Skip to main content

CAN YOU LOVE SOMEONE YOU DON'T RESPECT?


Bishop Noel Jones, brother of famous actress and model, Grace Jones, stunned a London crowd when during his sermon he suddenly asked, “Can you love someone you don’t respect? Can you respect someone you don’t love? Same question in reverse order. Well, before you answer, it may interest you to know he's been divorced for 20 years and heads a 17,000 member church, The City of Refuge, California – USA. He's also a grand-father and his children are happily married. 

At first, my reaction was, why try to teach on love when you've clearly failed at it? But it occurred to me, that by virtue of hindsight he may actually have good lessons on how to have a successful marriage. Perhaps people who say they are lucky with their marriage are just being sincere. 

Back to the question – if your answer to both is, no, then you’ll agree love and respect do correlate. And if respect must be earned and reciprocated, so must love. Thus, a healthy loving relationship is one where there's mutual respect and care. 

You may say you have a lot of people with whom you share mutual relationships, does this mean you’re in love with all of them? Certainly not “in love”, but definitely you do love them. The opposite of love is hate, it won't be possible to have any relationship without love; be it family, friends or work colleagues. Being “in love”, is when we single out someone from the lot and through a process of care and addiction we selfishly desire them for ourself only. Again, this level of desire must be mutual between the pair of you, if not you're only obsessed. 

Now to the major question – after the feeling of goose bumps and heart-pounding, why do we fall out of love? Well, from the above we can deduce that respecting someone we don’t love is another definition of fear, and loving someone we don’t respect is pity. Therefore, we fall out of love when we break the rule of mutual respect and care, which includes failing to meet each other's physical, emotional and social needs.

Love isn't difficult, we just have to continue doing that which is naturally deserving to someone we claim to care for and respect.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Color of Water by James McBride review - race, identity and transcendence

I once encountered a novel in the African literature section of a London library. It was about an out-of-luck black Nigerian man, Furo Wariboko, who went to bed and woke up transformed into a white man. Nothing else about Furo changes (held the same undergraduate degree, spoke in  Pidgin English  and even retained a  Black ass ), yet his social interactions in the vibrant city of Lagos improved overnight: from offers of high remunerating jobs to excessive deference towards him from his fellow Nigerians; all because of his newly-acquired skin colour. I remember sliding that novel back into the library’s bookshelf, thinking the synopsis around Furo’s life was outlandish even for a work of fiction. Not until I immersed myself into James McBride’s demure memoir,  The Color of Water , in which the author unfurled the life-world of his mother, Ruchel Dwajra Zylska, did I realise that I’d been limited in my imagination to think back then that Furo’s story was outlandish, and that reality can,
Post a Comment
Read more

Tinubu and end of Village Tree Democracy

The market square humiliation of incumbent governor of Lagos, Akinwunmi Ambode, was excruciating to watch even for a non-supporter. It was a ‘power show’ by Bola Ahmed Tinubu. A demonstration that two decades after ‘great minds think alike’ billboards stood on major Lagos streets – a baseless comparison of himself to Awolowo and Gandhi, except for round-eyed glasses – his ability to steer voters in his preferred direction hasn’t waned. I’m mindful that it’s usually an overestimation when an individual is said to have such power over society. Nevertheless, it’s undeniable that Tinubu’s opinions hold sway in Lagos. Indeed, how Tinubu came about that political power, and how it can be brought to an end, is what I intend to interrogate. Majority of Lagos residents are Yoruba. Like many African sub-nationalities, they hold as ideal that, although individual need is self-evident, community need shall supersede. This is argued convincingly by Professor Segun Gbadegesin – what
Post a Comment
Read more

Bello, Zik and Awo: Youth, Ambition and Unintended Consequences of Independence.

Pointing finger of blame when looking into history is tempting. But, reading two or more accounts of same historical event, by different witnesses, it becomes clear that there are no absolute-truths in history: just points of view. And requires discipline on our part to piece together for better understanding of the past, to build upon the successes, learn from the mistakes, and where possible and desirable make repairs. From accounts of Ahmadu Bello (My Life), Nnamdi Azikiwe (My Odyssey) and Obafemi Awolowo (Awo), we know the slogan ‘Self-Government for Nigeria NOW’ was demand of the ‘politically conscious’ indigenes. Demand continuously watered since 1923-elections in Lagos and Calabar Provinces, when only Nigerian men who earned £100 annually were allowed to vote. People who constitute Nigeria were never consulted if they so desired to be a ‘nation,’ let alone, be independent. Action Group (AG) would go further, at its Owo Conference of April 1951, declaring ‘SGN in 195
Post a Comment
Read more