Dear Agatha,
Thanks so much for the help you are rendering to many youths, who are helpless in one situation or the other.
I am 22 years of age and have been in a relationship with a man I love for the past five years. It isn’t a secret relationship as all our family members are aware of it.
He taught me what love really is. We are both deeply in love.
He comes from a very humble family and despite this, I can’t love another man as I have given him my whole heart, soul and body.
My love for him was so deep that each time he came home from his base in the North and lacked the money to pay his transport fare, I would lie to my parents about needing something so as to raise money for him. At times, I had to do menial jobs without the knowledge of my parents just to support him financially.
I didn’t even get angry when he impregnated my best friend. I forgave him because I knew it was temptation.
My whole life centered round his welfare, happiness and needs. Not that I lacked male attention. Men were coming, asking my hand in marriage, his immediate elder brother inclusive. Despite the fact that he hasn’t proposed to me, my answer was constant, I had a fiancé whom I loved with all my heart.
However, our problem started last month when he called on Sunday afternoon to ask about my whereabouts. Since it was the usual thing with him, I told him where I was and whom I was with. When I mentioned that I was with my landlord’s son in my father’s apartment, he got angry and asked why I was in his company. Without waiting for my reply or explanations, he didn’t just rain abuses on me but also accused me of being unfaithful to him. He ended up threatening to get himself another girlfriend.
Since then, I have been begging him and asking for his forgiveness while trying to make it clear there is nothing going on between me and the boy.
He refused to listen and insists I have been cheating on him. He has threatened to hand over the phone to his new girlfriend when next I call him. He has also gone ahead to tell my brother that he is no longer interested in me and that he has gotten another girl he wants to marry.
Agatha, can you imagine the pains I am going through? This is a man I have dated for five years. I can't imagine myself losing him to another girl because I love him so much. I cry whenever I remember what I passed though because of him.
He doesn’t call me anymore. The worst thing is, I can’t love another man like I love him. Each time, I remember him, I cry like a baby. Should I keep begging him to come back? If no, what should I do to get over all this mess, to forget him forever?
Gift.
Dear Gift,
From the moment he impregnated your friend, he has been looking for excuse to quit the relationship just that you were too much in love with him to see the handwritings on the wall. And when the opportunity presented itself, he smartly took advantage of it to do what he had always wanted, escape from you.
A man who cares about you will resist the urge to sleep with his woman’s best friend, no matter how strong the temptation is. To have gotten her pregnant in the process of having a secret relationship with her shows a deep flaw in his character as well as his puncture a huge hole in his avowed commitment to you.
From the moment he slept with your friend, he broke the bond of trust and excused himself from whatever commitment he had towards you. The closeness of the person he slept with should have warned you that there were other women in his life.
Any man capable of sleeping with his wife’s best friend and gotten her pregnant in the process must have slept with other women too.
Your years of commitment to him not withstanding, you failed on your part to recognise the signs of infidelity. You failed to look beyond the perfect image you have built around this man.
While it is good to forgive, a sensible woman would have used the opportunity provided by the pregnancy of her friend to look at the hidden marks in the mirror. Had you done that, this whole episode won’t have been this devastating since you would have prepared yourself for something like this.
That he has gotten himself another woman within such a short time is enough evidence for you to know that even if he comes back to you now, he would never be faithful to you. Let him go but look at your own faults too to the collapse of the relationship.
In particular, look at the quality of challenge you presented him as a woman. Beyond being so much in love with him and willing to do things to please him even at great cost to your comfort, what will he remember you for? Were you a real challenge to him in terms of character? What do you think attracted him to your friend in the first place?
What do you really know about this man? What is peculiar to him and what intrigues him in a woman? To have a successful relationship, you must strive to patent your relationship to suit the character of your partner. Without a firm knowledge of one’s partner, his or her personal lifestyle, he or she would be difficult to please. A firm knowledge of the lifestyle of one’s partner enables one to first key properly into the person’s life first before any change can be done.
In your five years of being with this man, how many times did you bother to go down to his base to visit and fetch information about him? Do you even have any inkling into the type of life he lives in the north where he is based?
Nothing comes from nothing. Love cannot come from nothing. You may have fallen in love with him but it takes something extra special to appreciate the quality of the relationship.
Again, can you think of any other mistake you may have made in the five years you were together? Were you bossy or acted as his superior? How did you treat him as a man? These are issues you must honestly find answers to for the purpose of another relationship. Did you also suffocate him with your brand of love? Funny as this may sound, some men get scared and stiff when confronted with such quality of love because they think it would infringe on their freedom and ability to be themselves. Has he ever complained about your kind of love?
Sometimes, what we think is done out of love or to communicate our true feelings come as dangerous signals to those in our lives. The average man likes to be in charge of his affairs and gets frightened by a domineering woman or one who lacks initiative.
Like I said, this post-mortem is to help you focus more on your area of strength and what to avoid in your subsequent relationships.
Using the experiences of this relationship would secure you a more balanced as well as happier relationship in the future provided you are a good student of history.
Yes, it is painful but in every situation be grateful to God. What would you have done if after you get married, he persists in his reckless and disrespectful lifestyle? How much can your love endure if he is tempted to sleep with every female around you?
How many times can you afford to forgive him if he has several children outside your home? Being so deeply in love with him may not be enough to sustain a relationship that is constantly being battered by a litany of unfaithfulness? There is always a limit to human endurance.
Grieve because of the pains his unfaithfulness has inflicted on you but don’t allow it to becloud your appreciation of the real beauty of the life ahead of you. God never does things without a good reason. Behind every cloud of pains and disappointment, there are beautiful colours of rainbows. Time, the perfect healer will eventually heal you of this pains of rejection you have suffered.
When you meet the right man, he will not only treat you like the queen you are supposed to be in his life, he would appreciate your love and never take it for granted like this one did.
Learn to lean more on God as well as allow yourself to be influenced by His decisions for you. It is the only way you can ever hope to be happy in life.
Good luck.
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