I’m Cute, Sociable Yet Lonely Without Woman

Dear Agatha,

Please help me because loneliness is closing in on me. I need a girl of my own. At 23, I have never dated a woman. Each time I express my feelings to a girl, she either tells me she is in relationship or not interested.

I am currently a medical student. Without being immodest, I am handsome, kind, honest, gentle and God fearing. It isn’t as if I am shy or don’t know what to say but I am perplexed at the attitude of all the ladies I have approached for a relationship. It isn’t as if I have a social problem of body or mouth odour. So what is wrong?

O.B.

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Dear O.B.,

What you think are the right words, may actually be the wrong things, to tell a woman you are meeting for the first time. Most women don’t appreciate being told by a man that he loves her on the first day of meeting.

It sounds insulting and completely insincere. The first question that pops up in her mind is what do you know about me to warrant your falling in love with me? In the mind of a woman, that statement translates to I want your body.

Granted, women are crafted by God to look appealing, but behind those attracted lines are brain and feelings. Not a woman likes to be placed on a slaughter slab on the first day of meeting. She wants to be appreciated for who she is and not how she looks. This explains why a lot of promising relationships are stillborn, thwarted by the man’s insensitivity to the woman’s feelings and sense of self-respect.

Most men would find it easier dealing with women if they stick to offer of friendship from the beginning. It takes more than the attraction of a man to bring about a relationship. It involves the two of them hence men should learn to treat relationship with more seriousness than most men currently do. A woman’s feeling isn’t a tap that can be turned on and off at the instance of a man.

Whereas, giving her time to know who the man is, as well as explore her feelings too, towards him through friendship, offers a sincere and realistic platform for both of them to move further.

Sit back and try to review the common trends in your approaches. Do you put the cart before the horse or the horse before the cart?

When next you see a woman, strive for friendship, appreciate that she is a human being who has feelings too. Get to know her first before telling her of your interest. Remember, she isn’t an abstract but a woman who has blood and water flowing in her veins hence must be treated with every respect she deserves.

Get to know the person behind the image before offering her love.

Good luck.

Wish My Lecturer Lover Looks Beyond His Belief On Woman From My Tribe

Dear Agatha,

I have a lecturer I’m close to. We are both from Delta State. He is Urhobo I’m Isoko. While he was still young, an Isoko woman almost destroy their family hence developed an aversion for women from that area.

Currently, he is trying to recover from heartbreak over a relationship that lasted six years.

Although we are just friends now, the truth is that I want more from this relationship. I want us to end up as a couple even though he is 13 years older.

I don’t know if my being from the area he doesn’t want to have anything to do with would hamper our being together. Could that be why he wants just friendship from me?

I need a solution to my problem.

Worried Woman.

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Dear Worried Woman,

As a friend what have you done to change his perception of people from that area? How have you help influenced him positively? You don’t have to wait to be his partner to make him change his mind about you and people from your area.

It took one woman’s effort to make him dislike your people, posterity has placed you in his life to help him heal from that hatred he has nursed deep in his heart from when he was young and tender. He has to let go for him to move forward, for him to discover his full potentials as a man and trust a woman fully.

That a six-year-old relationship went underground shows a flaw somewhere. While his ex may have her faults, the truth is your man has something against women generally flowing from his memory of that time. Deep down he hasn’t been able to flush out completely the negative effects of that woman’s intrusion into their family.

Though the family may have survived that experience but the scars will never disappear. For him the scars are too deep to be ignored. As his friend, make it your business to know how deep this scar is and how its ugliness fade away.

Encourage him to talk freely and point him at the inevitable truth that the world is filled with two tribes of people, the good and the bad. This woman could have come from his own tribe, within his family. It just happens that she came from another place, which doesn’t mean everyone from her place is liable for what she did to his family.

And she couldn’t have done it alone without home support from within. If he is not holding the person inside his own family responsible, then gently ask him if it is fair to hold an entire people responsible for one woman’s sin?

Be careful, when doing this, he doesn’t have any inkling about your feelings for him. He has to continue to see you as his friend until he has the confidence to move out of the shell he has imprisoned his heart for so long. Chances are that he also feels something for you but is blinded by the intensity of hatred he has built deep in his heart over the years.

Helping him deal with his past clears the future of a lot of debris, filth that for now is blanketing his life in drab colours. Under your subtle guidance and open friendship, he will definitely come out of it with joy and a renewed freshness to want to live again.

The truth is that his sentiment goes deeper than this woman from Isoko. It is something that has affected the way he views women generally. He may not know it hence limiting it to this woman from his past but by helping him talk openly about it, he will be able to go back into that past, to see things through the eyes of an adult and no longer from the eyes of a child. It is a psychological thing and until he has the understanding of an adult of the issues that brought about those situations back then, he will never be able to really let go. This is your job as his friend and one aspiring to share in his life. As the age differences, provided both of you can deal with it, especially you, nothing is wrong with it.

Importantly, learn not to rush things between the two of you. A step a day would get you closer to the ideal God has prepared for you. If this man is yours, nobody or situation can deny you of his love and happiness. Stand on the promise of God for you.

Good luck.