Are You Emotionally Fulfilled In Your Relationship?

Carole and Femi have been dating for five years. She practically lives in his house and has been playing the wifey role quite well. 

Femi is a manager in one of the big oil firms in the country. He provides her with the kind of life she could only have dreamt of. He lives in a beautiful mansion in one of the highbrow areas in Lagos. From frequent shopping trips abroad, expensive gifts, latest brand new car......you know, to an outsider looking in, he's the ideal man.....too perfect.

But Carole is very unhappy in the relationship, she cries and complains about it to her friends quite often. She says he provides her with everything money can buy but leaves her emotionally dry and empty. They rarely go out together, they hardly talk because he brings his office work home quite often. When they do get to hang out, he spends most of the time responding to pings, messages or taking phone calls.

She's confided that they don't really know each other as well as people who plan on getting married by the end of the year should. 

He cuts her off whenever she tries to talk about the loneliness and emptiness she feels by giving her his ATM card to go shopping or tells her to go hang out with her girlfriends. 

She says she doesn't feel the 'thing' with him as in they just don't click. The sex could be better because most times she fakes an orgasm to boost his ego.

So why don't you just leave him and go find someone who will truly fulfil your emotional needs, someone who will be there for you whenever you need him? 

Her response: "And leave this lush life? Are you kidding me? He may be emotionally unavailable and rarely has my time but I've invested so much time and energy in this  relationship to walk away. Besides if I leave him, where do I go, where do I begin life from? I know I don't love him, but I'm learning to live with him." 

Carole is an unemployed graduate who has never worked since she concluded her NYSC. She's been Femi's full staff for the past five years and according to her, the financial rewards compensate for the emptiness she feels. Then why is she complaining? 

Their wedding will be taking place in the Third Quarter of the year.

Why do some people stay in unhappy and unhealthy relationships because they are afraid of being alone or afraid of starting over?

It's easy for people to get caught up in a particular routine or lifestyle and they just don't want anything to ruin it, not even their lonely heart or their dull love life.

Perhaps, your partner provides you financial security. You have a lavish and enviable lifestyle all thanks to 'the love of your life' but deep inside,you are emotionally empty.

I believe one of the main ingredients of a healthy and fulfilling relationship is that both parties should be financially independent. The fact that you can't single handedly afford the lifestyle you are living and loving right now is not a good excuse to stay in an empty and unhealthy relationship with a partner who doesn't fulfil your emotional needs. This will more than likely leave you at their mercy.  Focus on your professional career or business and make your own life. Your happiness will come.

You shouldn't compromise your self-worth in a relationship. When you find yourself putting in more effort into your relationship than at your "day job," it is time to do some reassessment. 

Be bold enough to walk away when you have to, bearing in mind that leaving an unhealthy relationship is nothing compared to the lifetime of pain you could face by being stuck in one.

Why are you afraid of being alone? It's not going to be forever, you only have one life to live, why make it an emotionally unfulfilled one? Please don't say: "at all at all na im bad pass"......love is too beautiful a thing to deny oneself.