Becoming a romantic husband or wife

Once wrote about how I grew up in an atmosphere where I cannot remember seeing my father and mother hug each other not to talk of kissing. As far as I know, they had a relatively peaceful marriage, apart from four to six occasions of real explosion. And this was during about the first quartre of their marriage. My mother was the envy of some women because they felt that she was enjoying too much. It was much later, I knew that my mother needed something else from my father, which my father could not provide. She had a big Love Tank, which she needed my father to fill with words and actions, but which my father possibly due to his own traditional non-romantic upbringing could not provide. 

Like I said then, it was when my mother died at age 60 that I became aware that my father loved her so much because about three months later, the same year after the death of my mother, my father died. He could not take it. He was 68.After I let in and allowed the Spirit of Jesus to be the new governor of my life, I deliberately decided that I will express love in words and action to the lady I will take to the altar to be my wife. And then, I met Carol in 1985 and wedded her the following year. During our courtship, I deliberately went to bookshops to buy love cards that expressed my love for her. Apart from those words printed on the cards by the producers of the cards, I also tried to add my own words of love with my ugly handwriting. 

That was how I began my journey of becoming a romantic man. Before we got married, we had made up our minds that we shall call each other “darling.” The pet name, “darling” was in vogue then. Now, it is “baby,” “babe,” and so on. I was very determined to be calling her darling right from when the officiating minister of our wedding would say, “I hereby pronounce you husband and wife. Whom God, therefore, has joined let not man put asunder.” 

Boy, come and see me. I could not call her “darling” for five days. Carol being from a more romantic home did not find it difficult to do so. But when I will want to call her “darling,” the wall of culture, the wall of tradition, would close my mouth. 

But on the sixth day, while in our hotel room, during our honey moon in a Christian holiday resort at Miango in Plateau State, I summoned courage and made up my mind that this wall of tradition, this wall of culture that has turned out to be a wall of Jericho in my journey towards having an exciting and lovely marital life must fall down. That beautiful morning, I called Carol, “darling,” and I congratulated myself for being able to come out of a non-romantic life style. And since then, no turning back or restrictions. People say that I am a very romantic man.

But what they do not know is the deliberate effort I put in and keep putting in to express love to my wife, just as Jesus Christ through many deliberate means expressed and keeps expressing his love to His bride ( that is the church). After many years of marriage with five grand-children, I keep kissing my wife’s hands, kissing her lips, taking her out and looking for new ways of showing her love. All I have been trying to say through this write up is that a traditional husband or wife can become romantic if he or she wants to. Love you!