Saturday 6 June 2015

What happened to us?


                          Image result for images of intimacy
I sat in a bus and I eves dropped into a conversation of two females seated behind me. It was a sad story especially the moment she told her friend these words 'I don’t feel him any longer' .

I don’t feel my partner any longer is usually our way of saying we no longer feel intimate with our partner. The small magic moments have disappeared, the way we laugh that makes us look stupid when we walk by people, the sensitive feeling of touch when he holds your  hands all gone. You are literally TIRED.

In this our busy world it's  too easy to lose intimacy and connection in a relationship, your partner always needs your maximum concentration in every aspect of his or her life but then you can’t always give 100% and so the withdrawal begins and in no time you are like my friends on the bus, and you no longer feel your partner.

Intimacy did not just happen it was built by you two in the early days of your relationship so in case you have forgotten how you did it let me remind you

1.       You Accepted unconditionally – in the early days we are not as laser focused on the weakness of our partners, we accepted them for who they are and when they apologized we also accepted. There were no long stories or sarcastic comments and probing, we just took their words for it and took their actions in love , but as time went on we stopped doing this.  It's s time to start accepting him or her unconditionally.

2.       you paid attention and was always emotionally available – this is the most salient thing we did in the early stages of the relationship. You paid attention to what they said, looked closely at their body language as they said what they said, you turned everything out( work, school, all other issues).  You listened to everything and not only did you listen you let yourself open to feel what they said to you and in return you shared how what they said made you feel. Emotionally you were like a glass to them, no clocking and no twisting of words.  When you are with your partner be present stop letting your mind wonder, stop using your phones too much, research shows that eye contact is the most basic tool in establishing connection, yet when you are talking you are either looking at your phone or the TV.  I am not saying you should not multi task but once in a while slow it all down and just be in the moment. if you find that ability to listen and be emotionally open again your intimacy will come back.

3.       You laughed a lot and did things together – I read somewhere that the ability for couples to laugh at the same thing and talk about irrelevant things is a key factor to intimacy. I know I always saw my parents together sit and talk for hours and when you ask them what they are talking about, they point to a tree and you are shocked. You are telling me all these hours all you guys did was talk about a tree. Most evenings I watch them play Ludo game and its like they renew their love by doing that. So the ability to engage in supposed meaningless talks,  do things together and laugh about it is crucial, get back to those days.
                Image result for couples laughing
4.       You where physical – you held hands, you hugged etc. most people always confuse physical intimacy to sexual intimacy, they are not the same thing. Sexual intimacy is part of physical intimacy but it is not all that physical intimacy is. As someone who does not encourage pre-marital sex, I am not saying you should go and have sex,  I am just saying the sense of touch is primal to humans feeling connection so use it. Being physically affectionate not only feels good, but it also triggers our bodies to increase the amount of oxytocin produced. Oxytocin is often affectionately known as the "love hormone" because of that feel-good effect.

The last thing I want to add is this, I know most people don’t agree to my next point but I feel I should add it because I strongly believe it works like magic.

5.       Be spiritual together – in a spiritual moment there is vulnerability that occurs to each and every one of us. If channeled well can help bring you and your partner together.  Its this vulnerability that most clergy men and choir coordinators abuse when they use it in the wrong way. So try spending time together doing spiritual things.(N/B I don’t mean both of turning your house to a shrine. LOL* just kidding*)
      Image result for couples praying
Feel free to share more ways you can reconnect the intimacy in a relationship.



Friday 5 June 2015

Bride Price a License to RAPE.



   
             

There is this interesting conversation that we have been having on another platform since this week so I thought I bring it here to know your views as well.  It is about marital rape and from the conversation most men were of the view that the cardinal duty of a woman in a man’s world is to satisfy his desires.


 Marriage is no doubt the union between a man and a woman. Some define it as a contract made in due form of law by a man and a woman who must be willing to contract, able to contract and must have actually contracted.

Bride price to me is a symbol of sincerity and good faith that brought both families together.  It should create the feeling of trust, honour, respect and understanding between the families. Bride price is not evidence of purchased goods. Bride price is just to give you a sense of responsibility as most people do not cherish what does not cost them anything. It is also meant to instill a sense of accountability into the marriage and not bestiality. If a man pays your bride price, it shows he values you and expects other members of the family to do so.






















Rape on the other hand is an unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman against her will. Its essential elements are sexual penetration, force and lack of consent. Rape is an offence and any woman according to the definition I gave means any woman irrespective of the fact that she is your wife. It is rape once she physically resists you and you still force yourself in there.
There is no marital rape that is not associated with physical violence or let me rephrase it and say that I am yet to see or hear of that marital rape that is not associated with physical violence. Research has even shown marital rape to be more emotionally and physically damaging than rape by a stranger as the victim cannot remove herself from the company of the rapist. Every night you sleep, you wake up to your nightmare.



I agree that a marriage ought to be consummated, it is even one of the reasons you can use to satisfy the court that your marriage has broken down irretrievably. The million dollar question should be what should one do when your partner refuses to consummate the marriage?  To me neither Rape nor committing adultery is the best way to handle this situation
Generally I do not preach divorce but I believe that parties should just take a bow before it becomes too ugly.

Finally i want to ask, does the payment of bride price confer rights to spouses to abuse each other or one another?
Can a woman rape a man?
How will you deal with marital rape?

Thursday 4 June 2015

Grandma was so RIGHT...

