non-fiction – KAMS' COTTAGE

It’s always a pleasure to share these pages with like-minded people. I’m excited to Introduce some amazing guest writers here to share their wisdom with my readers. We have THE.INTROVERTED_SHE🦋, JAHZ_RHYTHM, MANDY, and my humble self, KAMS COTTAGE. When they accepted my invitation to share their wisdom with y’all I was thrilled and believe me, you will be too. There’s just so much to learn and trust me it’s worth your time.

KAMS COTTAGE

Romeo and Juliet have always been one of the couples used to set standards for relationship and intimacy, you know that Euphoria that just engulfs every part of you. Honestly, there’s a lot more to relationships than just romance, fairy tale and movie-inspired expectations. Relationships are unique to each partner. You can’t use that of other couples to set standards for yours. What works for them won’t work for you. A relationship isn’t about having another person complete you but coming to the relationship whole and sharing your life interdependently. By letting go of the romantic idea of merging and becoming “one“, you learn as Rainer Maria Rilke says, to love the distance in a relationship as much as the togetherness.

JAHZ_RHYTHM

Truly, It is something to write about – how strangers become lovers and lovers strangers. Don’t you find it intriguing how strange people meet for the first time and get sparks or connections, some even fall in love but sometimes, those feelings don’t last and that person you thought was the only one that could make you laugh can also make you cry. People get into relationships expecting much more love than they receive but some fail to put in the effort needed. This is why getting into a relationship shouldn’t be based on some momentary feeling or vibe. Relationship of any kind requires effort. You have to put in the work. If you don’t feel like you’d be able to do that, then there’s no need to get into one. You don’t get into a relationship just because you are bored or lonely or missing an ex. If you want excitement, hit the gym, go swimming, go sky diving and all of that. We shouldn’t be breaking hearts like it is some cheap cookie. Intentionality cannot be taken away from relationships. Every successful marriage heard of has had to deal with issues at some point. The success of a marriage is hinged on two people who know they love each other and have decided to commit their love to this person even through dark times and moments.
Somewhere in our heads, Mr. or Ms Right is some perfect person with no flaws and that’s why at little conflicts, we want to opt-out and run away to find another Ms Or Mr flawless perhaps. This is where we miss it. It’s not a thing of looking for someone else when challenges pop up, It’s facing challenges – both of you working on yourselves, your characters, understanding your love language and speaking it. I believe love is a driving force cause without the presence of love, you wouldn’t see the need to build a future with them. You would just keep chilling and selfishly getting whatever you feel you get from each other and that’s chaotic.
The whole lovey-dovey feeling can be overwhelming. That’s why the phrase “love is blind” is used a lot. When you are in love, the butterflies are still young and active, forgiveness is easy and you just want to spend the rest of your life with them without thinking well or doing the necessary research. Be wise about your decisions even though some things we tag as red flags are not necessarily red flags. You could be all in, putting in all the effort and your partner is giving you some vibe that doesn’t match your energy. The first thing to do is communicate. Of course, you can’t eliminate communication with words when speaking of any kind of relationship – so, it is vital to communicate your feelings and opinions with your partner. If the relationship was built on the same foundation, you would see them put in the effort to be better. Yelling, slamming doors, and giving attitude are listed among the most misunderstood forms of communication. Confronting situations up front with a lower voice tone has proven over time to be more effective in communicating. You also should be able to accept your partner’s confrontations and not think you are right all the time. People are scared to do this. So any form of conflict becomes a red flag when it is something that could be worked on as long as both parties are in agreement. Even though love and relationship cannot be solved with a straight-line map, some principles have worked over time and have kept couples happy and satisfied with their marriage when there will always be conflicts in a relationship.
If the relationship has been defined, an effort is being made, communication and patience are there. If your partner still doesn’t care about how you feel, for the sake of your happiness, that person might not be the best for you.
I’m not saying you can’t change anybody, but there are some traits that you know you got to have in a person like do they love God, are they teachable, humble (cause pride don’t go easy), are they compliant, do they respect your opinion, do they respect people? Are they ambitious? These will help you know if you both can work together.
Statistics showed that people who had a higher level of character development were happier couples from the beginning of the relationship. Work on yourself first before trying to fix another person. And don’t get into a relationship hoping to be a baby project. One of you is going to get drained. We often have expectations from our partners that we are not willing to work on the same things for ourselves, and then they become the bad person. Iron sharpens iron. Know your worth too and don’t pick people out of pity for yourself. Low self-esteem has made people do things they are not meant to do and they will stay in abusive relationships, relationships that don’t grow them or make them better people cause they don’t know their value.

the.intoverted_she🦋

“Love is the most beautiful thing when it happens to you unexpectedly but it never gets real until you do it on purpose”

Once upon a time, I used to get a lot of attention from guys, I didn’t understand why and it annoyed me so much. I used to hear a lot of “I love you’s” and even though I didn’t know what it was then, I knew they never meant it.
I could look each guy in the face and tell him “you don’t know what you’re saying.”

