Dear Agatha,
I have a problem that has been disturbing me for close to nine years now. It has to do with my relationship and my past.
I am into a serious relationship that is about to transform into a marriage life, in a few months from now.
However the challenge is the man I am about to marry is the elder brother to the man who deflowered me.
I have discussed the issue with my husband to be and he told me not to worry. He said he has no problem with my past but the question is: Is it going to be like this forever? Once, the younger brother, told my fiancé’s best friend: “the girl my brother is so proud off is the same girl I deflowered”.
I felt bad when I heard about it. I was so disturbed I almost gave up my relationship but for the insistence of my fiancé who told me to ignore his brother.
Besides, each day, I fall deeper and deeper in love with him; and as things stand now, I cannot even run away because the other members of his family including his mother are very wonderful. This young man is the only problem I am having in the family.
My fiancé has on the other hand forbidden me never to bring up the subject again. He loves me and I love him too, in fact, he adores me, I can tell, because we have dated for a very long time now. He wants us to get married, what do I do?
Worrisome Lady.
Dear Worrisome Lady,
Why are you worried when your man has told you not to be? It would have been a different kettle of fish if your new man knew nothing about your past relationship with his brother. That he knows and is still willing to go ahead with his marital plans with you shows he has sufficient trust in you as well as love for you.
To continue to agitate over an issue he has obviously settled is to pass a vote of confidence on his credibility or the worth of his words.
If you are unable to trust the worth of his words on this issue, can you believe him when something more profound comes up; something that has to do with his own credibility, which demands your implicit support and confidence? Trust begins from the little things we cannot hold to things that are very fundamental.
Your man appears to have a large heart; one that can handle that type of thing. To him, it could have been another man. Although unfortunate that the man turns out to be his brother, his love for you is the type that is blind to whatever you did in the past.
You did well to have explained to him about your relationship with his brother. Had you kept quiet, his brother would have used it to blackmail you out of the family.
Telling your man’s best friend about what you both had shows him to be immature and jealous of his brother. He never expected you after whatever may have happened between the two of you to find happiness again. Seeing you happy with no other person than his own brother has not only made him suddenly realise what he lost in allowing you out of his life but also the inherent qualities he never noticed in you.
He also didn’t think you would have told your man about him. Telling your man’s best friend was aimed at getting you to suffer a second time. He knows dropping such vital information in the wrong places can cause problems for you and would have done so if your husband to be didn’t know already.
Allowing such a feeble- minded person have control over you is to subject yourself to perpetual torture. Since your man didn’t meet you a virgin, he knew something had been there before him hence made up his mind to accept that fact.
Give him the chance to allow his trust in you grow. Raking up the past would make him begin to consider if there is any unfinished business between you and his brother and would make him begin to consider possibilities that do not exist at all. Don’t give him a chance to begin to suspect your reason for worries when he has told you not to.
I appreciate the oddness of the situation but it would help you a great deal if you begin to act as an elder sister to his brother by virtue of your relationship with his elder brother. Treat him as you would a younger person without being disrespectful though.
But be mindful of the limits you go with him. Ensure you are never alone with him because he could plot something to nail you with.
It might also be helpful if your man talk to him man to man to help him get over the issue of having his former girlfriend as his sister-in-law. While his attitude is condemnable, don’t forget that he also has feelings and that seeing you with his brother is damaging to his ego as a man. What you should understand about the behaviour of the average human being is that most people don’t want to see their former partners happy with anyone else. They are always hoping to see such a person end up miserable to give them reason to justify whatever they did to the person that led to the termination of their own relationship with that person.
For this reason don’t feel bad because if you do, it would not only affect your future relationship with him but the way his brother relates with him as well. Being the woman at the centre of it all, do what you can to keep the relationship between them cordial while at the same time you learn to keep your distance from him without making it obvious that you are doing that.
To quit is to give him a victory he doesn’t deserve. He remains in your past and the past he belongs. His brother is now your present and future. Do everything to keep him happy.
Good luck.
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