Dear Agatha,
I am 23 years of age in love with a girl of 19.
Already somebody is asking her hand in marriage but she isn’t ready for marriage. But her mother is forcing her to marry this man and that if she refuses to accept the man means she is against her.
From the way she now talks to me, I am suddenly having the feelings that she has made up her mind to marry the man, despite the promise never to leave me for another man.
This was a girl in my life, very much in love with and dated for three years. In our time together, I never once made love to her.
Along the line, we had problems over sex and other matters. I decided to part ways with her when she started comparing me with other men. Even though she claimed she was joking at the time she made the comments, the issues she raised in her supposed jokes still led to our separation.
She has remained apologetic over the way she handled things between us since then and has never hidden her desire for us to get back together. We are still in constant communication.
With my current girlfriend set for marriage, my whole world is incomplete and upside down. I now hate anything that has to do with a woman. I need your assistance urgently.
Daniel.
Dear Daniel,
Every day in life is a new opportunity to learn and acquire new experiences. These are not meant to discourage but to help make one stronger and tougher in life. To be discouraged is to give up on yourself as well as life. God didn’t mean us to be discouraged by whatever situation we find ourselves. He meant them to help shape us into better human beings.
You must admit that these situations have taught you more about the dynamism of the woman’s mind. What lessons did your first relationship teach you? Being bitter won’t help you at all. Rather, have a clear mind because that is the only way you can learn new things in your life. This is the special gift time gives us. Time offers a healing balm that allows each experience become bearable as well as priceless because overtime it affords us a broader perspective of situations we hitherto thought were unfair.
There is nothing you can do about the decision of your first girlfriend to yield to the pressures of her family, particularly her mother. It is obvious that her love for you is sufficient to challenge the decision of her family. If you look beyond the hurt, you will come to appreciate that you are indeed better off without this woman because you would never ever have her complete loyalty. She will always be under the influence of her family, taking orders from them and ignoring your own feelings.
Sometimes, things we think at the heat of the moment are to our disadvantage do turn out in the end to be our good.
God, who sees the end from the beginning, knows why. Again, she and her mother may be worried at the impossibility of you being ready when she is set.
At 23, their thinking is you still have very far to go in life before you are ready to take a wife and its accompanying responsibilities by which time the lady would have been ripe. So it may not be the issue of money but that of making hay while the sun shines. More often than not, this line of thinking is informed by the disappointments a lot of women suffer in the hands of men whom they have waited for to be ready only for these women to be dumped for younger women when the men are eventually ready to marry.
While this may not be so good a reason, looking at it from the viewpoint of this girl and her mother would help you get over this disappointment and move on with your life. It would stop you from taking the issue so personal.
As for the other lady, if you dated her for three years and she is still begging you to forgive her, you may have to reconsider and give her another chance in your life.
While it is advisable that couples should abstain from premarital sex, however, it must be a consensus between the two of them to make it achievable. So, you two must discuss the thorny issue of sex between the two of you. This isn’t a decision one of you can make for the other. It has to come from both of you to erase its attendant problems in your relationship. That she is complaining means you didn’t carry her completely along.
If you two must come back together, this issue has got to be discussed in explicitly to the understanding of both of you.
She, in particular, should understand the attendant sacrifices that come from whatever decision you both take as well as develop the necessary patience to see it to the end.
I think your relationship lacked the understanding as well as patience to go through with the decision of not having sex with her.
For a woman who is thirsty for sex, it could be frustrating and good reason for her to quest for emotional satisfaction outside the relationship. The quest for emotional satisfaction in both men and women makes the issue of self-discipline very thin. And if not properly tackled could also instigate the issue of trust between the one who is determined not to and the one who see nothing wrong in doing it. The one who sees nothing wrong may begin to suspect the more discipline one of not having enough interest to be able to hold on to his or her emotions.
But when the issues are clearly defined and reasons well understood nip such suspicions in the bud.
Discussing about your options as well as your plans for the future with your former girlfriend would give you an idea to the workability of your relationship.
It is also in your interest to forgive and forget else you open yourself up for an emotional breakdown capable of destroying you for life.
Whatever eventually happens between you and these women accept the situation as part of your memoirs in the cause of your growing up. We all come with such private memoirs to drag out of the cupboards later in life when the occasions call for sharing them to help give light to a young person or friend going through the pains of emotional disappointments.
Pray for the grace of God to be happy and fulfilled while putting more efforts at improving on the quality of your life. Once you get it right with your dreams, getting the woman to share your life with you would be much easy. There is a magnetism associated with success.
Good luck.
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