Dear Agatha,
My problem is that I am dating a girl that was my younger brother's ex girlfriend. We were all in the same school but was my brother's classmate.
She left the school for another school, a development that made my brother to start misbehaving. He stopped calling or visiting her. Then I acted as the peacemaker between them. I tried bringing back the two of them but it was obvious at a point that my brother has lost interest in her.
Up to that point we were simply friends and we stayed that way well over one year. It was after she wrote her Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations that we actually started dating. Even at that, it was not deliberate or planned. We simply found ourselves gallivanting towards each other.
Our relationship is a year plus now but her classmates now call her names. They are accusing her of dating two brothers. I love this girl so much and don't want to lose her.
But I don't know if it is right for us to be in such a relationship or not? I am so confused because she still tells me she loves me but does not know what to do either. Please I need your help urgently before she goes back to her school in Malaysia.
Wizzy.
Dear Wizzy,
Morally, it isn't right to date any person your sibling has been involved with. More often than not, it creates a huge problem within the family especially if there was a sexual relationship involved.
Friends calling her names are basing their judgement of the situation on what is right and not because you are both in love. There is an oddity in the arrangement, whereby you who once played the in-between role, is now on the driver's seat.
Even though your brother called off the relationship, it would be hard to explain how you took over his former girlfriend.
If you must continue in this relationship, it is important you take your brother along. Yes, love happens in very abnormal situations and circumstances but wisdom has to be applied at every moment to prevent such an odd circumstantial relationship from collapsing on the people involved.
The fact that this involves your brother makes all the more important for you to consider all the variables before the two of you go too far.
What are your plans for her in this relationship? It won't be fair if you also dump her after a while like your brother did as this would not only affect her already battered reputation but leave her devastated in the whole. Do you love her in that special way a man should love a woman? Do you respect her? Do you trust her to the extent you would leave her in the company of this same brother without feeling the two would commence anything behind you?
Sincerely, this relationship is more about what you want than what she wants in the sense that you are the one with the most baggage. You are the one who has to contend with the knowledge of your brother's former interest as well as relationship with her; you are the one who may have a dissatisfied brother behind the scene; you are the one who would always worry about trust; who has to deal with the discomfort of wondering if you can trust a woman who has once dated your brother to be absolutely loyal to you. These are issue you must deal with now, cannot afford to sweep under the carpet if this relationship is to survive beyond this moment.
Also, it is important you answer as objectively as you can these questions too. Are you simply dating her to continue from where your brother stopped or because you really feel something for her? Sincerely, if you have no plans for her, don't know why you want her to stay in your life beyond the good feelings it gives you to have her with you allow her go with the dignity she still has.
I understand all the emotions she is going through now, not knowing what your intentions are for her or if you want her for keeps. Given the attitude of her friends concerning your relationship, a lot of issues she may have deliberately ignored all these while, have understandably begun to bother her. And unless she gets clear signal from you, telling she wasn't wrong to have fallen in love with the brother of the man she was once dated; get confirmation that your interest in her isn't fleeting but solid, she could change her mind about leaving you.
She can only have the confidence to stay on and challenge her friends if she knows you feel all the things a man should feel for his woman for her and for the right reasons. Right now she is feeling she may have made a costly mistake in her life by following her heart and not her head. It is now left up to you to give her all the assurances in the world to neutralise those fears her friends' concern and opinions are generating in her.
Rather than feel bad about what your friends are saying about your relationship; you and your woman should see it as a blessing in disguise, an opportunity for both of you to reposition your relationship before you go too far.
Good luck.
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