Why Are Women Choosing Each Other as the Primary Partner in Tanzania?

March 24, 2017January 22, 2024 by zfortadminin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

In the Mara region of northern Tanzania, Abigail Haworth discovers an empowering tribal tradition undergoing a modern revival.

Mugosi Maningo and Anastasia Juma’s homestead lies among a cluster of hamlets that make up the remote village of Nyamongo in far northern Tanzania. There’s no road to their circular thatched houses in the bushland, only a snaking dirt track carved out by cattle on their way to graze. It’s early May—the rainy season in this part of East Africa—and the sky is growling loudly. The two women rush to gather crops before the inevitable downpour hits. “My wife and I do everything together,” says Juma, 27, a petite woman wearing a fuchsia T-shirt and short braids in her hair. “We’re just like any married couple.”

Almost, but not exactly. As members of the Kurya tribe, a cattle-herding community with a population of roughly 700,000 spread across northern Tanzania, Juma and her wife, Mugosi, 49, are married under a local tradition called nyumba ntobhu (“house of women”). The practice allows women to marry each other to preserve their livelihoods in the absence of husbands. Among the tribe—one of more than 120 in the country of 55 million people—female couples make up 10 to 15 percent of households, according to Kurya elders. The unions involve women living, cooking, working, and raising children together, even sharing a bed, but they don’t have sex.

“AMONG THE TRIBE—ONE OF MORE THAN 120 IN THE COUNTRY OF 55 MILLION PEOPLE—FEMALE COUPLES MAKE UP 10 TO 15 PERCENT OF HOUSEHOLDS, ACCORDING TO KURYA ELDERS.”

According to Dinna Maningo (no direct relation to Mugosi), a Kurya reporter with leading Tanzanian newspaper Mwananchi, nyumba ntobhu is an alternative family structure that has existed for many years. “Nobody knows when it started,” she says, “but its main purpose is to enable widows to keep their property.” By Kurya tribal law, only men can inherit property, but under nyumba ntobhu, if a woman without sons is widowed or her husband leaves her, she is allowed to marry a younger woman who can take a male lover and give birth to heirs on her behalf. The custom is very different from same-sex marriages in the West, Dinna adds, because homosexuality is strictly forbidden. “Most Kurya people don’t even know gay sex exists in other parts of the world,” she says. “Especially between women.”

Outdated attitudes aside, Dinna, 29, says nyumba ntobhu is undergoing something of a modern revival. In the Kurya’s polygamous, patriarchal culture, where men use cows as currency to buy multiple wives, rising numbers of younger Kurya women are choosing to marry another woman instead. “They realize the arrangement gives them more power and freedom,” she says. “It combines all the benefits of a stable home with the ability to choose their own male sexual partners.” Marriages between women also help to reduce the risk of domestic abuse, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. “Sadly, these problems are rife in our society,” Dinna adds. “Younger women are more aware these days, and they refuse to tolerate such treatment.”

The arrangement is working out happily for Juma and Mugosi so far. The couple married in June 2015 after meeting through neighbors. At the time, Juma was struggling to raise three small sons by herself.

When Juma was just 13, her father forced her to marry a 50-year-old man who wanted a second wife. He gave Juma’s father eight cows in exchange for her and treated her “like a slave.” She gave birth to a baby boy in her late teens and ran away with the child shortly afterward. She then had two more sons with two subsequent boyfriends, both of whom failed to stick around. “I didn’t trust men after that,” she says, sitting outside the thatched hut the couple now shares. “I certainly didn’t want another husband. Marrying a woman seemed the best solution.”

Her wife, Mugosi, who has spent the morning toiling in the fields in an old gray dress and rubber boots, says Juma was the perfect match for her. Her husband left her 10 years ago because she couldn’t have children. He moved to the regional capital city of Mwanza, leaving her at their homestead in Nyamongo in northern Tanzania’s Tarime District, a farming and gold-mining region roughly the size of Iowa. They never formally divorced. When he died 18 months ago, ownership of the property, comprising six thatched huts and some land, was in danger of reverting to his relatives. “I was lucky to find Anastasia and her boys, because I now have a family with ready-made heirs,” says Mugosi. “I love them very much.”

