Dear Agatha,
Ever since I stumbled on your column in ‘Daily Independent’ Newspaper I have made it my daily guidance.
I am a 22-year-old lady who has been struggling for sometime now with the Joint Admission and Matriculation Examinations (JAMB). I am currently employed on a monthly salary of N13, 000. Unfortunately I fell into relationship with a guy, who promised to marry me from the first time we met if I am able to get admission into the university.
He actually promised we would marry either in my first or second year. I used to sing in the church and participate in different activities in the church but couldn’t continue when I met this guy. The first time he asked me to visit him at home demanded to have sex with me.
I explained to him that yielding to his request would become a hindrance to my God and me. But he assured me that since we were in love and going to be married it wasn’t a problem. So I agreed to have sex with him.
Severally, I told him if he knew he was going to disappoint me, we should stop having sex but he kept assuring me that we would end up married. He promised to come and see my parents.
To my surprise, he came to my house recently to call off the relationship. According to him, he decided to call off the relationship because it was taking us nowhere and that he has made up his mind to treat me like his sister.
According to him, he has become a born again.
Agatha, advise me on what to do now that he has defiled me and cheated on me. I promise not to forgive him for the rest of my life. When I asked about myself, he said is it a crime for him to come and tell me what he has in his mind? Please I’m hurt right now I can do anything that will harm him because of the pain he gave to my life.
Disappointed Lady.
Dear Disappointed Lady,
Don’t allow what he did to you make you do something you will forever regret. Life is too short and delicate to be so wasted. Allow the past to rest where it belongs.
But if the truth must be told, he didn’t do it alone, everything he did was with your consent. You were the one who failed yourself, not the man who made false promises to you.
From the very beginning this man gave you clues into his person but you didn’t bother to examine them. He told you from the beginning you both met that he would only marry you if you gained admission into the university but you still allowed yourself to be persuaded by him to have access into your body. You gave in to him because you also desired sex. He didn’t force you into it. You had a choice to insist you won’t do it but because you didn’t want to lose him as well as a deeply rooted desire to have knowledge of sex, you allowed yourself to be persuaded by him. Your hatred would have been understandable if he raped you. He didn’t only played on your weakness as a woman. It is the right of the men to come with numerous promises because they know most women want to hear that, while it is the prerogative of the woman to either accept or reject. In your case, you elected to accept. So it would be unfair to heap the blame of this whole thing on his head alone. Admit to your own folly in this matter, it is the only way you can bury this episode with the maturity it deserves behind you once and for all.
Were you smart enough, you too would have told him to wait for you to gain admission into the university before agreeing to sleep with him since that was the same condition he gave you. If a university education is what qualifies you to become his wife, you should have also insisted that he could only have sex with you when you become an undergraduate.
He didn’t hide his double standards from you at all but you were too carried away by your own emotions and needs to think straight.
Rather than blame him for your failure to be faithful to God and enforce your own rules, blame yourself for the weakness of the flesh because a man can promise or say anything to get his way with the woman, it is the woman’s business to resist as well as interpret her own happiness.
Were you really committed to God, you will never have allowed this man persuade you against betraying your position in the church. You would have continued in your work while setting the pace for him to follow. Being your own gatekeeper, the man didn’t gate crash. You gave him of your freewill chose to believe everything he told you without questioning his motives. You weren’t sincere to God so can you expect this man to be sincere to you? You put him above the God you were working for and serving. Sincerely, there is nothing you can do about what happened between the two of you. Bitter as it is, let go of the memories. To continue to hold on to them is to cause yourself further pains, which may lead you into doing something stupid. Believe me, you don’t have the patent for this type of pains or disappointments. Women before you have suffered the same things and uncountable number of women after you will still suffer from it. It is the cycle of life. We have to lose something to gain something provided we are willing to subject ourselves to the lesson of experience.
Now you know what to believe and what not and everything you should never allow to happen in your next relationship. This is not to say you shouldn’t trust your next man but that you should be as wise as the serpent to stay focused in a relationship.
The truth is that relationship is unavoidable, but know your limits until you are licensed to do everything a woman and a man can do together as a couple.
To avoid making more complicating mistakes in your life, don’t rush into any relationship for now. Give yourself enough time to heal and to have a clearer picture of your vision as young woman. Once that is done, it would be easier for you to set priorities and stick to them without difficulties.
Good luck.
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