Nigerians & Love: Are we on the right track?

When love is not madness, it is not love. Loving is not just looking at each other, it is looking in the same direction. Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone very special to catch your heart. These are just a few famous quotes depicting the notion of “love”.

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, it is only fitting that we turn to the topic of love and relationships and delve into how much things have changed over the years and why. Are men and women forgetting the fundamental attributes to a successful relationship or marriage?

Based on more than a decade of research and experience, our in-house “Life Coach, Psychotherapist and Relationship Expert”, Lanre Olusola shared his top 5 pillars that Love and Relationships are built on and they are as follows:

1) Friendship – Be “Best of Friends” and build the kind of friendship that you have with your best female or male friends

2) Forgiveness – Be able to forgive one another over and over again – Know that you will always both offend each other daily and you both deserve to be forgiven. For it’s to both your benefits.

3) Knowledge and Understanding – In relating with each other well ignorance must be eliminated to a great degree, you must know about each other’s past, present, future; you must know about each other’s strengths and weaknesses; you must know each other’s personality type, styles and your preferred communication language; you must know each other’s love language but more importantly understand that you need to use the knowledge to create and maintain rapport and communication within your relationship: A key is to defer to using your partners default to engage with them instead of yours.

4) Kindness – Having empathy and compassion for your partner is very critical for the health of your relationship – Always position to outdo each other in kindness, empathy and compassion.

5) Maturity and Emotional Intelligence – knowing that each person sees things from a completely different perspective and being able to accept it and work together regardless is critical. Being together is different from when you were single and living only for yourself.

So, there you have it from the Catalyst himself! With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, let us take the time to consider our relationships or marriages and get them on the right track. Let’s pursue relationships with genuine and pure intentions, put love at the heart of it all…start with these 5 pillars and you’ll be almost there!