The couple did not have a wedding ceremony, but Mugosi paid Juma’s original “bride price” of eight cows to the family of her first husband. The payment released Juma from her ties to him and cemented her marriage to Mugosi. Almost all Kurya marriages, whether to a man or a woman, involve the payment of bride price, or dowry, to the younger woman’s family. Dowries average between 10 and 20 cows (one cow is worth around 500,000 Tanzanian shillings, or about $230), and teen girls are typically married off to the highest male bidder.

The two women live off their land, growing maize, millet, wheat, and vegetables, and keeping cows, goats, and chickens. They share the care of Juma’s sons—Muita, 11; Dominico, 7; and Daudi, 4—and hire local men to do odd jobs. “We divide everything equally,” Mugosi says. “We both have peaceful natures, and so far we haven’t had any arguments.” While she is no longer interested in romantic relationships with men, she’s happy for Juma to have an independent love life. “Anastasia is still young, so it’s natural for her to want a man to keep her company at night,” Mugosi says. “I won’t interfere with her choice of boyfriends. That is up to her.”

There is no shortage of men keen to sleep with women in all-female marriages, so Juma is in a position to be picky. “They think it’s easy sex,” Juma says. “But I am choosing carefully because I want a man who is kind and reliable.” She hopes to find a lover who is willing to be the biological father of future children. “Mugosi and I would like at least three more children to expand our family,” she says. “In our culture, the more children you have, the richer you are.” Nyumba ntobhu marriages are not recognized in Tanzanian law, only in tribal law, so any man who fathers the children must agree to honor tradition and give up all paternal rights. “He has to respect our household and not get jealous,” Juma says.

“DISPUTES ABOUT PATERNAL RIGHTS ARE RARE (MOST MEN ARE TOO RELUCTANT TO DISOBEY FORMIDABLE TRIBAL ELDERS, WHO SUPPORT THE SAME-SEX UNIONS).”

According to Dinna, disputes about paternal rights are rare (most men are too reluctant to disobey formidable tribal elders, who support the same-sex unions), but they do happen and can cause problems for female couples. Dinna has covered a couple of cases where biological fathers sued for custody of the children in Tanzania’s courts, and the judges were torn owing to the marriages’ lack of formal status. “In one case, the ruling favored the women, and in the other case, the man won,” she says. “The law really needs to be clarified.”

The chief tribal elder is Elias Maganya, 65, who lives in a village outside the main town of Tarime. Maganya is the chairman of the Kurya Tribal Council, the body that governs the tribe in the Tarime District. It’s easy to appreciate that he is not a man to cross. Tall and imposing in khaki pants and a trilby-style hat, he holds forth in the shade of a sprawling baobab tree as villagers sit at his feet. Tribal leaders condone marriages between women, he explains, because they serve a number of functions within the tribe. “They solve the problem of what to do about widows. A widow gets to keep her property, and she does not become a burden when she gets old,” he says. “No man wants to marry a woman who can no longer bear him children.”

There’s also the matter of complex clan politics. The Kurya tribe is made up of 12 main clans, each of which is divided into subclans. “If a woman is widowed, the remaining members of her dead husband’s clan want his property to stay within their group,” Maganya says. “They prefer her to marry a woman rather than get remarried to a male outsider.” Wouldn’t it be simpler to change the law and allow Kurya women to inherit directly? “No. That will never happen,” he says. “It is our tradition for men to inherit land and property, so the council would never agree.”

He’s undoubtedly right, given that women have zero say in the matter: All 200 members of Tarime’s Kurya Tribal Council are male. Such discrimination is reinforced by gender inequality nationwide—according to various sources, less than 20 percent of Tanzanian women own land in their own names.

The Kurya tribe seems to be the only one that practices same-sex marriage to address the issue, and it’s not a fail-safe solution. Thirty years ago, when widow Veronica Nyagochera was 51, she married Mugosi Isombe, who was 20 at the time. Nyagochera had five daughters of her own but no sons, so she hoped her union with Isombe would produce heirs. But throughout the women’s marriage in a hamlet near Tarime, Isombe, too, gave birth to only girls. “We had four daughters. They brought us great joy, but we still had a problem,” says Isombe, a statuesque woman in a black-and- white-checked headdress, who is now 50. “If my wife died, we would lose everything—our houses, our land, our livestock would all be given away to a distant male relative.”

