Dear Agatha,
I am a regular reader of your column. I am in a fix over the decision of my fiancé to sleep with another woman who is now pregnant for him.
The woman is insisting on having the baby.
He is now begging for my forgiveness. I don’t know how to respond to this request because I am both hurt and disappointed at his unfaithfulness to me. Please, help me. What do I do?
Favour.
Dear Favour,From time to time issues like this come up in relationships. Usually, the answer isn’t always clear-cut due to the complex nature of human beings and that of navigating a relationship.
When issues like this come up, the injured party has to look beyond the immediate to both the past and the future to avoid making a fatal mistake.
Doubtless, his conduct hurts as well as betrays your trust and confidence in accepting him into your life. The baby will always be a reminder to that fact but that baby wouldn’t have been if God hadn’t planned it that way. Life daily teaches that certain things, which happen in life, are meant to make us happy in the end if we have the insight to turn such situations to our advantage.
Look into your heart. How much do you love this boy? How much would you miss him when you no longer have him in your life? How much happiness has he brought into your life and what is the quality of your friendship with him? Years down in your life would you regret not giving him enough opportunity to make amends for this lapse?
A time comes in one’s life when issues take on a different perspective; when you regret not doing certain things differently. The age of wisdom is the time we weep at the hastiness of a decision in the time past when life has thoroughly drilled us to think differently. Experiences have shown that a lot of us would have loved to be given the chance to re-live certain aspects of our life all over again, to do certain things differently. I do and I am sure a lot of people who have crossed to the other side of matured wisdom look back with pains and regrets to certain decisions in the past.
This is because age is a transformation that daily takes place inside us.
Would it matter so much later in the future that this man betrayed you? If he is begging you, something inside of him must have nudged him into realising his mistake. Some men would not tell the important woman in their lives until later in life. That he told you shows some measure of respect and appreciation of you. These are issues you must at all times put on the front burner because when the scales are down these are what would count at the end of the day.
Ask him what he intends to do with the lady and child? Ask him how he plans to manage the other woman’s feelings and attitude after she gives birth. It won’t be the first time a woman is standing by her boyfriend to clear the mess of his lust for another woman.
Your answer would come from his attitude and that of his family after the child is born. You can always tell from the reactions of a man to his child where his heart is. If the man is involved with the child to the exclusion of your relationship, it would be useless to stay on because the mother of the child would sooner or later use the opportunity provided by the father’s affection for the child to warm her way back to his bed. In this instance, you become an unwanted party, the one trying to come between something that is beautiful and meant to be.
Your staying would only hurt you more in the end in such an unbalanced setting. The moment you notice this tilt, allow him go even if he pleads for time to adjust because the truth of such a situation is that he would never be able to free himself from the power of his heart. Deep down, he may not really love the other woman as he loves you; his heart however leaves him with no choice in the decision he has to make.
But, if his love for his child involves you, gives you the chance to be involved in the baby’s life as well as give you the confidence of his pledges never to betray you again, go ahead with him.
This choice comes with some responsibility to the child. One of such responsibilities is to learn from this nascent stage to love the child unconditionally to the extent, the child sees you as a concomitant part of his or her life. It makes it easy to effect discipline without fear, love and friendship without restriction. You must learn to be mother to the child right from the very day he or she is born. It is an unconditional sacrifice you have to school yourself to make for your man to give the confidence to trust you with his child. He has to have a measure of trust in you to entrust you with the life of his child. He may have betrayed your trust by having that child outside your relationship with him but the law of child guardianship requires everyone to place the interest of the child above every other consideration.
However, until the baby arrives, you may really not know if he is telling the truth about wanting you for keeps or not. Only the arrival of that child would give you clear evidence of his sincerity towards you. This is because babies affect us all in a peculiar way. They come in irresistible packages that go deep into the essence of our whole being.
Your answer would become evident if he is able to call the bluff and resist the pressures mounted on him to change his mind about you when the baby comes.
Tell him to give you time, enough time for the baby to be born and for you to observe his attitude thereafter.
In the interim, don’t foreclose any chance of both of you coming together again. Just keep praying to God for the right wisdom to do what is essential when the time comes. If this man and you are meant to be an item, God will give you the courage to overcome it effortlessly but if the two of you aren’t mean made to be, no matter how hard you try it won’t work.
Good luck.
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