This is a sample entry for the Guardian Column category — the actual columns Dolly Ohanyere writes for The Guardian Lifestyle Magazine will be uploaded here by the founder.
Every week, I sit across from someone navigating the same quiet question: how do I know if this is right? Whether it is a new relationship, a marriage under strain, or a decision about whether to stay or go, the question underneath is almost always the same — am I choosing well, or am I simply choosing familiar?
Discipline before feeling
We have been taught to trust the feeling above almost everything else. But feeling is a poor architect. It tells you how a moment feels, not whether a foundation will hold. Choosing well is a discipline — a willingness to ask harder questions before the easier ones, to examine patterns before repeating them, and to seek wisdom before certainty arrives on its own.
This is the work I return to again and again in my counselling room, and the work I hope to return to in this column: not romantic idealism, but honest, practical wisdom for the relationships we are actually building — in the middle of ordinary weeks, not just wedding days.