Isombe decided to look for a younger wife of her own. Some local men offered their teenage daughters, demanding cows as dowry. But Isombe refused. “Some people don’t care who their daughters marry, as long as they get paid,” she says. “But I am strongly against forced or child marriage. I could only accept a wife who agreed to this kind of marriage freely.”

Three years ago, Isombe met Paulina Mukosa, who had just turned 18. Mukosa’s father had tried “many times” to marry her off to various men, but she resisted, often putting up such a fight that male suitors bolted. Her father beat her for her disobedience, but that only strengthened her resolve. “All my life, I watched my parents having violent arguments that ended up with my mother being injured,” says Mukosa, a cropped-haired woman in a turquoise cotton wrap flanked by fussing goats and small children outside her hut. “I had seen other women and girls in my village being beaten by their husbands and fathers, even by their brothers. I didn’t want to be trapped like that.”

After meeting Isombe, Mukosa, now 21, readily agreed to the marriage. “I liked that marrying a woman would give me more control over my own body and affairs,” she says. By the time she was married, her father was so eager to see her go that he demanded “only seven cows” from Isombe.

In 2013, Mukosa moved in with Isombe and Nyagochera, who is now 81. The two older women gave her a private hut in their hamlet of eight traditional huts. She quickly found a boyfriend, an unmarried local man in his 20s, and gave birth to a son just over a year later. She is currently eight months pregnant with her second child by the same boyfriend. Her two wives were overjoyed that she’d produced a male heir so fast. “They slaughtered a goat to celebrate,” Mukosa says.

“MARRYING A WOMAN [GAVE] ME MORE CONTROL OVER MY OWN BODY AND AFFAIRS.”—PAULINA MUKOSA, WHO IS MARRIED TO TWO WOMEN

Still, the notion that Mukosa felt she’d have more control over her body seems odd given that her primary purpose was to give the women a son. Didn’t she feel exploited? “No, not at all,” she insists. “I understood that I had to give birth, but I wanted children anyway, so it was my choice as well. There is no choice if you marry a man—as well as giving him children, you must also have sex with him whenever he wants, or he will beat you for being a bad wife.” Mukosa says she enjoys seeing her boyfriend two or three times a week, but she’s glad that he takes a secondary role in her home life. “So far he has treated me beautifully,” she says. “But I can easily break up with him if that changes.”

Domestic violence is the most common form of violence in Tanzania. In 2013, a survey by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare found that 45 percent of women aged 15 to 49 had experienced sexual or other physical violence in the home. In the Mara region, where Mukosa and her two wives live, the survey found that the prevalence of domestic violence jumped to 72 percent— the highest in the country—a rate decried as a “shameful horror” in an op-ed in national newspaper The Citizen. Causes for the region’s endemic problem included poverty, lack of education, alcoholism, and entrenched discrimination against women. The government runs public-awareness programs and has introduced special desks at police stations for women to report gender-based violence, but there is still no comprehensive legislation specifically outlawing domestic abuse or marital rape.

Isombe says that all-female households are the best defense available against the risk of male violence. “Nobody can touch us,” she says. “If any men tried to take our property or hurt us, they would be punished by tribal elders because they have no rights over our household. All the power belongs to us.” According to Maganya, the tribal council chairman, men are banned from acts of aggression toward women in same-sex marriages because, he says, they are “not their own wives” (revealing, inadvertently, that there are no tribal rules against such abuse in regular marriages). Perpetrators must pay a fine of livestock to the women and repair any damage to their property. For Isombe at least, the deterrent has worked: She’s had very little trouble with men throughout her three decades as a nyumba ntobhu wife.

Such autonomy has also enabled her to spare her four daughters from early marriage. The family’s two oldest daughters didn’t marry until age 18. “We made sure they finished school first,” Isombe says. Their younger daughters, ages 17 and 14, still live at home. “They are studying hard,” Isombe says. “One hopes to become a teacher, and the other a nurse. Our priority is their education.”

