Solving Tough Relationship Questions by Pastor Mildred Kingsley-Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Reading the Signs Early

If a guy is too busy for you, is that a boundary issue or a sign? If you are the one consistently giving your time and resources while he stays too busy to reciprocate, the imbalance itself is the answer. When something matters to a man, he makes time for it; a man who is genuinely invested does not stay too busy to show it.

What about a dream that God has shown me my husband, with no confirmation yet? A dream alone is not enough to build a decision on, especially if the person in it does not even know the dreamer exists. God is not a gossip; if a revelation is real, he is equally able to speak to the other person, so the wait should be for the actual manifestation, not for a private conviction to be forced into being. Ecclesiastes 5:3 notes that a dream can come through much activity of the mind, so a dream is not automatically a message. The mind is naturally restless, and left ungoverned by the word and the Spirit, it will keep circling the same fixation. Many women have lost years waiting on a private dream or desire only to watch the man marry someone else, so life should continue, options should stay open, and if it is truly God's plan, he is fully capable of bringing the right person across that path without anyone else's help.

Defining the Relationship

My friend has been in a relationship for six years and the man is still not ready to propose, so she keeps praying about it. Undefined relationships are one of the most common traps women fall into, largely out of fear, fear of being alone, and fear of naming what they actually want at the point of negotiation. If a man says he wants to date, the appropriate response is to ask plainly what that means and where it is headed, rather than entering an undefined arrangement and then praying to become married inside of it. Praying inside a relationship without first defining it is like registering for a medical degree and being handed the certificate on day one; there is little incentive left to attend lectures. A man who receives every benefit of marriage without the commitment of marriage has little motivation to propose, because he already has what marriage would have given him.

The posture to take is to be available for marriage, not merely available for dating, since dating was only ever meant to be the middle process between meeting and marrying, not a destination in itself. If a man is honest that he only wants to date, and years pass, and he eventually walks away, he has broken no promise; dating was the only thing offered and the only thing delivered. The better move is to ask early and directly what the relationship is meant to become, and to be willing to walk away from a situationship rather than stay indefinitely available while the world assumes the position is filled.

Addiction in a Relationship

What about a partner who checks every other box but is struggling with pornography and infidelity? Infidelity is genuinely damaging, and it should never be minimized. Prayer has real value, but an addiction like this also needs an actual addiction specialist, not spiritual effort alone; the effects of pornography addiction on the brain are documented and serious, and this is not simply a matter of willpower. The partner of someone struggling this way also needs support of their own, since carrying someone else's addiction alone tends to pull the carrier under as well. Both people need help, spiritual and professional, and both need to expect that recovery, if the struggling partner is willing to pursue it, will likely take real time rather than resolving overnight.

Leadership and Roles

Who sets the tone of daily life in a marriage, and does headship mean the husband should be across everything? Headship is about responsibility, not superiority or universal competence. In a well-run marriage, whoever is genuinely better at a given task should be the one running it, whether that is finances, cooking, or anything else; a captain does not have to personally play every position, only make sure the team functions. A marriage run on love, rather than a rigid ledger of roles and duties, stops being a fifty-fifty arrangement and becomes something closer to both people bringing the whole of themselves. A question about who is "supposed" to handle what is often a sign that a couple is still relating like colleagues dividing tasks rather than functioning as one team.

Growing Emotionally

How can a husband become emotionally available if he did not grow up in an emotionally expressive environment? Most men are not naturally as emotionally fluent as most women, and that upbringing is a real starting point, not a permanent excuse. Growth here is learnable. One personal account described coming into marriage as a rugged, practically-minded man, someone who once smoked, once carried a weapon in his teenage years, and was far more comfortable talking football and cars than feelings, and having to be taught, largely by his own wife, that men typically talk for information while women typically talk for connection. Calling only when there was a specific reason to call was not received as care; learning to call in between, just to check in with warmth rather than an agenda, had to be deliberately practiced. Men are often far more at ease discussing weather, sport, or politics than their own inner life, which means learning to talk about feelings, and to say things like affirming a wife's beauty even on an ordinary day, has to be treated as a skill worth developing rather than something that should already come naturally.

Sex, Bride Price, and the Wedding Timeline

Should a couple wait for the full church and court wedding, or is it acceptable once the bride price has been paid? The deeper question is really why the process is being spread out into stages at all rather than completed together. There are several legitimate ways marriage is recognized, civil, traditional, and church, and any one of them alone is sufficient to constitute marriage; culturally, ceremonies simply tend to be layered on top of each other. For believers, coming to the altar matters not because Scripture demands a church ceremony specifically, but because weekly worship and dedication before God are part of a shared culture of faith, the same way children are dedicated not because the act itself changes anything spiritually necessary, but because it is an act of bringing a family's life officially before God. Waiting is not really a matter of missing out; there is a lifetime ahead for physical intimacy, and the urgency being felt in the meantime is worth naming honestly rather than treating as an emergency it is not.

Handling Difficult In-Laws

Can difficult in-laws be a deal breaker for a relationship or marriage? They can be, but the more useful posture is prayerful boundaries rather than avoidance. The first principle is not to start what cannot be sustained, extending access or closeness early on that will be awkward to withdraw later. The second is that whoever is related to the parent should be the one to manage that parent; it is far easier for a person to correct their own mother than for their spouse to do it without real conflict. Where siblings are the issue, clear boundaries about disrespect toward a spouse matter just as much, and running to family to air a partner's faults in the middle of a conflict tends to leave a mark that outlasts the disagreement itself, even after the couple has resolved things privately.

The story of Ruth and Naomi is instructive here. Naomi, grieving the loss of her husband and both sons, was not necessarily an easy person to be near; by her own words on returning home, she asked to be called Mara, meaning bitter, rather than Naomi, meaning pleasant, because life had dealt hard with her. Ruth, likely a living reminder of that loss, stayed anyway and said, "Thy God shall be my God." Loyalty through a difficult relationship is possible, but it requires real boundaries to be sustainable; without them, the relationship, and sometimes the marriage itself, will not survive the pressure.