Episode Details

You can do everything right. You can love your spouse with everything in you. But if you don't understand that marriage is more than just love, if you don't protect the first year from external interference, and if you're not intentional about teaching your daughters how they deserve to be loved, you'll miss the foundation that holds everything together. In this deeply insightful, beautifully vulnerable episode of Unbroken Podcast, host Richard Akita sits down with John Michael, social worker and development consultant, for an unfiltered conversation that will challenge everything you think you know about what it takes to build a marriage that lasts, why the first year of marriage should be just the two of you with no family interference, and the uncomfortable truth that if you're a father who is absent in your daughters' lives they will accept any kind of love from any man because you never taught them what real love looks like. John Michael holds nothing back. He breaks down why the first year of marriage should be just the two of you because you need to get to know each other without external parties bringing their opinions and turning your private issues into family discussions, why eight out of ten couples who survive the first year survive the rest of the years, and the one thing most couples refuse to accept: when children come they disrupt everything and turn your world either the right side up or the right side down. He reveals why his father who is a Reverend Minister said he doesn't understand why young couples go on honeymoon because by the time they marry they've already eaten all the honey, how some people got married because they got pregnant and trying to put a timeline on when to have children is weird, and the moment you realize that ideally the best time to have children is in your 20s when a woman's body is young and she heals quickly. He also explains why if you have children in your 20s by the time you're 40 you look like you've never had kids and men are asking is that your girlfriend and you say that's my wife, how waiting until your mid 30s means you should start working towards having children immediately because what are you waiting for, and the one thing every couple needs to prepare for: the first year becomes complicated when you're dealing with a woman waking up in the middle of the night telling you she wants to eat okra and you don't have okra at home or she wants KFC at 2 a.m. and you have to find it. This isn't just marriage advice. It's a masterclass in understanding why emotional intelligence is about developing a habit of reflection so you can think about what happened and what you did that added to it and what you could have done differently, why the trick is to have these conversations constantly with yourself because this is how you grow and evolve, and how being an involved father means showing up for school recitals and open days and serving as PTA chairman twice because parenting doesn't stop at paying school fees. John Michael dives into why he made his wife cry the only time he remembers when she couldn't reverse the manual car and he kept repeating himself and got flustered because repeating himself is one of his triggers, how he had to sit down and reflect and make a conscious effort to communicate without escalating the situation, and the uncomfortable reality that when he started having kids he realized he was a lot more patient than he thought and learned to teach children to self soothe by letting them cry for 30 minutes until they realized crying won't make him pick them up. He also tackles why he refused to read any books on raising children because white people writing about their white child doesn't mean his black child will do the same thing, how he wanted to write his own child's book and learn how to raise his child uniquely, and the one thing every father needs to understand: your role is not just to mentor your sons but to teach your daughters ho