Despite their unusual circumstances, the three women try to have a regular family life with their children. “We are very good friends,” Isombe says. “We share all our joy and all our tears, and we don’t get lonely because we have each other.”

In addition to growing crops and raising livestock, Isombe and Mukosa collect mud from nearby marshes to make bricks, which they sell at the market, and both look after elderly Nyagochera. “We don’t have much money, but we have enough to survive, so we are lucky,” Isombe says. The Kurya in their village don’t celebrate birthdays much, but the women treat one another on other special occasions, including festival days. “We give each other new clothes because we like to get dressed up,” Mukosa says. “If we don’t have money for gifts, we go into the bush to get vegetables to make a special meal.”

“PERHAPS NOT SURPRISINGLY, THE FACT THAT YOUNG WOMEN LIKE MUKOSA SEEM TO PREFER SAME-SEX MARRIAGES CAN BE UNSETTLING TO LOCAL MEN.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the fact that young women like Mukosa seem to prefer same-sex marriages can be unsettling to local men. Magige Mhonia, 32, a man living outside Tarime who is currently involved with a nyumba ntobhu wife living two miles away, says many of his male friends try to talk him out of the relationship. “They say it’s a bad idea to have sex with women in such marriages because they are allowed to sleep with many men, and they probably have HIV/AIDS. Basically, they are jealous and confused,” he says, laughing loudly.

He initially got involved with his girlfriend because a clan member asked him to father her children as a favor to the clan. He soon discovered that he liked the 25-year-old woman, so it was no sacrifice. “We get on very well and are trying for the first baby,” Mhonia says. “I understand that the children will not have my name, but I don’t mind because soon I will have to take a wife and have my own family.” Men are not obliged to take any responsibility for the children they father, but some stay involved and visit on a regular basis. “I hope to be like an uncle,” Mhonia says.

Still, not all nyumba ntobhu unions work out smoothly. Dinna, the Kurya journalist, recalls cases where the younger wife has fallen in love with a boyfriend and run away from her older wife with him. “In a case two years ago, the younger wife stole all her wife’s crops and took the children, and left her with nothing,” Dinna says.

Ill treatment can also work the other way, of course. In Nyamongo, Dinna takes me to meet 17-year-old Eliza Polycap, who fled an abusive same-sex marriage. Polycap’s much- older wife paid a dowry of six cows for her when she was only 12, and arranged for men to have sex with her as soon as she reached puberty. “She didn’t care about me at all. She just wanted children, and she treated me like I wasn’t human,” says Polycap, who escaped with her 3-year-old son a year ago and is now trying to find a way to repay her dowry so she can get divorced. Dinna says such blatant exploitation by older women is rare these days, but it remains a possibility. “We have to be careful not to blindly believe that all nyumba ntobhu marriages are safe,” she says. “Sometimes they just mirror our society’s general culture of abuse toward women.”

Fortunately, all is well at the Nyamongo homestead of Juma and Mugosi. The two women will soon reach their first anniversary as a married couple. They’re not sure if they’ll do anything to celebrate the occasion—their lives are busy with their land, their livestock, and their three boisterous boys. “Anastasia likes goat meat, so I might cook some for her as an anniversary treat,” says Mugosi. Juma is excited about their future together. “The marriage is working out better than I could have imagined,” she says. “I wasn’t sure at first, because it was such a new experience—now, I wouldn’t choose any other way.”

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

How Millennials Rank in Marriage Statistics

April 13, 2017January 22, 2024 by zfortadminin LOVE

There’s no shortage of theories as to how and why today’s young people differ from their parents.

As marketing consultants never cease to point out, baby boomers and millennials appear to have starkly different attitudes about pretty much everything, from money and sports to breakfast and lunch.

New research tries to ground those observations in solid data. The National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University set out to compare 25- to 34-year-olds in 1980—baby boomers—with the same age group today. Researcher Lydia Anderson compared U.S. Census data from 1980 with the most recent American Community Survey 1 data in 2015.

The results reveal some stark differences in how young Americans are living today, compared with three or four decades ago.

In 1980, two-thirds of 25- to 34-year-olds were already married. One in eight had already been married and divorced. In 2015, just two in five millennials were married, and only 7 percent had been divorced.