Have you ever been in love?
I have.
And I know very well how things could go when one party decides they don’t want to work for it.

I’m probably the biggest hopeless romantic I know. I believe that you can have the “fiction kind” of romance. Where the man is the sweetest human to exist, both of you serenade each other with words and actions and the purest heartfelt gestures that just continuously remind you of how much you love and are loved. I’m big on romance, and when I say romance, I mean ROMANCE.

I’m a believer so I’ll never be able to separate the two — that is my faith and romance. I mean, King Solomon did talk about romance in the bible so it’s no sin. There’s just context.

You lots probably believe romance isn’t complete without sex but I beg to differ.
Romance — intimacy — is so much more than just skin against skin. It’s that song that reminds you of your partner’s smile. It’s in the scent that reminds you of their favourite outfit. It’s in that food that you only eat because it reminds you of your partner. It’s in the little texts you leave each other in between work just so you both feel included in your day. It’s in that movie that you two have named yourselves because of the day you watched it. It’s in the favourite spot you two share because it reminds you of when you caught yourself tripping.

It’s In the way you look at each across the room and carry each other in your hearts and actions because it’s such an honour to have your own. It’s that pride in your tone when you get the slightest opportunity to brag about how wonderful your partner is as a human and even to you.

I could go on forever.
Love is commitment. It’s more than the initial tickly feelings that make you want to curl up on your bed and hug a pillow all day. To love is to commit.
Intimacy is built in the place of wanting to remain committed. And the best part? None of it happens until you make the conscious decision to work on it.
So many people fancy the idea of love without realizing that even when you are head over heels in love, without effort, without deliberately showing up every day, you’re not going to have anything to hold on to.

The one minute you decide to stop being deliberate is the very minute the whole thing crumbles to the ground. It’s why I’d like to say that “soul mate” is a myth. If you find someone that you think is THE one and you don’t show up, that person is just going to keep moving ahead until they find the one who’s willing to make it work.

Human beings are social animals. We exist to socialize. It’s okay to admit that you crave companionship, we were built that way. Now, you’d be an arrogant fool to want to deny that. But also, if you want it, you have to be willing to work for it. For most people, these days, if you take out the sex and physical touch, there’s nothing left to name as intimacy.

Don’t you think there’s something off about that?

KAMS COTTAGE

Honestly, I agree with the.introverted_she🦋 on this one, you know the intentionality to make it work. Intimacy isn’t always about sex. The basis of your relationship shouldn’t be laid on sex. So does it mean without sex, the relationship goes sour and dies off? There are a lot of ways to create intimacy, find pure love and be truly happy in your relationship, but I’ll just list five. One thing is to be in a relationship and it’s another thing to be happy in that relationship.

1. See your partner for who he or she is: most times we set our expectations and standards of our partners whom we are in love with, with what they have come to represent. The truth is, at the beginning of a relationship, both parties are trying to impress the other. They are not who they are at the eclipse of the relationship. When you realise that more often than not you don’t know your partner, you begin to discover who they are and how they change and evolve.

2. Be willing to learn from each other: the key is to see the other as a mirror and learn from the reflection how you can be a better person. Rather than get upset or point fingers, try to be calm. Understand and observe them. Remain awake to what has yet to be healed in each other

3. Be comfortable being alone: I know how hard this part is trust me but in other to accept the fact that love can’t rescue you from being alone, learn to spend time being with yourself. You must not be with each other 24/7. You both have a life to live outside yourselves, come on! You must not text or call every single day. By doing so, you feel safer and secure being on your own within the framework of your relationship.

4. Let go of expectations: this cannot be overemphasised. You may look to things such as romance and togetherness to fill a void in yourself. This will cause you suffering trust me. If you unconsciously expect to receive love in certain ways from your partner, you’ll be so disappointed and you’ll end up putting your sense of security in him/her. Draw upon your inner resources to offer love, attention and nurturance to yourself when you need it then you can let the love come to you instead of putting expectations on what it needs to look like.

5. Effective communication: just like Jahz_rhythm mentioned earlier, communication and not just communication but Effective communication helps grease the wheels of relationships, it helps strengthen respect for each other. People are emphatic. They can understand on a very subtle level when something is wrong. It takes misunderstandings away and builds trust as well.

MANDY

Have you ever thought that you may be the reason why your partner is acting up? You may say “that’s ridiculous! I’m the perfect partner, but maybe you’re not focusing on little factors that go a long way. The emotional perspective of your partner either the male or the female on things differs. There are certain things you do that deem normal, but your partner hates them.

