guesswork many stick to and start creating opportunities that will bring about the intense attraction that your partner needs to feel with you if your relationship is going to last and grow.

    Don’t let yourself get stuck in another relationship where you watch the affection and excitement of the man you love fade away.

    If you’ve ever struggled with how to keep that attraction and passion burning bright without having to try and worry if things are going to work out. It is also important to understand how to maintain a good relationship, prevent relationship crisis and continue to wax stronger in love forever.

    Interestingly, one great way of showing trust is when lovebirds accept mutual respect, set boundaries and have a common emotional goal. This would help them to assess what they do, how to enhance their relationship and redefine their goals as they move along in the different phases of life.

    However, permitting each other to have a private space and avoiding pushing the other person to do things they would prefer not to do helps a lot in creating sustaining happiness in relationships.

  • PILLOWTALK

    The works hard for his money; so hard for his money. Bayo is not the typical guy that you see around. He is one of those guys that you can call dedicated and not be in doubt at all. At work, he is known for the value that he adds to everything that comes his way.

    Friends and family members know that once you give him a task, you can actually go to bed with your two eyes closed because he would certainly deliver beyond your expectations. When he isn’t at work, you can be sure to find him on his little farm located behind the house. Here he tends to a variety of plants and you can see the same level of dedication at work here and the outputs usually call for celebration, each time it’s harvest time.

    However, he has noticed that some invasion recently. Some birds and animals have become spoilers here and it is getting so irritating that he decided to set a trap for them. This morning, Bayo is back on the farm (his heart) and it looks like the thief has been caught. He gets closer and to Bayo’s dismay, it is his poor chicken (his babe) that walked into the trap. He rushes over to set it free but something has gone wrong, it is limping and may never walk properly again.

    That scenario actually captures what two lovebirds are passing through at the moment. The guy at the centre of the love drama is Bayo and he has played his part very well, working round the clock to make things work well.

    Unfortunately for him, some desperate folks are doing everything possible to take away the love of his life from him. The more he tries to be in charge, the more desperate they have become. Determined to wrestle this emotional ‘loot’, he maps out a number of strategies which ultimately affect the heart in question. Now that there are visible scars in the relationship, he has two options: “To let go or go back to the drawing board for the way forward.”

    He certainly does not want to lose this girl and suddenly, he decided to go to her and find out if she feels exactly the same way he is feeling about the relationship. It was a good decision and there he found that she had also been worried about the turn of events. It was a great encounter and they became united in the quest to forge ahead against all the odds. That determination was all they needed and from that point, love conquered all.

    Interestingly, when it comes to healthy relationships, there is no one-size-fits-all advice. You may need to try, try and try again before you finally discover how to get on the right path and make your relationship work. A number of lovebirds run away from a very good relationship and end up with a partner they can never get along with.

    At that point, it is already too late and they become stranded on the emotional corridor, hanging on to hearts that can never make their dreams come true.

    The crux of the matter here is that not every relationship survives the test of time and there will always be moments when you would feel the need to finally give up and let go. However, it’s not also that easy to just drop everything and leave because you’re talking about something or someone that once made you the happiest person in the world – so you are stuck in the frustrating and often heartbreaking dilemma between staying and saying good bye.

    A good relationship is more than something we want – it’s something we need to be our happiest, healthiest, most productive selves. But at home or work, supportive, fulfilling relationships don’t come automatically. They take an investment in time and energy as well as social skills that can be learned.

    If you are lonely, long for close friendships or a better understanding of co-workers. However, if romantic relationships have disappointed you, there are steps you can take to repair old connections and build meaningful new ones.

    You know you can manipulate someone into being your friend or partner without ever feeling genuinely connected with them. Experts will tell you that a relationship is a consequence of a connection.

    You cannot afford to give up yet because as long as you both believe in your love for each other, there will always be a rainbow after every storm. Maybe you just need a break from everything? Take all the time that you need – both of you.