Baby boomers’ eagerness to get married meant they were far more likely than today’s young people to live on their own. Anderson looked at the share of each generation living independently, either as heads of their own household or in married couples.

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I Met My Boyfriend First But All My Friends Got Married Before Us

August 4, 2017January 22, 2024 by Jillian Pretzelin LOVE

What I learned while waiting to get married until it felt right.

A woman at work just got engaged, and so did I. We were chatting about wedding plans, comparing rings, and eventually started talking about how we met our fiancés. She said she met hers this past November, and it was love at first sight. They were in a relationship by December and talking about marriage by February. I told her I started dating my fiancée nine years ago.

“Nine years?” She said, shocked. “That’s a really long time.”

And it is. It’s definitely not the norm to be together that long and still not be married. We were always happy, we were always in love, we just weren’t married.

And it drove me nuts.

It’s easy to give yourself a complex

Over the years I’ve seen so many friends tie the knot, and boy, was I jealous. I’d suffered through a million Facebook engagement announcements and had to drag myself to countless bridal showers.

At weddings I’d count on my fingers how many more years my boyfriend and I had been together than the bride and groom. And judge them accordingly.

At every wedding my boyfriend and I attended together (and there were a lot), I’d wonder why it wasn’t him and me up there in the fancy white dress and suit. Maybe, I thought, there was something wrong with us. Were we not as happy as I thought? Were we just compatible enough to want to be together, but not to make a big commitment?

It would have been different if we actively didn’t want to get married, or didn’t see ourselves together in the long-term. It would have been different if we weren’t right for each other.

But that wasn’t it.

We knew couples that got married with way more problems than we did. (One couple we knew got divorced within the year.) So then, I wondered, what was the holdup with us?

It’s hard to wait until the time is right

Sure, we were young. We met in high school, so by the time we’d been together three years (a reasonable time to get married) we were only twenty, and still busy with school. By the time we graduated from college, we were, well, just out of college. We’d both moved back in with our parents and were struggling to find jobs. Planning a wedding just wasn’t realistic.

It wasn’t like we hadn’t talked about it. We had, and usually decided we wanted to save money to have a bigger wedding (and honeymoon) later, or that we wanted to wait until I was done with grad school.

I knew it was reasonable to wait it out, let the right time come. But reason didn’t stop me from un-friending co-workers when they posted engagement pictures online. I mean, how dare they?

I’d spend my time at sorority sisters’ weddings perched by the bar, drinking too many flutes of champagne, unabashedly wrinkling my bridesmaid’s dress.

It’s easy to second guess yourself

Of course, the feminist in me struggles with this.

It’s embarrassing to look back on drunk-crying over cake, complaining that it should have been us on that cake topper, but the truth is, it was difficult for me. Even knowing my relationship was healthy and happy, I wanted what my friends had.

I felt like I was missing out on something that I deserved more than others, and it was a struggle to keep my friends.

Maybe some of the stress came from peer pressure. Everyone and their mother had been asking me when we’d be getting married since our second anniversary. And it was getting old.

Any time a good-natured friend would elbow me and say “you’re next” I’d force a smile and hope they couldn’t tell I was mentally punching them in the nose. But the more they pressed, the more my inner voice asked why we were waiting.

The question poked at my brain until eventually I realized: we simply weren’t ready.

The wait is hard, but worth it

Maybe that was hard to grasp when I watched my best friend try on wedding dresses, and maybe it didn’t make sense when I caught five bouquets in a row, but the truth is, it just wasn’t the right time yet.

We’re a pretty conservative couple, and it’s not our style to rush into things. We only spend the money we have, and we’re careful. We won’t even try a new restaurant before scrolling through all the reviews on Yelp. It’s not wild or whirlwind-romantic, but it’s us.

It wasn’t that we had a problem, I’d just managed to find the right guy about five years early.

And, when I think about that, it makes me feel really lucky. Now that we’re finally engaged, at 26, we’ve already spent almost a third of our lives together.

We know everything about each other, we have countless memories and thousands of pictures, which, I think, is a great start to the rest of our lives.

Loved this story? Read more about unconventional committed relationships on Love TV.