So there was some truth to it after all.
A friend of mine who suffers from dry skin and itchy skin had tried all the creams he could lay his hands on, he was finally giving up when he visited a dermatologist and she told him he should try UREA but if he can’t find a UREA containing cream he should try URINE THERAPY. At first it sounded like he should try urine and in his amazement he asked
          Is Urine the Solution to Bad Skin Conditions?
Urine Therapy, as in I should use my urine as cream and the Doctor said yes, and he started laughing.  It has always been at the back of his mind that his grand mom was correct, the last time he traveled home to the village the grand mom told him to use his urine and apply It on his face before he had his bath, you could have imagined his reaction to this advice. LOL

Fast forward 8months and now a certified dermatologist is telling him that could be his cure. Is it not funny how we always see ancient practices as stupid and incorrect? when it has worked for them for several years and produced amazing results. I agree some can be way out of the world e.g. eating the head of red lizard to stop bed wetting. Hmmmm , but you must agree our village medicine practice was spot on most of the time but the world has evolved.

Back to our friend who is now faced to finding a urea product or trying out his own urine as a treatment plan.
                             
Urine therapy as it is dubbed, has a long and storied history as a skin-conditioning treatment. Beginning in Indian culture at least five centuries ago, the practice made its way to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. It was popular during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and even found its way into the baths of 18th-century French women. It is a form of natural treatment when the urine is applied topically or ingested.

Those methods might make you raise an eyebrow, especially because that liquid is being excreted from the body as waste...or so most believe. Urine isn't really a toxic by product, but rather a distilled liquid, filtered from the blood, containing water and excess nutrients your body didn't really need at the time they were ingested. Urine itself is sterile, unless you are ill and have a urinary tract infection, and there are other electrolytes and hormones excreted in the urine.

Enthusiasts of urine therapy think that, when applied topically, this can have beneficial effects on the skin for things like acne, and can also improve suppleness and elasticity and help with skin dryness. These people believe that there's some extra magic in urine's varying concentrations of minerals, salts, hormones, antibodies, and enzymes
         
Urea dissolves inter-cellular matrix of the skin therefore promotion of normal healing of skin areas particularly where healing is inhibited by local skin infection, skin death (or scars) or itching debris.
In fact, you might be using urine therapy in your regimen already, because it doesn't have to involve a straight-up urine sample. (Phew.)Urea is incorporated in many skin creams, The amount of urea you'll grab from your own urine isn't that reliable, and ultimately depends on the time of day and your level of hydration at a given moment. Today, there are so many choices of creams with known concentrations of urea that are not cost prohibitive and are more palatable.


So you see Grand Ma was right after all, yes they might have refined the urine to bring out the urea and all that but then don't write of Grand Ma’s advice in a  haste ( hahahahahahhahahah).

Between how many of us had our bath with Salt water during the Ebola nightmare? phew

Wednesday 3 June 2015

The Price For Figure 8

                             
The Kardashians are “obsessed.” Jessica Alba claims it helped her return to her pre- baby body, it is the next big thing in the Sex industry, but what exactly is “waist training,” and does it work? More importantly, is it safe?
My country has a funny way to adopt somethings; whenever we decide to adopt something we always go over the edge and it is the extreme we go to that worries me. Waist training is not a new thing in the world but in my beloved country it is gaining audience at an alarming rate.

What exactly is waist training?
This newly trendy practice involves wearing a corset-like device for hours at a time to compress your core, which will supposedly decrease the size of your waist permanently over time

Does it work?
There is no research that proves that over time this device will reshape your waist size, but it can help you maintain a good posture, help you tuck in your tummy when you want to wear that lovely gown to an event , but asides that i believe once you remove it, your body goes back to the original state. It works better when you work out with it. 

Is it safe?
A friend of mine jokingly said the idea behind it could be likened to when we were young and wore shoes that were too tight and with time our toes reshaped to fit those shoes. Even if this is true, the main point should be when you were young with malleable bones but now you are old and you are trying to trim your waist, LOL, tell me something else joor. Anyway if you don’t trust my opinion, here is what experts have to say

          
"Dr. Oz's show that airs on FOX 26 shared a real wake-up call about the extreme side of it. He conducted CT scans "before" and then "while" a woman wore a waist-cinching device., “The diaphragm is pushed up two inches as to compared over there -- liver, gallbladder, kidneys - they're all pushed up," exclaims Dr. Oz. "The corset squeezes everything to go up. It's also squeezing all of your intestines. I was stunned seeing indentations in liver - that's the ribcage being shoved into the liver. I never imagined that these corsets would do that, People will have an increased chance of having gastric reflux disease, and can also cause constipation. I don't think you can change your waist size permanently by using only the waist trainers. There may be the chance of decreasing your waistline by a few inches or so, but I do not think extreme changes to the waistline are going to happen because of waist training, and I think it's important for people to go back to the things that do work - healthy diet and participating in regular exercise."

“Medically, it doesn’t make sense that cinching your waist tightly will make it permanently smaller,” says Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., clinical professor of ob-gyn at Yale School of Medicine. "Once you take the garment off, your body will return to its usual shape. It’s also uncomfortable, restricts your movements, and if you wear it really tight, it can even make it difficult to breathe and theoretically could cause rib damage.”

          
With the trend of fuller bottom and small waist line we are now deforming our internal organs to please men or attract them, and I am so sure a quality man would not want you going through this deforming process just to please him.  I hope my male readers will support my claim oh...
Anyway i wont help but confess that that 'hour-glass' shape is to die for and I will personally advice those using it not to use it in isolation but exercise with it.