    Trying to fix an almost broken relationship can be emotionally taxing, and so you must take it easy. You also need to talk about what you are passing through in the relationship and be open and honest with each other. You must communicate and be honest and truthful about how you really feel.

    On your part, you must also be ready to admit your mistakes and have faith in the fact that it’s not yet too late to fix the problem. So, take it easy. In addition, you also need to talk about what you are passing through in the relationship and be open and honest with each other. You must communicate and be honest and truthful about how you really feel. Tell them about the time when they hurt you but you’re too scared to show it. On your part, you must also be ready to admit your mistakes and have faith in the fact that it’s not yet too late to fix the problem.

  • PILLOWTALK

    HAVE you been to Love’s molehill? Making a mountain out of Love’s molehill reminds you of the idiom that refers to making too much of a minor issue. It could also refer to exaggerating the importance of something. So in relationships, you discover that a number of people fall apart because of things that they should have overlooked, things that should have been inconsequential to love matter.

    Instead of showering the one they claim to love with affection, what we do is to look out for their mistakes, what they left undone as well as what we think they are likely to do. Unfortunately, that is why we always run into problems. Instead of holding on to the power of positive thinking, Love’s molehill is usually clustered and cluttered with negatives. The molehill, interestingly, is a conial mound of loose soil raised by small burrowing mammals, including moles.

    The love animal thinks like these burrowing mammals, we keep on unearthing things that break the heart. You keep on fishing in troubled emotional waters and result is the heartbreaks we have these days.

    It’s actually a long, tiring journey and you need perseverance to survive the odds. You also need a trusty road map and guidebook to benefit from the experience of those who have been through the bumpy road, climbing emotional hills with stress, getting lost in valley of lust while a few make it to the mountaintop.

    Solomon is looking for a babe, someone he can be happy with 24/7. Happily he tells his friends the type of gal he is looking for and they laughed at him. Dreamer? “You are just too ambitious, you need to look around and if you find someone who fits into your target. If the babe meets up at least 50 or 60 per cent, then you are okay. But if you insist on having all the details a 100 per cent then it may just be a wild goose chase.”

    A gap tooth and every smiling chic. This can really be a great source of inspiration in any relationship. A frowning babe is not a great companion. She’s going to drag you to the bottomless pit and make the whole idea very uninteresting. A bad bargain anyday.

    What is he going to do with a babe whose eyeballs are flat? “No way. It’s more exciting when you are in a relationship with someone that excites you. The eyeball is the first contact; you must be able to connect positively at this point. If the one you want to spend the rest of your life with possessed eyeballs that are not attractive, then it’s not likely to work.”

    That is not all. This dude also wants his babe to be intelligent or close to a genius at work.

    Insatiable? Not really. A guy with class should go after what his heart’s desires. His dream is unique, not for ordinary souls. This dream gal must be a pot pourri of some sort. An angel in the midst of other angels, something worth having forever. A diamond must be forever.

    Well, we can’t really blame him. So, are we saying that it may not be possible to have just one babe with all these assets? No, we just can’t make that lazy assumption. Let him try, try and try again. He may just be lucky to find this missing rib somewhere and somehow.

    Like a molehill, Love can be very difficult to define.

    Most times, you may just have to make something

    out of nothing. You need to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself and make things work, if you can. Things are different from what we used to have in the past, obviously signs of the love times.

    Two young lovebirds decided to go in search of a good Love nest. Somewhere, they can live happily thereafter. Of course, they were not sure where true Love was, they went to a love doctor for diagnosis. The doctor did the necessary tests to be sure that they were compatible. Once there was a confirmation that they both had enough of cupid’s arrows in their veins to take them through this strenuous Love journey, it was time to be practical.

    Here he took them though a shimmering path that got higher and deeper with every step. It was fun and the two lovebirds laughed, sang, danced and shed tears of joy. The sun was shining brilliantly and fragrant wildflowers were blossoming abundantly all around them as the skipped merrily around the path of Love.