True Love Lessons from Sierra: Honesty Is the Best Policy

August 12, 2017January 22, 2024 by Sierra Mercierin LOVE

Secrets are like weeds. They might seem small and harmless, but over time they grow.

I’m Sierra. My husband Andre and I were the first couple to win The Knot’s Dream Wedding. Follow me as I share how I attracted true love into my life. I’ll share tips and stories that help open your heart to all love’s possibilities. Please watch or read the full transcript of my video below.

We’re going to share lots of love stories.

Ola! Mi Amigos! From Peru! “Honesty Is the Best Policy.” “The Truth Will Set You Free.” These might be oldies but they’re goodies.

This subject can be hard to accept sometimes but deep down, in my heart of hearts, I know it to be true. In order to have the fullest, most loving, successful relationship you need to be completely honest about everything.

Once you’re in a long term, committed relationship there’s no keeping secrets.

Secrets are like weeds. At first they might seem small and harmless, but over time those weeds grow and get bigger. The longer time goes by, the harder it is to yank the roots out. So it’s best just to be honest from the start.

I learned this the hard way.

Once upon a time, I kept something from Andre because I thought it would upset him. Over time it began to fester and pain me. It was difficult to come out and be truthful but once I did I felt so much better and it made me never want to keep anything from him again.

Having an honest relationship has allowed for trust to build and a relationship built on trust is powerful!

Love this video? Watch all of Sierra’s True Love Lessons on LOVE TV.

How to Pick and Choose the Wedding Advice That Works For You

September 1, 2017January 22, 2024 by Jillian Pretzelin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

5 tips on how to find good wedding advice — and when to stick your fingers in your ears.

When you get engaged, everyone wants to give you all kinds of advice. Some of them will even straight-up tell you what to do. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “you can’t wear a tea length dress” or “you need to get married in Spring” or “I know exactly how you need to do your hair.”

It made me want to scream.

And unfortunately, the stuff you don’t want to listen to can drown out the actual, good wedding advice that you might be lucky enough to get. Here are some things I’ve learned about the dreaded “two cents” and what to do with it.

First, do not punch your friends in the face.

Lol…but really. After the 30th “great flower guy” recommended to you, you’ll never want to hear about roses again. I guarantee it. But remember that you’re going to be really stressed out about planning a wedding, and if it weren’t for this stressful time, you might not be so upset when your friend says something you’ve heard before. Remember that you actually like these people in real life. You don’t want to risk losing a friend or starting a fight over something that is probably coming from a good place.

Instead, no matter how ridiculous the suggestion, just thank them and tell them you’ll consider it. Every. Damn. Time. Most of your family and friends will feel happy with this answer. And they’ll feel satisfied in thinking you’re listening to them.

It’ll be hard, at first, to get into the habit, but you can practice in your mirror until it’s second nature. Practice it on your dog, the friend you haven’t seen since college, even the guy at the car repair shop. They say, “You should probably change your oil once in awhile.” You say, “Thank you so much for your help, we’ll take that into consideration.” Good job!

Write it down anyway.

When Cousin Suzy gives you the name of her roommate, who (apparently) is an amazing photographer, you might want to toss it. Hiring her might sound like the bad idea and, besides, you might already have your photographer set up.

But, when someone gives you a card or makes a suggestion, keep a list. You never know — a list of “back ups” might come in handy. What if the venue has a fire a month before the wedding or the perfect bakery goes under? Last minute, you could have a list of people to call, which is especially handy if it’s full of people like your cousin’s roommate, because maybe they’ll pull last minute strings for a friend of a friend.

Plus, a list of recommended vendors could be good just in case you change your mind. Maybe you were dead set against serving cupcakes until your fiancé pulls one of those last-minute, “wouldn’t it be great if we had cupcakes?” Don’t panic, because you have the number of a great cupcake bakery you got from Aunt Carol!

Don’t trust anyone with old information.

Be careful not to get too excited about a seemingly perfect recommendation. I’ve gotten heart-set-on-it, gotta-have-it, excited over venues that had been closed for ten years, and dress shops that are now banks. If the people you’re talking to have old information, you’re bound to get disappointed.

