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February 14 has become a pseudo holiday, a day when florists and retailers of gift items enjoy a burst of consumer activities, as people attempt to commemorate St Valentine. But is a day enough to demonstrate the necessity of healthy relationships between couples? Suzan Ironsi writes
‘Are you in love with a loser?”, it is the title for one of many columns put out by Matchmaker and Relationship Coach, Jerome Onipede and responding to it, Victoria, as she identifies herself, describes her recent break-up with a man she considered a ‘loser’, a guy who she stated tried to break her. However, having walked away from the ill-fated liaison, she attributes her endurance to the support of God, her Mothers counsel, and personal courage to break free despite pains and heartbreak. In her words: “Right now I am having the best time of my life devoid of pain and worry. Your article reminded me with nostalgia my ordeal in the recent past and how enslaving and destructive that sort of relationship can be in one’s life.”
It has become an annual expectation that around this time, hotels, resorts, restaurants send out notices, detailing their special Valentine’s Day packages, often including special indulgences like chocolate, flowers, champagne, discounted superb massages for ‘loving’ couples. These treats have casually become synonymous with Valentine’s Day, worrisome to those who may believe that it digresses from its intended purpose. Matchmaker and Counsellor, Jerome Onipede is well acquainted with issues of Love, lust and relationships. For this professional, the build-up of Valentine is just another opportunity to counsel intending couples and married couples to paying attention to their relationship. This he does through paid consultations and regular articles, as he freely dishes his pieces of wisdom, which fervent hopefuls are tuned to.
“All people seem to care about today is just to be in a relationship regardless of whether the relationship is right or not, working or not working, and so when they come to a Relationship coach, they don’t have the patience of appreciating the aspect that involves counselling so they can understand their previous wrongs in previous relationships and learn to turn them to stepping stones that can prevent them from making the same mistakes,” Jerome writes.
As Valentine approaches he asks his followers a related question, “Have you lost your mind over Valentine?” The counsellor goes on to say that, “Always remember God is Love, and there’s no controversy over that”.
Valentine’s Day, a liturgical celebration also known as St. Valentine’s Day or the feast of Saint Valentine, recognises at least three different narratives for Saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. There is one notion that he was a priest from Rome who served in the 3rd century. During that time, Emperor Claudius II banned marriage when he decided that single men made better soldiers and when Valentine felt this was unfair he broke the rules and arranged marriages in secret. But when the emperor found out, he was thrown in jail and sentenced to death. The day is celebrated in many countries around the world even though it is not a public holiday in most of them.
Valentine’s Day was believed to first be associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer when the tradition of chivalry thrived. In 18 century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards. Reports indicate that in Europe, St. Valentine’s keys are given to lovers as a romantic symbol and an invitation to unlock the giver’s heart. Today, Valentine’s Day symbols that are commonly used include heart-shaped outlines, doves, and the figure of the winged cupid.
Father Frank O’Gara from Whitefriars street church, one of three churches that claim to house the remains of Valentine, explains in reports that Valentine was a priest, whose actions led him to be known as the patron Saint of lovers, after defying Emperor Claudius when he persecuted the church during a time when an edict prohibited the marriage of young people, “I think we must bear in mind that it was a very permissive society in which Valentine lived. Polygamy would have been much more popular than just one woman and one man living together. And yet some of them seemed to be attracted to Christian faith. But obviously the church thought that marriage was very sacred between one man and one woman for their life and that it was to be encouraged. Before you enter into a Christian marriage, you want some sense of God in your life. If Valentine was here today, he would say to married couples that there comes a time where you are going to have to suffer. It is not going to be easy to maintain your commitment and your vows in marriage. Love, human love and sexuality is wonderful, and blessed by God, but also the shadow of the cross.”
Jerome in his scrutiny, further labels that young men 21-27 year olds are desperately in search for sugar mommies now, considering that as the avenue for them to break the poverty cycles within their family. He also describes that girls are at ease sending nude pictures out to men they meet online and decried the persistence of child sexual abuse. “Lots of married men and women are out there competing with singles for relationships. Isn’t it a curse for someone to be married, yet looking and chasing after someone else to be in a relationship with that other person instead of building his or her marriage? We are having problems with our men taking responsibility today, and as a result, ladies who are interested in finding and having good men in their lives are finding it to be the tasks of their lives. I think the big question today should be “how can we build and have a community of men who are really ready to answer their call from god to be the man”?
Despite Valentine’s sacrifice for Marriage, in the country today, Jerome stated that, “ I have come to realize people do not believe so much in living right anymore as much as they believe in just succeeding anyhow, and getting whatever they want. Going into a relationship with just one person is alien to youths now, because they are born into the era of multiple relationships, and both males and females do not see why they should be in a relationship with just one person. For them, they don’t even see it as wrong, they just believe it is only natural to keep multiple relationships, and be sexually active in all.”
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