    Just when you thought they had found Love, the unexpected happened; the euphoria was interrupted by a voice from the past.

    “Susan how can you do this to me? How can you bite the Love fingers that fed you? Why did you break a loving heart?” Yes, that was the voice of an old flame. It was a sad voice and it was also warning the new Romeo. The message here was that he had been a victim and the new guy was going to fall prey soon.

    Our queen is a fair weather lover, the type who shows affection only when there are goodies in the emotional bag; once the bag becomes deflated then she is going to take to her heels. Utopia? Well, you would find out as you sink deeper and deeper into this Love quagmire.

  • PILLOWTALK

    Rape, rape and more stories about rape. Yes, the sad story is that it has been with us for so long. Memories of a heart in tears, memories of a heart in disarray! Not the usual emotional tales of kisses, hugs and poetic vibes.

    Perhaps, what comes to mind here is the poem, The Rape of the Lock, written by Alexander Pope, a social satire. Interestingly, it beams a searchlight into human weaknesses, follies, foibles, and absurdities, specifically on the life of the aristocratic ladies of the eighteenth century.

    Fast forward the emotional tape to the 21st century and you would see that things have indeed changed in so many ways. While some people strive towards perfection in the emotional terrain, others are crude in their emotional attitude; they just want to grab and grab everything, those freely given and those that must be forcefully taken away.

    Unfortunately, the church has been on the emotional cross in the past few weeks. First, it was Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of The COZA church and beautiful Busola Dakolo. It happened a long, long time ago, according to the story. Unfortunately, the pain never heals, it doesn’t matter how long it happened. The man at the centre of the emotional storm has denied and it is left for those gifted with unraveling ‘the emotional truth to decode whether it happened or not.

    Just while the emotional corridor was grappling with this tearful emotional story and the effect on the people around them and rape saga breaks. This time around, it is another member of the church claiming that Pastor T.B Joshua raped her. She claimed to have been raped over and over in The Synagogue.

    Another emotional scoop, and tongues began to wag in different directions again. A statement saying the woman is not mentally stable comes in to douse the tension.

    Love is a process and it requires affection and a caring heart. Unfortunately, things are falling apart and the emotional centre no longer holds.

    Intimacy, affection and all the usual emotional ‘ceremonies are missing in action. That takes us to the emotional tide, arguments and counter arguments about rape.” Who done it? Where, how and why? Interestingly, it is usually very difficult to get down to unravel the rape mystery; someone, somewhere is hiding some information and you may or never get to the root of the rape matter. Blackmail also is an accomplished something and the more you look, the less you see.

    Africa has the highest prevalence rate of child sexual abuse around 34.4 per cent. Between 2012 and 2013, about 30 per cent of women in Nigeria experienced one form of domestic violence or another

    Findings from a national survey carried out in 2014 on violence against children in Nigeria confirmed one in four females reported experiencing sexual violence in childhood, with approximately 70% reporting more than one incident of sexual violence. In the same study, it was found that 24.8% of females’ ages 18 to 24 years experienced sexual abuse prior to age 18 of which 5.0% sought help, with only 3.5% receiving any services.

    There  are so many cases that comes to mind here. One of such is Imade who was raped at seven years old by her teacher after school.

    “He [told] me I was a smart and beautiful girl and gave me little sums of money,” says Imade, now 24. One day, he raped her.

    Imade told her mother, who complained to the school. “They fired him, but that was all,” she says.

    The teacher wasn’t prosecuted despite being referred to the police. But in Nigeria, this is by no means rare.

    The country has an extremely low conviction rate for rape and sexual abuse, despite articles in recent years.

    A human rights lawyer who has been handling sexual assault cases for over a decade, says “cases are not effective enough … because some [instances of] rape are not recognized in the eyes of law. Sometimes, after medical examination [when] we find no signs of force or bruising, the law does not recognize that as rape.”

