You can’t be stingy to your boyfriend/girlfriend (fiancé/fiancée…feel
free to choose the one that suits you). And you do not justify
stinginess with the logic, “saying after all, he’s the man!” That is
called sexist selfishness. If you’re a stingy or grudging giver it will
definitely affect your relationship. It will become contrived. Even God
our creator declared He loves a cheerful giver. If you do not give, at
some point the other party will start feeling cheated. Your partner may
continue to give though, but the joy that comes from reciprocity of
affection is hovered out of the relationship.
Giving is first an attitude. And when I say giving I’m talking about
generosity of soul. Giving without generosity is nothing more than an
eye-service. The stingy will invariably lose out! A sclerotic soul
deprives itself of nourishment. And you know something is very wrong
somewhere when giving becomes mathematical and calculating exercise for
you. The relationship has slipped into the shameful era of manipulation
and it soon scales up where emotional calculus is introduced: “I want
him to love me more than I love him”.
Texts are withheld… Parties begin to withhold affection from one
another. And to imagine you’re doing this with someone you want to spend
the rest of your life with is so immature! Sometimes these things could
be traced back to our backgrounds- the feeling of feeling unwanted,
being unloved in childhood can breed insecurity. And so to artificially
induce being needed and wanted you intentionally withhold affection.
Wives do it too. Some even withhold sex or require some form of payment
before their husbands can have their bodies! (only God knows what
they’re selling)
It’s a bargaining ploy, a conflicted strategy to gain the upper hand
in a relationship, to always be in control. Call it affection economics-
the gambit runs on the laws of demand and supply…the less the supply
the higher the price. Affection is dispensed in measurements less than
that obtainable in syringes (nanoscale measurement). And the
relationship becomes a tit for tat tournament of emotional withholding
and soon someone becomes emotionally tired of all the game, and thoughts
go haywire.
I’d say it is better to have love and affection in surplus in a
relationship than an emotional deficit. Love gives! And giving,
especially gift giving can’t be limited to anniversaries alone. Giving
can’t be anniversary exclusive. If the only time you give is at
birthdays that’s not good enough for the soul of the relationship.
Whatever happened to random acts of generosity! That belt, that perfume,
the t-shirt, text, flowers, books…tokens of affection.
What a joy a relationship will be when both parties are givers! The
relationship will not lack emotional nourishment. Meaningful giving
demands generosity of soul. Let your giving be motivated by love. If you
don’t change your attitude towards giving it will become your character
which is a good thing.
Giving nourishes a relationship because it focuses us on the other
party and so it’s a potent antidote to selfishness. I strongly believe
men ought to be generous to their wives (or girlfriends); but it
shouldn’t be limited to just guys/men, women ought to be too. You are
never a loser giving, even if it’s unappreciated. That’s because of the
conceptual mechanics of giving. A gift is likened to a seed therefore
the principle regulating its life cycle is modelled on that of a seed.
From the sayings of Jesus and Paul’s disquisition we learn that a
gift is a seed. When a seed falls to the ground it dies says the bible,
it thus presents itself as a loss. And that’s what some people can’t
handle- the “loss”. But without the seed dying there can be no seed
resurrection. It can’t become a multiplicand. No multiplication
whatsoever. Of course what you sow you’ll reap, and in the quantum to
which you sow is what you’ll reap. And so the quantum of generosity you
put into that material or emotional gift is what will be multiplied back
to you. The return will not necessarily come from that stingy
boyfriend/girlfriend, who’ll most likely lose you to a generous
man/woman. Didn’t Solomon say kindness makes a man attractive? The
return can come from any source.
Just give, you simply cannot lose! The cliché is true: Givers never
lose and they never lack! A generous soul will be made rich. You might
be tempted into asking “but if what you sow is what you reap, how does
buying presents translate into love”? A present is material. How can you
reap immateriality from sowing a material thing? If I give a belt, you
ask, shouldn’t I then reap belts going by the law of reciprocation?
Isn’t what you sow what you reap? You only ask because you’ve not taken
time to study Paul’s exposition.
I believe there is the principle of body substitution in agric, not
so? No seed ever germinates with the same body. When a seed is sown it
dies. What germinates (or resurrects) is another body entirely. To use
Paul’s analogy, the resurrection body of your seed is not the same as
the mortal body sown. The key principle is body substitution
and one beautiful thing about the laws of sowing and reaping is that it
can be any type of body. Paul wrote: “God who provides seed for the
sower…will also multiply the FRUITS of your righteousness which
MANIFESTS itself in active goodness, kindness, and charity.”
You can reap goodness, kindness and love from giving material gifts:
immaterial returns can come from material gifts. You can sow presents in
your relationship and reap love, fidelity and happiness. It’s a
corporeal-incorporeal dynamic. Return is usually not constrained to a
body type. Paul says God can give the return on your seed-gift any body
He desires. The implication of Paul’s thesis is that a barren woman can
sow material gifts (including money) or caring for neighbours kids and
reap conception. Sometimes spiritual laws are strange and awesome than
fiction. But life is two-dimensional- material and immaterial.
Remember, if you hold on to your seed by withholding affection, you never get to sow! And so you can’t reap…
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