This blog was created to serve as an inspiration to all who read it..........to aspire, to love and to live a life of purpose.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Husband Gist: Dear NwaVic, Am I Settling?

Dear NwaVic,

I'm in my late 20s (ok, almost 30 lol) and ready to settle down. I am dating around and generally getting a feel of what I want in a husband. None of them particularly stand out. The one who is my type to the T and with whom I seem to have the most spark is not settled with a stable job. The one who has a stable job isn't as attractive as I have dated or am used to but he's very intelligent, caring and is really into me. The one whose family I love is too short and there's no spark. They all seem serious and I feel a bit like a deer in headlights....very confused. I feel like if I marry anyone of them, I'll be settling but my friends have called me "silly" and "ungrateful". Your advice?

Sincerely,
K
Source: Nigeriana.org
Dear K,

Thank you for writing Dear Nwavic at dearnwavic@gmail.com. Your question begs the question, what does it really mean to settle? The first step is owning the fact that not everyone gets that instant storybook fairytale connection then lives happily after. Everyone's love story is differently detailed. As a matter of fact, not everyone who has that instant connection lives happily ever after and vice versa. I know women who were repulsed by their now-husbands on first-meet but now think the world of them. Remember, in the old times, parents found spouses for thier children and they learned to live happly ever after. While that method has long-standing flaws, a good number of our grandparents stayed the course and had happy marriages.

I say this to say, no one is perfect. While attraction is important, there are more important qualities that make a good husband like I noted in my 7 keys to finding a good husband post.  For e.g., it is not about marrying someone with the most stable job at the moment. It requires a deeper analysis as to why he doesn't have one. Is he looking or just lazy? As for the second one, "not as attractive as I've dated or used to". You definitely don't want to compare your future with your past. If "attractive as I'm used to" was a 'marriable' standard, you won't be currently single. There has to be more...

A column I regularly read and often repost tackled something similar recently. In her response, Carolyn Hax said in situations like this, one way to gauge the keeper vs. the loser is whether your appreciation for someone is growing vs. diminishing. If so, giving him a chance and time is worthwhile. Other ways to tell if you are settling is if you feel easily irritated by your partner, see them a safety net  or have a laundry list in your head of things you'd like to "fix" about them. More so, you're settling only if you are giving up something you deeply value in a relationship just for companionship or to buy into the outdated idea that being 30 and unmarried is a death sentence.

Stop unnecessarily putting yourself under pressure. Don't marry any of them just yet. Take marriage talk off the table for now and date. Give it time and see if anything changes. Don't rush into anything you're not ready for. Keep an open mind, be prayerful and patient. The one who is meant to be yours will stand out and when he does, you'd know it. If it doesn't, then hold out for your "one". Sometimes, just like with acquiring wealth, the best kind of love lasts when it gradually grows, grows and just keeps growing.


I hope this helped!

Stay inspired,
NwaVic
www.nwavic.blogspot.com|||dearnwavic@gmail.com |||Twitter & Instagram @nwavicesq

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Dear NwaVic, I Got Engaged and My Friends Disappeared

Dear NwaVic,

I decided to write you today because I know you are also engaged as well.  My fiance proposed to me earlier this year. I was so excited. I love him and my friends all seemed to love him. But then just like magic, they started dropping one by one. Well, all but for my best friend who is also engaged and has done her trad. They are now having lunches and attending group events without me. I am planning a wedding and working but I am not dead. I tried to ask one of my close friends and her reply was, "you have an oga now abi?" I am so confused. What difference is that supposed to make? I am still the girl they went to high school and uni with. Is this normal? Are you experiencing this too? Help. 

Sincerely,
F
Dear F,

Thank you for writing NwaVic at dearnwavic@gmail.com. First, congrats on your engagement. What your friends are doing isn't normal, but the course of losing friends in life transition is especially if you are one of the first to get engaged/married among your friends and they are still single. The truth is that when you get engaged, your life and commitment level changes a bit. In turn, sometimes your behavior changes without you knowing. What happens is that your time becomes stretched beyond what your previous normal was. Be it wedding plans, moving plans, and getting to know your new family. Your commitment is deeper because marriage means merging with another, the way you've never done with your friends.