To be very honest, lack of attention is one of the major reasons for quarrels and disagreements in relationships. Your partner wants attention from you, and most times it’s always the women seeking that attention but men crave attention too.
Your partner may love you to frequently call, text, go on dates, hang out and the rest of them. But here’s the big question. How long do you stay on the call? What do you guys talk about? Are you patient enough to listen to his/her rambles? Do you forget any little detail he/she tells you? Do you rather do other stuff than spend quality time with your partner??!

In a long-distance relationship where you don’t see each other often, try to keep up the communication at least daily. A call or even a romantic text in the middle of a workday goes a long way in building intimacy in your relationship.

KAMS COTTAGE

Honestly, there are a lot of things to be said in relationships from different angles. We’ll get to have more deep discussions like this on them from time to time. I’m super happy and personally had a lot of fun doing this with our guest writers, and look forward to doing this again with them. Do drop a comment on ways you think can help build relationships and intimacy.

“Life is a chess match. Every decision that you make has a consequence to it”. I sat by my window, with so much thought in my head. I stood up after a while and walked straight to the mirror, looked at myself and realised how many qualities I have, how distinct I was, and how unique and important I was. I was known for making unexpected moves, I had peculiar traits and I knew it. I always got comments like, “your character is unpredictable and that makes you dangerous”. I thought deep about it today, but I realised that it doesn’t only make me dangerous, it makes me a Knight. People always said that my quirky nature was very displeasing but that’s what makes me attractive, that’s what stands me out in the crowd. Who knows, quirky routes might be the key to most life situations.

I got tired of standing and walked over to the kitchen to make myself a burger, then I thought, why try to break the wall when I can jump over it and I realised that, that was what I had been doing all this while. Life isn’t that difficult you know. If you just look deeper and deeper you’d see clear solutions to your problems and instead of creating another mess, you would avoid them and get away from the one you’ve found yourself in. It’s been a while since I did some self-reflection, I said to myself. While in my thoughts, I was done making my burger. I walked over to the fridge to get some cool lemonade because boy! the weather was extremely hot. Took my snack to the table to do more self-reflection.

A little confusion and erratic behaviour are sometimes good you know because you become unpredictable and your behaviour inconsistent. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t entirely good but it can come in handy sometimes. In life, not everyone should be able to predict your next move, acting a little confused in some situations in life can save you a whole lot of stress. Trust me that is my super power. I don’t think you can kill me easily. But then I value collaboration. No man is an island. I respect team work and trust me, it saves you a lot of stress. So long as the goal is to positively achieve something, I’ll give you my all. I’m always actively involved and I appreciate diversity. I have to be active and engaged from the start to get whatever work it is done. I’m also very plain and honest and thereby I detest being lied to or played. Life is that simple but unfortunately dishonesty makes it quite difficult. Imagine a world of honest people… Boy oh boy!

Almost done with my snack I get a text from my friend Terry, the text said, “I think maybe you should just observe than participate, that doesn’t mean you are not still part of the team”. I laughed so loud and it dawned on me, I can’t just be an observer. Off sidelines, I have very little value, I can’t function when I’m out of the action, no it doesn’t work that way. Think of it this way, you have a job but you are not part of the action of that job, your just observing rather than taking part. I would be miserable and that is what Terry is trying to make me? No way. I rather not even be in a team where I am sidelined. But when I’m in a centralised outpost I feel and become very essential and ready to pounce on any opportunity that comes my way. Once I’m ready to pile in you’ll know it, I’m that plain and easy to work with and understand. My principles are very simple. I texted Terry back and told him I’m leaving the team. You can’t dull my shine I laughed to myself.

Ok now i’m done with my snack, I went into the garden to take a little walk and get some fresh air despite the very hot weather. I was hoping to get a little breeze across my skin. I took an umbrella with me tho ‘cos the sun was pretty annoyed and I wasn’t going to fall prey to sunburn when I’m most definitely not the one who upset you, Mr Sun, I chuckled. Walking and touching the flowers as I passed by I began to think again, I’m a Multitasker. I enjoyed it as well and come to think of it, it sounds pretty weird but I couldn’t help it. I love getting a lot of work done at the same time. I’m also very strategic and tactical in my work and in the way I operate. I’m a very careful thinker and you can’t fool me easily. Even with the littlest things, I think carefully about them. But at the same time, I’m also very enigmatic, I’m quite mysterious and difficult to understand or interpret and I become this when it’s necessary.

You know, I believe every human being on earth is a pawn. Just as each pawn in chess has its characteristics, so do humans and it would amaze you what pawn you have similar traits with. This little self-reflection has brought to my notice what pawn I am and with each unique character, you can adapt to life and solve life problems amicably. They have their downsides yes, but look at the bright side. The truth is, like I said earlier, life is like a chess match. You play to win and if you snooze, you lose.

Each pawn is unique but I chose to be a NOBLE KNIGHT.

Category: non-fiction

BUILDING RELATIONSHIP AND INTIMACY…

The Noble Knight

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