– Real Talk From Newlyweds (The Dare’s)
Chapter I: Chequered Uniforms
The year is 2010, and James has a crush.
He’d seen her before—enough times to consider her quiet and reserved.
“Hello,” is the most they have ever exchanged. Though if you had asked James, he had more words to say.
On regular days, they shared the same green and white uniform. Yet, Tolu had caught his eye a whole year before she knew he existed. And when she did, she considered him a church guy. “Not that I held that in bad esteem,” Tolu clarifies. It just seemed they always ran into each other at the high school chapel.
James’ crush on Tolu remained undeclared until they met again at University in 2016, where he finally got her number in front of maintenance, OAU. ‘I do not remember this,’ Tolu chips in.
She genuinely does not.
Soon, they were responding to each other’s WhatsApp statuses and realised they shared the same taste in music and disdain for poor governance. But James was not around for much longer.
After a year, he moved to a totally different area in Ibadan, Oyo State, for school.
Chapter II: Beginnings in the Brown-Roof City
One of those days in 2023, James discovered through her status update that she was in his city.
He did not ask at first, but eventually, he invited her for a date. Unknown to Tolu, James prepared a game. A draft of ‘questions to make someone fall in love’.
But after the second or third question, Tolu caught on to it.
It was clear to James that he admired her. Yet, he did not want to ruin their friendship because of how long he had known her.
By their second date, after a conversation over chicken wings and drinks, drenched by the rain from the motorcycle ride he had taken there, James decided it was worth trying for. He decided that pursuing her was worth it.
It was not until the third date that Tolu knew she had fallen for him. Recovering from a relationship that ended only months before, she wondered, ‘Am I ready?’ They both had a growing friendship, but she still yearned for God’s leading.
One of those moments in prayer, God spoke to her about a part of her life, and shortly after, in a conversation with James, he used the exact phrase God had said to her. From then on, the knowing in her heart became too heavy to ignore.
One evening in August, they revealed the fears they carried to one another. It was a moment that showed that their hearts were for each other, and they were ready to take the next step. Tolu gave James her yes to be his girlfriend that evening, and they danced to their favourite song right after.
Chapter III: Building Convictions after the Yes
Now a marriage is in view, and James is getting to spend the rest of his life with this girl who’s had his eyes since he was fifteen. Except, finances seem to be getting in the way of that.
To tackle this, a mentor helps him grow financial discipline for the life he wants to lead. ‘If we didn’t have help, I don’t think we’d be married,’ James notes. Having a couple who have been married for many years guide them during their season of growth helped them to realise that they were not alone in the challenges they faced.
Yet doubts arose, still. Tolu sensed that they could have a stronger spiritual alignment, and it made her restless. The girl who arrived in Ibadan was not the same as the girl in the relationship—she had grown in her walk with God. A conversation with their mentor reassured her, ‘There is a certain work that is just meant for the Holy Spirit in a person’s life.’
Godly counsel also revealed that the root of her fear was driven by what she had seen and experienced before. Truly, in the months that followed, as they walked with their mentors and God, the restlessness shifted into peace. What was previously a point of worry was no longer. By November 2024, they say ‘I do’, exchanging vows to give the rest of their lives to each other.
Chapter IV: Expectations at Play
Half a year after their vows, I sit across the newly-weds listening to their story. A love chronicle over a decade in the works, yet it is only just beginning.
Their story is also one of intentionality, and it’s evident. So I ask them, what they learned after getting married that they wished they had known before.
James is the first to respond. He recalls thinking it was easy to pick and choose from people’s marriages–especially his parents’–what he wanted to replicate (or not) in his marriage.
He says, “One of the eye-openers for me is, it’s not easy to just say, ‘I want this, I don’t want this.’ I think that my parents, too, knew that there were some things that they didn’t want. They probably worked on it a number of times.”
Then he adds, “I think that [with] many marriages, [many] people think that, ‘this thing is not good in the marriage, let’s remove it’. Then it happens again and again and again. So it takes a lot of intentionality to do stuff that doesn’t come naturally to you.”
“Copy that.” Tolu smiles once her husband is done speaking. She shares that even in walking a marriage journey with someone she grew to know, there are more sides of him she discovers every day. So far, it has been a journey of knowing him and herself too.
“In the most hypothetical sense,” She says, “I used to think I could predict my behaviours. Or that because I have lived with myself for the longest time, and I know what I can do. I think another one is the disparity between theory and practice. Knowing something and then connecting it to real life. Like I know it, but sometimes it does not apply.”
“It takes a lot of intentionality to do stuff that doesn’t come naturally to you.”
Tolu shares, that watching her parents’ marriage also shaped her expectations of marriage positively.
From her experience, she also relays how the relationships she had been in before primed her expectations. Coming into a relationship with James, she believed she knew what made a relationship work, and what did not.
“I was very [strong] about it and at some point it was not, it was not like reasonable.” She says, “It was not being sensible and everything. So what shaped my expectations was a desire to just control the outcome in that sense.”
Chapter V: Legacy
There are people in different seasons reading this, people preparing for a marriage, singles, and newlyweds. So, I ask the couple, “What’s something that you would share with them?”
“So for me,” James starts, “This phase I’m thinking of is dating…if they have not done it before, they should commit to it. Every single thing to God.”
He presents a disclaimer, stressing that even then, “God has given everybody freewill. So, anything can still be messed up in that sense. God can give somebody a gift, and a gift can end up being messed up.”
To which Tolu adds, “There’s just that hubris of ‘God does not give the best gifts,” then she emphasises, “I don’t think I would’ve chartered a course for my life and my relationship or marriage as good or better than what God has or had planned for me. So commit it to God. Ask him about it.”
James goes on to place weight on the need for couples to submit to Christian accountability. “Because there are a lot of things that people learn from people who have gone through them.”
Then his wife adds, “Some things will happen and you will just think like, oh my God.” She laughs, “Then you just hear from two other people that this happened to me, too. You suddenly feel better, like, ‘Okay.’ You don’t feel so terrible.”
Finally, a key piece of advice Tolu draws from her experience is the importance of not ignoring negative behavioural patterns seen before marriage, as they require more than just hoping it away.
“Can God save?” She asks, “Yes. Can God deliver? Yes, but patterns are very strong to break, especially if they’re obviously negative. So if you have looked at this person, you know that there’s something about them or you that might not fit and everything, don’t try to hope it away. If it’s not getting resolved beforehand, or maybe counsel is not helping or anything else. I’ll just say, please don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t trust yourself, especially when you can see it beforehand. That’s on the behavioural side, anyway.”
Our conversation comes to a close, and Tolu wishes it could have been longer. Memories, she says with a smile. Ones which she enjoyed revisiting.
Epilogue
By the time you are reading this, if you are on the Friday Afternoon, it was published, James and Tolu would have been married for 6 months and 27 days.
It is a story that started fourteen years ago with eyes that met in a high school chapel, and a faithful God with hands on both their hearts.
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James Dare serves with the Events Management Team at Sycamore Church, Ibadan. Tolu Dare serves with the Prayer Team at Sycamore Church, Ibadan._
Written By Eme Agbor
Eme serves with the Content Team at Sycamore Church, Ibadan.
(Blog posts are creative expressions generously provided for Sycamore Church. The ideas and thoughts do not necessarily represent the position of Sycamore Church.)