This is especially true when they start pulling out prices. You might think you found a gem when you hear about some cake shop that sells a three-layer cake for double digits, but if that bakery is still open, prepare to find that it’s been hit with inflation, just like everywhere else.

A good rule of thumb is four years: any wedding advice older than that and you’ll want to start Google-ing first.

Think about the messenger and not just the message.

If the suggestion is from your mom, and she thinks it’s really, REALLY important to have yellow flower centerpieces instead of blue, you might actually want to take it into consideration. Even if that’s not what you were thinking, throwing your parents (or whoever is important to you) one or two things will make them feel special, and it will mean a lot to them later.

On the other hand, feel free to brush off the ideas your weird cousin Alan offers. Don’t bend over backwards to please people if you don’t care what they think.

Remember, a good wedding is a wedding of your choosing.

You and your future spouse are in charge. It’s a whole day just for the two of you, and you’ll want it to come from your hearts. When you’re choosing between venues, or flower arrangements, or menus, try to think of what best represents you. If you’re a laid-back couple, don’t be afraid to serve nachos and burritos in your backyard. If you two are bold and adventurous, don’t hesitate to make it a destination wedding. Good wedding advice may just come from within yourselves.

At the end of the day, you’ll want something that you both love, and something that represents you as a couple. And following the above tips may help guide you — or someone you love — on how to handle it through the planning of your special day.

For more interesting perspectives on modern marriage, check out this comparison of the expectations vs. the reality of marriage, how to determine whether you’re in a real partnership, or this story about a couple who waited longer than their friends to get hitched.

How a Little Bit of Appreciation Can Change Everything in Love

April 19, 2018January 22, 2024 by Sierra Mercierin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

True Love Lessons: Appreciation

I believe it has the ability to transform and heal ANYTHING!

Appreciation in a partnership is something that can revolutionized your relationship.

Do you ever find yourself dwelling on the things you feel your partner did wrong or maybe didn’t do at all? The next time one of those thoughts arises immediately turn your focus to something you appreciate about your partner. The more you do this, the more all you will see are the things you appreciate.

This little exercise isn’t meant to replace dialogue or communication in any way. It’s only meant to get your mind in the mode of appreciating. Which, like I mentioned earlier can TRANSFORM AND HEAL ANYTHING!

You can incorporate appreciation into every aspect of your life. Appreciate your body and all the incredible workings it contains.

..the safe roof over your head… the food you put on your table or your clean running water…

…the shoes on your feet…

I promise you, once you get started on this list, it will be pages, and pages long.

Expanding our appreciation causes everything around us to glow with LOVE!

Tune in next time to the ‘True Love Lessons and Confessions with Sierra’.

15 Things People with Anxiety Want Their Partners to Know

June 21, 2019January 22, 2024 by Kate Oczypokin Mind, Wellness

I, like many other people in this world, have anxiety.

My generalized anxiety disorder can get super frustrating at times. I imagine it can be even more frustrating for my boyfriend.

Here are 15 things people with anxiety want their partners to know.

1. You don’t need to understand—just respect what we have.

My boyfriend has a retinal disease. When I occasionally find myself getting annoyed at him being slow while we’re out walking somewhere, I stop and think about what it must be like to have his disease. I’m not ever going to understand it completely, but I have to remember to respect it. That is exactly how I feel about my anxiety. I don’t need my boyfriend to understand it at all, he just needs to respect why I might be feeling a certain way.

2. We miss you more than ever during your business trips and we call often because we worry.

My partner travels fairly often. I can’t tell you how often I miss him during his business trips. Our dog passed away a few months ago too, so when he’s away it’s even harder without anyone here to keep me company! Granted, the alone time is nice for a bit but then I start getting anxious and wondering how he’s doing. I call him often because I worry about whether or not he’s enjoying the trip, getting dinner okay or occasionally, (in the darkest corners of my mind) if any woman is hitting on him.

3. Sometimes all we really need it just a hug—nothing more, nothing less.

There’s nothing better than a hug from my boyfriend when I’m feeling anxious. Sometimes having the person we love just simply hold us is all we need to feel calmer.

