Dear Agatha,
I am actually an old man and probably do not personally need the good advice you give to people. However, your wonderful counsel to people on problems in relationship has always fascinated me. I found them helpful in my vocation as a counselor. I would like to thank you profoundly for the counsels you give. They impact on me, in spite of my ‘old age.’
There is, however, a recurring decimal in all the relationship problems involving ladies. The problem as I see it is that dating relationship is being mixed up with marriage relationship. In my capacity as a counselor on family issues and for youth, young single adults and parents, I have seen this mix-up as the underlying factor of most relationship problems.
My idea on this issue is that dating relationship is not a marriage relationship. Sexual intimacy is appropriate in a marriage relationship between a man and woman. Outside marriage, sexual intimacy is not acceptable. I am unequivocal about this statement regardless of the possibility of being termed archaic, given the permissiveness and perversion of our time. My licence is based on the fact that if we analyse the cases of ladies who write to you and similar columns in other newspapers and those who use my free services to seek counsel on their relationship problems as statistics, we can safely say that close to 80 percent of them are in relationship where they started having sexual intimacy with those they are dating. In each of the cases, I see the cart before the horse instead of the horse before the cart. No reasonable man worthy of a reasonable woman’s hand in marriage would marry a woman because of her sexual prowess. In all marriages resulting from sexual intimacy as its foundation, a woman has ended up with a man who is not worthy of her if she was forced into the sexual act. If she was not forced, then, you have “avis of identical plumage here.”
I would also like to state at the onset that when a relationship has shifted from dating to courtship, it is still not appropriate to indulge in sexual intimacies. In fact, engagement is not a licence for sexual intimacy with a man or a woman. The only licence for sexual intimacy with the opposite sex is Marriage. In this day and age, I would counsel that marriage should be according to marriage ordinance (law), legal marriage. I state this, hoping it is sounding strong enough because engagements have been broken off in the last minute. If during the course of building a relationship with the opposite sex one starts sexual intimacy and the relationship is called off, the only person whose loss may be manageable is the man. The woman loses completely and lives her life with a scar that hurts and hunts, even when she pretends it doesn’t. The men do not go unscathed either. They live with the thoughts of it and spend their lives comparing their earlier sexual encounters with the sexual performance of their wives. My experience dealing with relationship problems show that the men suffer also but without knowing its source. “The rich also cry,” remember.
I don’t know how mothers forgot or stopped telling their daughters the well-known line “boys want sex, they play at love and girls want love and they play at sex.” In 90-plus percent of times when a boy/man say he loves a woman, he actually means ‘I want to have sexual intimacy with her.’ And when a girl/woman tries out their charm on a man, she is actually saying, ‘I need someone, the man she is targeting, to care for me.’
The value of sexual intimacy in a relationship is either over-emphasised or wrongly emphasised or both. Sexual intimacy is an integral part of the man-woman relationship. It is, however, not the foundation. All relationships between men and women when founded upon sexual intimacy must crumble regardless of how far it was taken to: dating, courtship, engagement or marriage. This is the bedrock of almost all relationship challenges faced by mankind. Such a relationship could be likened to a drunk driver who is “an accident looking for where to happen.” Remember the house built by the foolish man on a pack of sand when the rains came, the wind blew, and the house came crumbling down.
We must have heard about people seeking counsel or dissolution of their marriages in six months or less. This is common in a sexual intimacy laden relationship that leads to marriage.
The foundation for lasting relationships that lead to growing marriage relationships are friendship, mutual respect, honour, faith in God and faith in one another, clarity of purpose, integrity and virtue.
Find a relationship that has endured and you will find these elements at its foundation. Find a relationship that has collapsed and you’ll find that these virtues were lacking or were not strengthened over time. Those men/women relationships that are still there that lack these elements are one of the hundreds of millions of marriage relationships that are mere caricature of the real thing. Many involved confess being trapped, confused, and running high-blood pressure. It takes a lifetime to sustain the marriage relationships that are well founded.
Most relationships are hanging on because children are involved, or the partners are afraid of what people would say or being seen as failures.
Dear Agatha, I would like to support your cause by suggesting that you be upfront with our female folks and let them know that the evil of premarital sex is not a mere religious jargon. It is a foundational issue for success in marriage relationships. Avoidance of premarital sex would enable ‘girls to get what they really want which is who would care for them.’
I cannot remember the name of the movie where I heard this quotation. I would use it anyway. “Love is one product you cannot sell by giving out sample.” The predominant mindset of the ladies, especially those who feel time is running out on them on account of age seem to be “give the man a ‘little booty’ if you want help them decide to marry you.” Nothing can be further from the truth. We have countless cases, but no one seem to be ready to learn from their past mistakes or the mistakes of their peers. If you give a man a little booty, if you allow a man who has not signed the dotted lines before your Church or the Law (Registry) and your parents to see your nakedness or have sexual intimacy with you, you reduce the chance that he will marry you by 90 percent. That is a big risk to run if you ask me. At the same time, you erode the elements of mutual respect, trust, faith, honour and virtue by 100 percent, meaning: if he ultimately marries you, there would be no strength in the foundation of that marriage to produce happiness and make it endure.
There is a higher doctrine of marriage the world needs to seriously be, considering at this time. This is the eternal dimension of marriage. The popular thing known to man is “till death do us part.” Marriage is part of the eternal plan of God for His children. If we plan marriages on ‘till death do us part’ basis, we increase the chance of failure and heartache. But if we plan marriage with a vision of the eternal relationship in mind, we would make the foundation sure before hand.
Sexual intimacy, no matter how thrilling, has no capacity to sustain a relationship beyond ‘one hour.’ I want to be quoted on this. I want to be proven wrong on this with evidence too.
The late Lucky Dube cried “my mother didn’t tell me the truth; my father didn’t tell me the truth…about the government.”
Dear Agatha, please tell mothers to tell their daughters the truth. Tell fathers to tell their sons the truth. Let fathers tell their sons the reason why they have no respect or why they have great respect for their mothers. Let them open up as to why they are not happy in their marriages to their sons’ mothers.
Mothers, instead of telling your daughters to “deal” with men because you suffered in their hands as a result of your mistakes, help them to stop ruining their lives. My people have a proverb that says, “The sheep is messing its tail up, thinking it is messing up the shed for its owner.” When premarital sex is involved in a relationship it is the girls/women who lose the most whether it continued into marriage or failed. The men always get what they want, ‘sex’ and the girls always lose what they really want, ‘love’ (care).
Sexual intimacy outside the bond of marriage is immorality. Dating is not a licence for sexual intimacy. Ladies, protect yourselves. Cheers.
Francis O. Nmeribe is a Marriage and Relationship Counselor.
Email: nmeribefrancis@gmail.com
Dear Francis,
Thank you so much for your rich words of wisdom and experience. I sincerely hope a lot of our young girls, especially, and parents go away with something precious from this article.
God bless you.
Agatha.
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