Our Anniversary Message: Beyond the ‘Be Careful’ and ‘What Ifs’ and Into Reckless Love!

Today is Winnie’s and my Anniversary, and we have a message for ourselves and for you: Go beyond the ‘Be Careful’ and the ‘What Ifs’. Love like it will last forever, not because you are guaranteed tomorrow, but because it is the only way to make the most of today. Why do we say so? Here is our story—hear me out:

Our 11th Anniversary: How did we get here?

More than 11 years ago, I met a woman who would change the trajectory of my life forever. She was, and is, my beautiful and beloved wife, Winnie. We were both student nurses at Mutolere School of Nursing & Midwifery. We were young, ambitious, and slightly reckless nursing students, filled with dreams bigger than our textbooks, hearts lighter than our backpacks, and eyes brimming with curiosity. I have written about our story here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Unfortunately, as exciting as that time was, it was also steeped in a particular kind of everyday cynicism. We were surrounded by negativity and love-phobia that I have never encountered anywhere else. We loved each other in an environment that saw every love relationship as evil, and lovers as sinners. We were harrassed, side-lined, nicknamed, and challenged. It was us against the world.

Winnie and I had a lot stacked against us, at least according to the rulebook of conventional wisdom. We were from different backgrounds, different cultures, and even vastly different socioeconomic classes. Above all, we were students, moreover in a Catholic-founded institution, and love relationships were never tolerated. We tried to hide it, but we failed. We thus suffered the consequences; harrassment, side-lining, nicknames, and a lot of cynicism. Even friends could not see where we surely were going.

Haters harassed us. Friends cautioned us. “It won’t last,” they warned. “You’re too different.” “Enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t commit too much,” others advised. “You are on the wrong path,” some openly said. “You are a pagan,” they abused us. “You will fail and won’t be anything,” they chanted. “You are in a wrong profession,” they retorted, day in and day out. ‘When you exit the gate, it will be your last time being talked to’, each one of us was told. As I write this article, I can clearly hear these words, the voices, the tone, and the stunned look on the faces of friends and enemies alike!

The last semester, which is the same semester in which we fell in love, was was the hardest. One time, I strongly considered parking my bags and abandon the course! God’s grace saved us! Sometimes I wondered if people were genuinely trying to save us or knowingly trying to destroy us?

Whatever it was, Winnie and I have come to realize that it was not only during our time or about us; it is everywhere. The default setting of the world, it seems, is pessimism. Love, we are told, is a risky investment that requires an exit strategy. It’s a temporary contract that must be enjoyed with the brakes lightly applied, just in case the road gets bumpy.

But today, on our eleventh anniversary, I want to share a truth that Winnie and I have proven, day after day: That caution is a lie, and that reckless love is the truest form of love. And it never loses. Hear me out:

The Lie of ‘Be Careful’ & ‘What ifs’

The fear-based advice we received over a decade ago, and the advice many of our friends are still hearing today, was all about self-preservation. It comes in many forms, thinly veiled as wisdom:

• “Have property that doesn’t bear their name, just in case.”
• “Keep a separate account. Don’t merge everything.”
• “Marry another woman, balance the boat”. On this, a recent trending social media post indirectly projects polygamy as one way to shelter one’self from loneliness or being left alone. In other words, you should have as many wives as possible such that there is always another when one leaves us! The same advise is given to ladies; have as many men as possible. Balance the boat.
• “Have an ‘own backup’ plan—something hidden, something only yours.”
• “Never go in 100%. Keep something in reserve.”

It gets worse for those finding love after hundreds of other love relationships! A lot of experience in love relationships can actually be a hindrance to true love.

As such, to young girls and boys out here, do not take it for granted. Do not think that you can swim and play in as many relationships as you want, have as many boyfriends and girlfriends as you wish, and only settle when you want to. I believe that love, true blind love might be beyond your reach when you finally decide to settle. You will look at every man or woman as part of the hundreds of relationships you have played; nothing genuine, nothing true. It is a terrible position to be in, I guess!

To be careful in love demands a loving relationship to be approached like a hostile takeover, where one must always have a private escape route ready. This kind of thinking does not protect love; it suffocates it. It keeps one foot constantly outside the door, guaranteeing that when the inevitable hard times come, the temptation to bolt will be too great.

Winnie and I looked at that mountain of caution and decided, with a clear, defiant heart, to ignore it all. We chose to love like innocent kids who fall into a game with no brakes. You truly know nothing about love if you never experienced this ‘blind, reckless, childish-kind of love’ where and when your mind, soul, and body are 100% tuned for and into the other person; no brakes, no what ifs, no plan Bs, no nothing!

Choosing Reckless Love: Our Methodology

Our methodology, our philosophy of love, is simple but radical: We love like it will last forever, because it’s the only way to truly live today.

We intentionally decided to go 100% in. We merged our lives, our finances, our dreams, and our vulnerabilities. We never treated our relationship as a temporary lease, but as an unbreakable, shared foundation.

What does this “reckless love” look like in practice?

1. The Power of Mutual Ownership

When the world told us to keep separate assets, we chose mutual ownership of our journey. This is more than just sharing a title deed; it means recognizing that every success and every failure belongs to us. When you own something together, you fight for it together. There is no possibility of retreating to ‘your’ separate corner to lick wounds or hide secrets. We buy property together, keep money together, go to school together (mostly in alternating ways so as to manage school fees), and provide for home together, and look after kids together. It’s not equality, but equity in love.

