Not because I believe money is the most important thing in a relationship. It isn't.

But because I've started asking myself a difficult question:

What happens when love is present, but effort isn't?

We talk so much about choosing someone who loves us. Someone who understands us. Someone who makes our hearts feel at home.

And yes, love matters.

But relationships don't exist in a vacuum. At some point, life happens.

There are bills to pay. Plans to make. Emergencies. Dates. Gifts. Flowers. Family responsibilities. Dreams that require money, discipline, and sacrifice.

And that's when love alone can start to feel like a very beautiful idea that doesn't quite know how to pay the bills.

Can You Eat Love?

I know someone will read that question and say, “But money isn't everything.”

I agree.Money isn't everything.But let's also be honest.

You cannot use love to pay rent. You cannot use affection to buy groceries. You cannot use sweet words to build a future.

And I'm not saying your partner should be rich.

I'm saying both people should be willing to contribute to the life they're building together.

Contribution doesn't always mean equal amounts of money.

Sometimes one person earns more. Sometimes one person is unemployed while searching for work. Sometimes life gets difficult and one partner has to carry more for a season.

That's life.The problem isn't struggling.The problem is refusing to try.

There is a huge difference between being broke and being careless.

There is a difference between someone who is struggling but waking up every day determined to improve their situation and someone who has become comfortable living off another person's effort.

One deserves patience.The other deserves a conversation.

When One Person Is Always Giving ,imagine being the person who is always planning

the dates.Always paying.Always buying the gifts.Always helping when things go

wrong.Always thinking about the future.Always asking, “How can we make this

work?”While the other person simply receives.

At first, you may not mind.

You love them.

You tell yourself, “It's okay. I'll handle it.”

And perhaps you genuinely can.

But eventually, something changes.

You start feeling tired.

Then resentful.

Then you begin wondering whether you're actually in a relationship or whether you've accidentally become someone's financial support system.And that's a painful place to be.

Because you don't want to feel like you're keeping score with someone you love.

But you also don't want your kindness to become an obligation.

I Don't Want Rich. I Want Willing.

This distinction matters to me.

I don't think people should choose partners simply because they have money.

A financially comfortable person can still be irresponsible, selfish, dishonest, or completely incapable of building a healthy relationship.

Money doesn't automatically make someone a good partner.

And someone who doesn't have much money today isn't automatically a bad partner.

Life happens.

People lose jobs.

Businesses fail.

Plans don't work.

People start again.

What matters to me is the mindset.

Give me someone who doesn't have much but has a vision.

Someone who says, “I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm working on it.”

Someone who is learning.Trying.Saving.Building.Applying.Starting again.

Someone who understands that their current circumstances don't have to become their permanent identity.

That person may not have much today, but they may be exactly the kind of person you can build with.

Because sometimes the most valuable thing someone can bring into a relationship isn't money.

It's willingness.

Struggling Is Not the Same as Being Lazy

We need to stop confusing these two.

A person can be struggling and still be incredibly hardworking.

They can be unemployed and still be applying for jobs every day.

They can have a small business that isn't doing well and still be looking for ways to improve it.

They can come from very little and still dream of building something meaningful.

I would rather build slowly with someone who is trying than live comfortably with someone who has no ambition.

Because circumstances can change.

But character is harder to change.

The person who is disciplined today will probably find a way forward tomorrow.

The person who is constantly looking for someone else to rescue them may continue needing rescuing even when opportunities are placed directly in front of them.

So, What About Those Who Married for Love?

To those who married for love, I genuinely want to know:

• How is it going?

• Not the Instagram version.

• Not the anniversary photos.

• Not the matching outfits.

• The real version.

• How do you navigate finances?

• How do you handle seasons when one person earns significantly more than the other?

• How do you divide responsibilities?

• How do you prevent resentment when one person feels like they're carrying more?

Because I believe love can absolutely be the foundation of a marriage.

But love needs other things around it.

1. Communication.

2. Responsibility.

3. Respect.

4. Financial honesty.

5. Shared values.

6. And a willingness to grow together.

Choose Your Match

I'm not saying everyone should date someone who earns a six-figure salary.

I'm not saying you should reject someone because they are currently struggling.

And I'm definitely not saying you should marry someone simply because they are financially stable.

Choose your match.

Choose the kind of life you want.

Choose someone whose values align with yours.

