"For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost?" — Luke 14:28

You would not build a house without asking what it costs. Why would you build a marriage that way?

Every year, single men and women walk into relationships they have never once priced. Nobody sat them down. Nobody told them what love would ask of them — the hours, the surrendered preferences, the pride they would have to swallow, the forgiveness they would have to extend again and again to the same person.

So they begin. The thing collapses. The heart breaks. And standing in the wreckage they pass the most expensive verdict of their lives:

This does not work.

They are wrong. They were not badly loved so much as badly taught. A man who has never been taught to drive will wreck a perfectly good car and climb out of it announcing that cars do not work.

In Loving and Loved — At What Cost?, Sunday Adesina does for single people what almost nobody does: he hands them the receipt before they spend. Working from Luke 14, from Esau's bowl of soup, and from Adam's garden, he sets out in plain language what loving somebody will take from you — and what being loved will take from you, which is the invoice nobody expects.

Across sixteen chapters you will learn:

Why falling in love is the wrong verb, and what Scripture tells you to do instead
Why purpose must come before partner — and what happens to the man who reverses it
The difference between being alone and being lonely, and why marriage cures only one of them
The eight costs of loving, and the seven costs of being loved
How to recognise an Esau before you love one
How to run an honest readiness audit on yourself, and on the person in front of you
What to do when you have already spent what you cannot get back

Every chapter closes with reflection questions, practical action steps and a prayer, and the book ends with a counting-the-cost worksheet you can work through alone, with a mentor, or with a singles' group.

This is not a book about becoming perfect. Nobody who has ever married was perfect. It is a book about knowing enough to start well.

It works. It works if you know how to work it.