4. We’re so grateful for what we have, particularly our significant others.

Being an anxious person, I am so grateful for my boyfriend. He is someone I can always ask for reassurance when I’m making big decisions, or even little decisions. Sometimes, all the reassurance we need is just a simple hug, as I mentioned before.

5. We know we shouldn’t be scared of our fears but part of us still is.

Sometimes, a lot of people with anxiety have irrational fears or phobias. There’s lots more information about this here, but in the meantime, I know that my boyfriend understands my fears and phobias are mostly illogical. We know they are illogical, but part of us, that irrational part, is still frightened beyond belief.

6. Anxiety is a part of us but isn’t all of us.

Anxiety is a part of who we are yes, but it isn’t all of us. We don’t let it define us nor do we let it hold us back in any way (if we can help it!). I know that I am a writer, a teacher, a good friend, former dog mom, movie lover, magazine devourer, book lover, dog lover, sunshine lover and more. Anxiety is just a small part of the bigger picture of me.

7. We often worry about anxiety being a burden.

A lot of times when I have panic attacks, the first thing I always do is apologize to the person I’m with (which is almost always my boyfriend or a family member). We often worry about our anxiety being a burden on our loved ones. Apologizing for me helps me feel just a little less worried about being an annoyance to my loved ones.

8. Anxiety, and many other mental illnesses all depend on the individual.

Anxiety can be helped through medication and therapy, as well as meditation and trauma therapy (for those with trauma-related anxiety, the book The Body Keeps the Score could be an interesting read). Exercise and yoga are also great stress and anxiety relievers. Perhaps going to a yoga class or for a walk or run with your partner could be a great way to spend some time together and lessen some of life’s stresses. The bottom line is, mental health problems are very individualized. You wouldn’t treat someone the same way for other physical health issues, why should mental health be any different?

9. Sometimes we may not experience anxiety and other times have full-blown panic attacks on the daily.

This piggybacks off of number eight. Just like life’s ups and downs, anxiety has its terrible times and not-so-bad instances. It all depends on what’s going on in our lives at the moment. For me, the months of June and December are always just a bit worse because those are transitional in terms of a lot of my students leaving for the summer (I teach piano as well) and then the December holiday break where as a freelancer, I don’t get paid.

10. We absolutely need you to communicate with us.

My boyfriend and I are still working on this, seven years later! Where I love to express my emotions every time I have them, my boyfriend tends to guard his. I am working on gently reminding him that I need to sometimes be reminded that things are all good between us. Sometimes I also need him to express why he’s being quiet a certain day. He may be tired but as an anxious person, my mind tends to wander if it’s other reasons involving me.

11. Change is really hard for us.

I’ll never forget the day I moved in with my boyfriend. He was downstairs with the movers and I just slumped against the wall in the empty living room and cried. I was so unsure if I was doing the right thing and was absolutely terrified of the change. Now, no matter what happens with the two of us, I’m glad I did. Partners just need to remember that change can be really hard for us, no matter how big or small.

12. We know we’re not being logical, and it’s hard for us.

Our worries and neuroses are not logical most of the time and we know that. The thing is, anxiety defies logic and we are always constantly trying to overcome that. Partners who have a spouse or significant other with anxiety should never yell at them for “not thinking straight.” We’re trying to!

13. Remember anxiety can give us physical symptoms.

I am just recently discovering this. I grind my teeth at night and have TMJ. I have suffered from IBS throughout most of my life. These physical symptoms are manifestations of my anxiety. I am starting to recognize and acknowledge this, because when my anxiety is controlled, my TMJ and IBS are a lot more controlled as well.

14. You can’t fix us, but therapy might be able to help.

Sadly, mental health still is somewhat treated poorly in our country. We don’t have adequate access to mental health professionals in our country. Many see those in therapy as weak. If your partner seeks out help for their anxiety that’s a good thing! If you can make it work, even if it means less dinners out or you maybe taking on a bit more of the rent for awhile, it’s be worth it in the long run, trust me.

15. We always welcome lots of questions, if you promise to be patient with us.

We love helping you learn about our anxiety! We just ask that you promise to be patient with us. Sometimes it can take a bit of time for us to open up about our issues. We’re just grateful you want to listen.