Reality TV stars Flex and Shanice were in New Orleans to promote the second season of their new show. When we asked them how they’ve made it fifteen years in spite of bankruptcy and losing their home, they both responded in unison: “Prayer!” Amen!
“I don’t own her [and] she doesn’t own me,” explained Devon Franklin of wife Meagan Good during the ESSENCE Festival empowerment experience stage during a discussion about love and relationships. “We are together and I respect whatever she chooses to put on. When I married her, I said, ‘I accept you for who you are. And whatever you choose to wear, that is your right.’” And his praises of the leading lady in his life didn’t stop there: “I don’t have an issue [with her clothes]. It’s not about the dress; it’s about her heart. And I know her heart is amazing, that’s why I love her.”
Flex and Shanice discussed how much easier it was to fall in love for all of the right reasons when they met and realized they were both celibate. For them, they said, the choice was what solidified their friendship, which was the foundation their love grew on.
“Everyone that you have chemistry with is not necessarily your soul mate,” says Pastor Toure Roberts, who taught an empower you session with wife Sarah Jakes Roberts on identifying your soul mate.
“You have a built-in advantage,” says New York Times bestselling author, speaker and creator of The Happy Wives Club, Fawn Weaver. “You can literally say, ‘Honey, what is your biggest dream? Here’s mine,’ and you can chart your course of how you’re going to get there as a team. Built-in advantage, two people, it’s your relay [race]. You have something that no single person has, and that is a person to hold you down. Why press pause on your dreams when you have someone who can help you to get there?”
“There’s only one way to define a happy marriage,” adds Weaver. “You look at your spouse and your spouse looks at you and says, ‘What makes you happy?’ What makes you happy in your marriage has nothing to do with what makes another person happy in their marriage. You should never compare the two.”