2. Full Vulnerability, Zero Backup Plan

Reckless love demands that you put your whole heart on the line, knowing it might be broken. It requires laying down the armor and abandoning the “backup” mentality. This level of vulnerability is terrifying, but it is also the ultimate builder of trust. When your partner knows you have nowhere else to go and nothing to fall back on except them, they understand the depth of your commitment.

This is the best both a man and woman can give and have. In the world full of enemies, your partner is 100% on your side. Do you fathom the peace in this?

3. The Rejection of the ‘What Ifs’

We refused to allow the negative voices and the ‘what ifs’—What if we split? What if someone changes?—to govern our present joy. We do not operate on the expectation of disaster. Instead, we operate on the certainty of growth. We choose to believe in the best version of each other, today and tomorrow. This certainty allows us to build dreams not on sand, but on solid, shared rock.

In the next part, I am going to show you that this is the wisest way even if the worst happened!

Why Reckless Love Is The Best Way

To our friends, to all the couples watching us, to those just starting their journey, and especially to those facing their own unique cynics:

Love is the most beautiful, terrifying thing you will ever do. And while it is terrifying, the cautious approach doesn’t make it less so; it only makes it less beautiful.

When you love recklessly, when you commit fully and without an exit strategy, you unlock an incomparable joy. You create a space of total safety where both partners are free to be their authentic selves, knowing they are fully seen, fully accepted, and fully stuck with. I have talked about this freedom to be self in my other article on desire and sex. And the famous scholar, Esther Perel, goes deeper on the same in the book, Mating in Captivity.

For the last eleven years, Winnie and I have lived this truth. And yes, there have been bumps. They will always be here, knocking. Evil desires, anger, disagreements, unfaithfulness, ungratefulness, or even the worst of them all; unbelief. There have been hard conversations. There has been change. But because we chose to love with the expectation of permanence and improvement, we approached every challenge as a shared problem to be solved, not as a sign that the contract was about to expire. And I hope and pray that, God willing, we will keep failing forward.

I have watched Winnie grow in these eleven years, not just as my partner, but as a phenomenal human being, navigating her own dreams, ambitions, and challenges with grace and courage. I have grown too, in ways I never imagined, shaped by the shared life we dared to create. Love changes you. It softens your edges, strengthens your resolve, and illuminates parts of your heart you never knew existed.

And here is the ultimate point, the radical recommendation I want to leave you with: Even if it were to be bad tomorrow, I would still recommend our methodology.

Why? Because the quality of life you build together in the present, the trust, the joy, the freedom, the depth of connection achieved through 100% commitment, is a reward in itself. Did you hear that? It does not matter much how it will end, but how you live it now. It is not the end, but the journey, the process. And with brakes, cautions, and what ifs, one can never truly enjoy everything that love is.

The greatest risk in life is not having your love end or end badly; it is having your life pass by while you were too busy waiting for the end to truly begin.

I know most people use current marriage scandals to scare us away, but I would like to emphasize that, even for those whose love relationships end terribly, it matters that they lived them (the relationships) when they still were. That is the point. And yet there is more; God’s grace is sufficient to carry you through. Therefore, love and live love like it’s forever!

An Anniversary of Toast to Forever, my beautiful Winnie

Winnie, my love, thank you for the more than eleven years of teaching me that the best way to live is to live together, wholeheartedly. Thank you for proving, year after year, that when we leap, the universe holds us. Thank you for growing me into the man that I am trying to be.

It’s right here that I dedicate you, us, a song! Last year, it was You Make it Easy and God blessed the Broken Road, right? I am sure you already know the one of this year, don’t you? THE MAN I AM TRYING TO BE! Thanks for supporting me on this journey, honey.

To our family and friends, I send a message, not just to Winnie, though she is the heart of it, but to anyone who doubts the power of reckless love: ignore the voices that demand caution. Step boldly into the kind of love that demands everything from you and offers everything in return. Love like it has no safety net, because the beauty of it lies not in certainty, but in surrender. You are not even sure of anything, not even for those calendestine plans you make, lol!

This is our message: love beyond the ‘be careful’ and the ‘what ifs.’ Love without a pause, without hesitation, without reservation. Because the only way to truly experience the depth, joy, and transformative power of love is to let yourself fall, hard, fully, and unapologetically.

Eleven years of marriage, eleven years of choosing each other every single day, have taught me this truth: the best life, the most extraordinary relationships, the deepest joys, are found when you love recklessly. And if life has taught me anything, it is that I would choose this path a thousand times over. Even in our worst moments, I have never regretted choosing you, Winnie. And I have told you this a thousand times! I will never forget that one evening when sat across each other in the dinning room and discussed the fate of our relationship. I thank God I chose this path. I even do not know how I did it, for I surely was not a strong man. God did with us!

Because in the end, it is not about guarantees, it is about living. It is not about calculating risks, it is about feeling. And it is not about hedging love, it is about diving in fully, heart and soul, hand in hand with the person who makes your world brighter.

Winnie, here’s to eleven years of audacious love. Here’s to choosing each other in a world that often doubts love. And here’s to many more years of falling in love, again and again, without brakes, without hesitation, and without fear.

Because reckless love, true, wholehearted, fearless love, is always worth it. Always.

Go beyond the ‘Be Careful’ and the ‘What Ifs’. Love like it will last forever, not because you are guaranteed tomorrow, but because it is the only way to make the most of today.

May your love, and ours simply get better.

Happy 11th Anniversary, Winnie, my beloved, our children, our familes, and friends. I love you.