    But the shortcomings in Nigeria’s legal system – where the burden to prove rape or abuse often lies in evidence of it also being a violent attack – are not the only challenges facing survivors. Nigeria, home to an estimated 170 million people, has just a handful of facilities dedicated to the care and support of survivors.

  • PILLOWTALK

    HE works hard for his money; so hard for his money. Bayo is not the typical guy that you see around. He is one of those guys that you can call dedicated and not be in doubt at all. At work, he is known for the value that he adds to everything that comes his way.

    Friends and family members know that once you give him a task, you can actually go to bed with your two eyes closed because he would certainly deliver beyond your expectations. When he isn’t at work, you can be sure to find him on his small farm located behind the house. Here he tends to a variety of plants and you can see the same level of dedication at work here and the outputs usually call for celebration, each time it’s harvest time.

    However, he has noticed some invasion recently. Some birds and animals have become spoilers here and it is getting so irritating that he decided to set a trap for them. This morning, Bayo is back on the farm (his heart) and it looks like the thief has been caught. He gets closer and to Bayo’s dismay, it is his poor chicken (his babe) that walks into the trap. He rushes over to set it free but something has gone wrong, it is limping and may never walk properly again.

    That scenario actually captures what two lovebirds are passing through at the moment. The guy at the centre of the love drama is Bayo and he has played his part very well, working round the clock to make things work well.

    Unfortunately for him, some desperate folks are doing everything possible to take away the love of his life from him. The more he tries to be in charge, the more desperate they have become. Determined to wrestle this emotional ‘loot’, he maps out a number of strategies which ultimately affects the heart in question. Now that there are visible scars in the relationship, he has two options: “To let go or go back to the drawing board for the way forward.”

    He certainly does not want to lose this girl and suddenly, he decided to go to her and find out if she feels exactly the same way he is feeling about the relationship. It was a good decision and there he found that she had also been worried about the turn of events. It was a great encounter and they became united in the quest to forge ahead against all the odds. That determination was all they needed and from that point, love conquered all.

    Interestingly, when it comes to healthy relationships, there is no one-size-fits-all advice. You may need to try, try and try again before you finally discover how to get on the right path and make your relationship work. A number of lovebirds run away from a very good relationship and end up with a partner they can never get along with.

    At that point, it is already too late and they become stranded on the emotional corridor, hanging on top of hearts that can never make their dreams come true.

    The crux of the matter here is that not every relationship survives the test of time and there will always be moments when you would feel the need to finally give up and let go. However, it’s not also that easy to just drop everything and leave because you’re talking about something or someone that once made you the happiest person in the world – so you are stuck in the frustrating and often heartbreaking dilemma between staying and saying good bye.

    A good relationship is more than something we want – it’s something we need to be our happiest, healthiest, most productive selves. But at home or work, supportive, fulfilling relationships don’t come automatically. They take an investment in time and energy as well as social skills that can be learned.

    If you are lonely, long for close friendships or a better understanding of co-workers. However, if romantic relationships have disappointed you, there are steps you can take to repair old connections and build meaningful new ones.

    You know you can manipulate someone into being your friend or partner without ever feeling genuinely connected with them. Experts will tell you that a relationship is a consequence of a connection.

    You cannot afford to give up yet because as long as you both believe in your love for each other, there will always be a rainbow after every storm. Maybe you just need a break from everything? Take all the time that you need – both of you.

    Trying to fix an almost broken relationship can be emotionally taxing, and so you must take it easy. You also need to talk about what you are passing through in the relationship and be open and honest with each other. You must communicate and be honest and truthful about how you really feel.

    On your part, you must also be ready to admit your mistakes and have faith in the fact that it’s not yet too late to fix the problem. So, take it easy. In addition, you also need to talk about what you are passing through in the relationship and be open and honest with each other. Tell them about the time when they hurt you but you’re too scared to show it. On your part, you must also be ready to admit your mistakes and have faith in the fact that it’s not yet too late to fix the problem.