On one hand, it could be that without knowing, you may be giving off a 'busier' (which they could interpret as "I'm better than you") vibe. In fact, this sometimes even happens just when someone starts dating. They start loosing friends because they are really invested in their relationship and unintentionally cut out friends. If I may add, I know girls who have lost friends in the process of wedding planning. It's this kind of behavior that birthed the term "bridezilla". Then when the wedding is done and their majestic bubble has busted, they start looking for their friends. Because no matter how much drunken in love you are with your partner, wedding hype and marriage, your friends still remain relevant in your life. They have probably known you longer and while your husband/wife should be your best friend, your friends "know" you differently and will provide the escape you'll need sometimes from your marriage. But I digress.

On the other hand, your friends may have just assumed/anticipated all of the above without any inkling from you. Just because you are engaged/married, they may expect you to drop them for your husband and so in order to protect their feelings, they become unavailable first. Or sometimes, it's just jealousy. When you happily make life changes, not everyone will be happy for you because it shows them where they are lacking in their lives. 
In trying to strike a balance, you only owe them one thing. Consistency. However you behaved to them before you got engaged, stay that way. Invite them to lunches/parties/hangouts as usual. If they decline, then that's on them and you have done your part.

In dealing with my friendships, I've learned a lot of lessons, three of which are the most important to your situation.
1. Friendship requires mutual effort. If one person is running and the other is chasing, unless the chaser wants to pass out along the way, s/he'll never catch up. The most you can do is your part= consistency.

2. Regardless of the physical distance between friends, a friend is always "there". You never have to look for a "friend." In my life, I've stopped chasing down people who don't want to be there. I say "good riddance" and move on to people who are happy to be in my life.

3. True friendships require transparency. While they may not have given you this courtesy, be the bigger person. For those friends you really care about, bring it up with them and give them a chance to express whatever the reason is for their distance. You also have to keep an open mind to listen to, apologize for and deal with any change in behavior on your part. If a "talk out" isn't fruitful, you'd have to cut your losses knowing you've done your best. Remember, it may not even be about you. It may just be about who they are and what they are dealing with in their lives at the moment.

Life transitions can be tough on relationships...marriage, engagements, bigger jobs, illness, relocation, children, etc. You change and grow. Sometimes you grow out of your friends. Your priorities shift and while true friendships last through life's phases, unfortunately not all friends can. Engagement and wedding planning will hurt some people's feelings. Prepare for it. Your friendships and sometimes 'familyships' will be tested. That's okay.

Your life is changing, own it. And in everything you do, never ever apologize for your happiness/blessings. It is yours to live. 

I hope this helped!

Stay inspired,
NwaVic
www.nwavic.blogspot.com|||dearnwavic@gmail.com |||Twitter & Instagram @nwavicesq

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Ode to a Legend: 30 Interesting Facts about Joan Rivers

My Ode to Legend series is not one I'm eager to write because a new one means the demise of yet another prodigy. Nonetheless, the bright side is that there's almost always inspiration from the journey they traveled to become who they are...the underlying themes always being resilience, wisdom and determination. 

This afternoon, I was walking from the courthouse when one of my colleagues screamed. "Joan Rivers is dead!"  We had all known she had been life support for the past couple of days after complications from a throat surgery. And though it wasn't looking good, for an 81 year old woman who was so full of life with no plans to retire anytime soon, there was hope that she would bounce back like she has always done. 

Everyone knew Joan to have a sharp tongue. She spoke her mind and didn't care who was listening or watching. However, behind all the jokes and glamour, there was a human being. There was a woman who had worked her way to the top in a time when women didn't have as many opportunities. There was a mother, who like she would often say, "gave birth to her best friend."

In honor of a very interesting entertainment icon, here are 30 facts about Joan Rivers' life you may not have known.

1.     Joan Rivers was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York on June 8, 1933.



2.     Her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants.

3.     Her father was a doctor.

4.     She said in an interview that even though she knew her mom truly adored her, she didn't get as much nurturing as a child. According to her, her mother was very humorous yet critical and her dad was softhearted, yet stingy.

