Attendants set up a gift point at Siel Supermarket, Nyeri County in Kenya, on February 8, 2025 in preparation for Valentine’s Day.
This is the week people bring up issues from nowhere just to get a reason for disappearing from you until next week. This is the time people act like they're upset about things they should have brought up before just to cause tension and hide behind it.
The days are upon us when true lovers and fake ones are divided asunder. The question is whether you have the marking scheme to tell who has failed the test.
Some people ghost you around this time to avoid buying gifts and flowers - which have doubled or tripled in price, but others ghost you because they have a seasonal date elsewhere who is offering more goodies. Some loaded Mumama or Mubaba may have thrown them an alluring deal: 'Let me spoil you this Valentine's weekend with no strings attached. Anything you want is on me.'
If someone avoids connection just because they don't want to show affection, do you need such a person for a lifetime? And if someone can be bought with money and they cheat on their partner and give their body, where is their dignity?
Marriage is not built on love alone, and you must never marry a person just because you love them. Marriage is built on love and reliability. You need to have both good chemistry and good character in place.
That is if you're dating for marriage and not just for company. When you date because you find being alone too uncomfortable, you'll never let go of someone before you find their replacement.
This type of dating is a psychological bandage for traumas and wounds within you that you prefer to compensate for instead of healing. Healing is uncomfortable because it involves digging up issues from the root and owning our role in what went wrong.
A healthy relationship is not a bandage but a bridge to the next phase of your life. If you've been preparing and growing yourself into the stature of a wife or husband, dating is the interview that allows you to seek another person who is as prepared as you.
Interviews never take years. Interviews are precise and purpose-driven.
Once you see traits of materialism and avoidance of responsibility, you don't argue and try to change the person's mind about these issues. You simply take note of that information and make your decision about that person.
The hype and trends surrounding Valentine's may tempt you to rekindle things in a relationship that was already dying just so that you can have a story to share with your friends or a photo to post on Instagram.
We conduct these so-called reconciliation meetings, sometimes mediated by friends and mentors. During these meetings, we over-share our expectations, and we cause people to adapt temporarily just to satisfy us.
Make no mistake about it - communication does help iron out differences and get people on the same page. As long as those issues are a matter of approach and miscommunication.
When it comes to moral issues, however, trying to align a person is a bad idea. They will lapse later, most likely when the two are already married. Moral issues are deep-seated, and everyone thinks they're right in their own way. Relationships that need too much reconciliation and mediated sittings are a sign that people are morally misaligned.
Allow Valentine's to be a time of learning and making decisions rather than going too far to make things work with the wrong people.