Choose someone whose definition of partnership makes sense to you.

And, most importantly, choose someone who is willing to build.

Because marriage isn't just about finding someone you love.

It's about finding someone you can walk through life with.

Someone who won't necessarily have all the answers.

Someone who won't always have money.

Someone who won't always get everything right.

But someone who looks at life and says:

“Let's figure this out together.”

That's partnership.

Love, But With Both Feet on the Ground

Love is beautiful.

Love can heal you.

Love can make ordinary days feel extraordinary.

Love can make you want to spend the rest of your life with someone.

But love should not require you to abandon common sense.

You can choose love and choose responsibility.

You can choose romance and choose ambition.

You can choose tenderness and choose discipline.

You can choose someone who makes your heart happy and someone who is willing to build a life with you.

Because eventually, the butterflies settle.

The dates become ordinary Tuesday evenings.

The flowers wilt.

The gifts get opened.

And life begins asking the bigger questions.

Can we communicate?

Can we solve problems?

Can we support each other?

Can we grow together?

Can we carry each other when one of us is tired?

Can we both put something into this?

That's where partnership begins.

So yes, choose love.

But also choose someone who is willing to build.

Someone with a vision.

Someone who is trying.

Someone who is disciplined, consistent, hardworking, and committed to becoming better.

Not because they have everything figured out.

But because they are moving.

Because I would rather build something slowly with someone who is walking beside me than spend my life carrying someone who has no intention of walking at all.

Love is beautiful. But partnership requires effort.

And perhaps that's the kind of love worth choosing.

Maybe the question isn’t really, “Why does she stay?”

Maybe it’s, “What made her believe that leaving means she failed?”

Sometimes, a woman isn’t clinging to a man. She’s clinging to the memories.

To the version of him she met in the beginning.

To the promises he once made.

To the future she imagined.

To the hope that if she loves him a little harder, gives a little more, waits a little longer, he might finally become the man she needs him to be.

And sometimes, she knows he doesn’t love her the way she deserves.

She just isn’t ready to accept that the love she gave so freely cannot be returned.

We often tell women, “Just leave.”

But leaving someone you still love isn't always as simple as walking out the door.

Sometimes, you have to grieve a person who is still alive.

A relationship that still exists, but no longer feels like home.

A future that will never happen.

So perhaps the better question is:

How do we teach women that being loved should never require them to beg, prove, perform, or disappear?

And how do we learn to let go not because we stopped loving them, but because we finally started loving ourselves too?

I have never really loved my name,Auma .

For a long time, it was simply the name some people called me. A name I answered to because it belonged to me, but never one I truly felt connected to.

There were moments when I wished I had a different name.

Something softer. Something I thought sounded more beautiful.

Something I could introduce without secretly wondering what people thought when they heard it.

But today, 21/08/2026, something has shifted in me.

I have decided to embrace my name.

Not because the name itself suddenly changed, but because I changed the way I see it.

I think we sometimes spend so much time wishing certain things about ourselves were different that we forget to ask what beauty might already exist in the things we've been trying to change.

Maybe my name was never the problem.

Maybe I had simply never taken the time to meet it.

So today, I am meeting my name differently.

Auma.

I take the name and I crown it with a meaning that feels beautiful to me:

A child born peacefully, with calmness and light.

And suddenly, it feels less like a name I was given and more like a blessing I get to carry.

A child born peacefully.

A child carrying calmness.

A child carrying light.

There is something deeply comforting about that.

Because life hasn't always felt peaceful.

There have been seasons when my heart has been loud with questions, when I have carried things quietly, when I have wondered about who I am becoming and where life is taking me.

But perhaps peace isn't the absence of difficult seasons. Perhaps peace is the part of us that remains even after the storm. Perhaps calmness is something we grow into. And perhaps light isn't something we have to search for somewhere outside ourselves.

Maybe sometimes, we discover that we have been carrying it all along. Today, I don't want to hide from my name. I don't want to shorten it, replace it, or wish it belonged to someone else. I want to say it slowly.

Auma.

And hear something beautiful when I say it. I want to remember that a name doesn't have to be universally beautiful to be meaningful. It only needs to become meaningful to the person who carries it.

So, this is my little declaration today:

I am choosing my name.

I am choosing the story I attach to it.

I am choosing to see softness where I once saw awkwardness.

I am choosing to see beauty where I once searched for something else.