5.     She had one older sister, Mrs. Barbara Waxler, who died on June 3, 2013, at 82 years old.

6.     She attended Connecticut College from 1950-1952.

7.     She graduated Phi Beta from Kappa Barnard College in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and anthropology. 

8.   Her first love was acting. Later on, she said if she had not gone into entertainment, she would be an anthropologist.  

9.     Before entering the entertainment business, she worked as a tour guide at Rockefeller center, a fashion consultant at Bond Clothing stores and a writer at an advertising agency. 

10.  Her first marriage was to James Sanger, the son of a Bond Clothing Stores manager named James Sanger. The marriage was annulled after 6 months because Sanger didn't tell Joan before they married that he didn't want children.

11.  She first got her big break in 1965 on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.


12.  Comedian Bill Cosby first suggested to Johnny Carson to make her a co-host. He described her as “an intelligent girl without being a weirdo . . . a human being, not a kook."

13.  Joan was known for her wit, but being brash and insensitive at times, making jokes about sensitive topics like the holocaust and Adele's weight. To explain that, she said the only way she dealt with difficult issues was through humor. 

14.  Some of her most criticized jokes were about the holocaust, Adele's weight, the Cleveland kidnap victims, the Gaza conflict and for calling first lady Michelle Obama "a trans."

15.  Though she said many A list celebrities had given her the middle finger, she never apologized for a joke. Through her eyes, it just meant that the said celebrity was watching/paying attention to her or her show(s).
" I succeeded by saying what everyone else was thinking"
Joan and Betty White on  The Late Show
16.  She was the first woman to have her own talk show on a major network, launching her own rival show, The Late Show.
"I don't like when the ladies come up and say, 'Oh you broke barriers for women, I'm still breaking barriers, that's starting with it, and I could still take you, sweetheart, with both hands tied behind my back ... Am I proud to be a pioneer? I'm not a pioneer. I'm still in the trenches. I'm still breaking ground. I have never spent two minutes saying, 'Well, I just did that.' I'm still looking for the new frontier. I'm still in my astronaut suit." 

17.  She married her second husband Edgar Rosenberg in July 1965, four days after meeting him. He also served as a producer with The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. Even though Edgar and Joan were known to be close friends who danced to the same beat, Joan admitted during an interview to having cheated on Edgar numerous times.

 
Joan and Edgar

18.  Edgar fathered Joan's only child, Melissa Warburg Rosenberg (now known as Melissa Rivers) who was born on January 20, 1968. 


19.  In 1987, her husband Edgar Rosenberg committed suicide in Philadelphia after FOX fired him and Joan from The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. Joan said he committed suicide out of "humiliation".

20.  After Edgar's suicide, not only was Joan broke, her daughter Melissa didn't talk to her for two years. They later reconciled and became inseparable, often working together and co-starring in their reality show.

21.  Joan bounced back starring in her own daytime talk show for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding talk show host in 1990.



22.  Her first acting gig was as a lesbian in love with Barbara Streisand (before she became famous) in a play called Driftwood, which ran for six weeks in 1959. In the play, she kissed Barbara Streisand!


23.  Joan starred in about 27 movies between 1965 and 2014.


24.  In February 1983, she became the first female comedian to ever perform at Carnegie Hall.

25.  Joan once suffered from bulimia nervosa and contemplated suicide. But soon recovered after counseling.

26.  Joan became a grandmother in 2000 when Melissa gave birth to Edgar Cooper Endicott. She described the moment as "amazing".

27.  Joan started undergoing plastic surgery procedures at age 31 and proudly owned her numerous plastic surgeries, once saying "I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware."

28.  In 2009, she won an edition of Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice."

29.  She had a successful jewelry line that she sold on QVC.

30.  Joan was an avid dog-lover, owned five rescue dogs and often donated to the charity Guide Dogs for the Blind. Her favorite foods were steak and shepherd’s pie.
 RIP Joan Rivers. You were an entertainment legend, indeed.

www.nwavic.blogspot.com|||dearnwavic@gmail.com |||Twitter & Instagram @nwavicesq