Dear Agatha,
I want to appreciate you on the good advice and responses you daily provide people with problems.
I am 24, and combine work with schooling. I’m a civil servant with the Delta State Civil Service Commission, while schooling in Akwa Ibom.
I am in love with this lady whom I cherish so much, an orphan. Our relationship is over 10 months old. She stays in Warri while I in Asaba.
At the beginning, our relationship was smooth sailing to the point I almost proposed marriage to her. But I began to notice that things were no longer going smooth between us as she began to misbehave. She took to insulting me at the slightest opportunity only for her to apologise afterwards. As a matter of fact she longer exhibit any respect for my person.
In the place of the pleasant reports I used to get about her, people began to complain, including her friends, the woman she stays with and her church members.
Even though she has severally accused me of unfaithfulness, in spite of my sincerity, I never suspected her capable of unfaithfulness. It is so painful.
Disappointed Man.
Dear Disappointed Man,
In the course of finding emotional equilibrium and tranquility in the opposite sex, you will meet with one or two disappointments. Heartache is one of the risks we take when we decide to go into a relationship.
There is no relationship that doesn’t come with its fair share of pains and aches. This is inherent in our individualities and characters as human beings. When a man and woman decide to come together, the greatest challenge is finding a middle ground between the difference in their attitude as well as their family orientations.
In addition, they have to find a path of compromise between their social attitudes picked up from interactions with friends and peers.
The beginning was without incidents because the natural euphoria of finding and discovering something new was at work. In the beginning your mind and eyes overlooked her faults because of the newness of the relationship. You applied the principle of selective perception which blocks out what you don’t want to see and see things from the perceptive you only wanted.
Her behaviour didn’t change from what it has always been. The difference is you changed from being so idealistically in love to being realistically in love. It is the reality of your feelings for her that threw up issues, which you never agreed to pay attention to before.
Issues like rudeness, disrespect and unfaithfulness don’t just happen overnight. She has always been doing all these things. The fact that you have to combine your studies with your work also didn’t give you too much time to observe her as closely as you would have loved to.
These attitudes may have become more apparent on her side due to certain failures of expectation. Women decide to show their true colours to the men in their lives when dissatisfied with the man on account of his inability to meet up with her demands or failed to live up to expectations. She also does this when she desires to quit the relationship for a perceived more rewarding one.
You have to resist the temptation of allowing this incident affect you in such a way as to make you doubt any other woman you fall in love with. What experiences like this teach in a relationship is to place emphasis on the inner qualities of a person rather than the physical ones.
A woman with the right inner qualities would never be rude to her man no matter his provocations, and would at all times demonstrate respect for him even if he doesn’t deserve it. She would never agree to any other relationship until she bids the relationship farewell.
Physical beauty alone doesn’t make a woman instead she needs an inner beauty to be a complete woman.
It is also important too you examine your own contributions to the problem. Combining school and work in different locations of the country, living in different towns all come with very heavy challenges. It couldn’t have been easy for someone so young to cope with. Even older married ladies would find this arrangement tedious and unappealing.
The strain of your involvements would naturally make her wonder if you are not having another relationship especially if she hardly sees you. While talking over the phone regularly has its advantages, it is not a substitute for personal contact. If you are able to forgive whatever issues exist between the two of you, this is one area you both need to work on in the interest of peace and commitment.
You just have to find a way of making her understand your passion. If it means taking her with you to school one weekend to experience first hand the type of environment you operate, might help to make understand.
Even if you agree to go your separate ways, don’t leave things to chances in your next attempt by allowing the issues that affected this relationship come up in your next one.
From the very beginning ensure you not only explain the things you are involved in but to also plead for the sacrifices as well as support of your partner.
In clear details explain what is involved in dating you in your current situation; give her the chance to say yes to the arrangement or reject it.
Not only would it address, from the beginning, the thorny issue of faithfulness but also of you not having either the time or enough money to play around.
Good luck.
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