And I am choosing to believe that there is something sacred about being called by the name that has walked with me through every version of myself.

The little girl.

The young woman.

The woman who has lost.

The woman who has learned.

All of them have been Auma.

And perhaps that is why I don't want a different name anymore. Because this name has witnessed my becoming. It has carried me through chapters I thought would break me. It has remained mine through every version of myself. So today, I crown it. Not because it needs my permission to be beautiful. But because I finally give myself permission to see it that way.

Auma.

My name.

My story.

My peace.

My light.

My crown.

Not because anyone had promised her he would.

He never said, “Wait for me.”

But there are some promises people make without saying a word. A look. A memory. A future that once felt so certain that you start treating it like a destination.

So she waited.

She went on with her life, of course.

She worked. She laughed when she was expected to laugh. She answered messages. She showed up for birthdays. She sat at tables surrounded by people and somehow still felt alone.

And every now and then, usually at night, she wondered:

What if he comes back?

That question became a small room she kept inside herself.

She decorated it with memories.

The first conversation.

The jokes only they understood.

The plans they made.

The way he once looked at her as though she was home.

She kept everything there.

Even the things that had hurt her.

Especially those.

Because sometimes we don't hold on to people because they treated us well.

Sometimes we hold on because of who we were when we loved them.

She missed that girl.

The girl who believed without calculating the risk.

The girl who made plans without wondering how they might end.

The girl who could look at someone and say, “This is my person,” without being afraid of being wrong.

Years didn't necessarily make the memories disappear.

They just made them quieter.

Until one ordinary Tuesday, something changed.

Nothing dramatic happened.

There was no phone call.

No apology.

No unexpected knock at the door.

No message saying, “I made a mistake. I want you back.”

There was only her.

Standing in front of the mirror.

She looked at herself for a long time.

And for the first time, she didn't see the woman who had been left behind.

She saw the woman who had stayed.

She noticed the tiredness around her eyes.

The softness she had almost forgotten she possessed.

The strength she had never given herself credit for.

And suddenly, she understood something.

She had been waiting for someone who wasn't waiting for her.

She had postponed parts of her life for a person who had already continued with his.

She had been saving stories she wanted to tell him.

Saving places she wanted to visit with him.

Saving pieces of herself for a future that no longer existed.

And perhaps the saddest part wasn't that he had left.

It was that she had been leaving herself every day just to keep a space open for him.

That night, she opened the old box where she kept the things she couldn't throw away.

Photographs.

A handwritten note.

A small gift.

Things that had once felt priceless.

She held each one gently.

Not angrily.

Not bitterly.

Just honestly.

Then she put them away.

Not because the memories meant nothing.

But because they no longer needed to run her life.

She went to bed that night without checking her phone.

She didn't wonder whether he had thought about her.

She didn't imagine what would happen if he suddenly appeared.

She simply slept.

And when morning came, something felt different.

The world hadn't changed.

But she had.

She made breakfast.

Opened the curtains.

Played music while getting ready.

And somewhere between brushing her hair and choosing what to wear, she caught herself smiling.

It was a small smile.

But it belonged entirely to her.

That was the beginning.

Not a grand transformation.

Not a dramatic reinvention.

Just little things.

She started saying yes to invitations she would once have declined.

She took herself out.

She bought the dress she had kept saying she would wear “when there was an occasion.”

She began reading again.

She laughed loudly.

She made new plans.

She stopped checking whether certain people had viewed her stories.

She stopped trying to understand why someone had chosen not to love her properly.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, her life became bigger than the person she had once built it around.

One evening, months later, she walked past a place they used to visit.

For a moment, she felt the old ache.

She stopped.

Then she smiled.

Not because it didn't hurt.

But because it didn't own her anymore.

She realized healing wasn't forgetting.

It wasn't waking up one morning and feeling absolutely nothing.

Healing was remembering without wanting to return.

It was being grateful for what was beautiful without pretending the ending wasn't painful.

It was being able to say:

That was a chapter.

Not:

That was my whole story.

She continued walking.

And for the first time, she wasn't walking toward anyone.

She wasn't walking away from anyone either.

She was simply walking forward.

Maybe that's what she had been waiting for all along.

Not for him to come back.

Not for an apology.

Not for closure.

Not even for another love.

She had been waiting to come back to herself.

And that day, finally, she did.

She stopped waiting.

And life began.