Dear Agatha,
I am 20 years of age and a secondary school leaver. I want to further my study but can’t because my parents are poor.
A rich married man has offered to help on condition that I sleep with him.
I am confused. I don’t know what to do. Please advise me.
B.
Dear B,
This isn’t help. Run as fast as your legs can carry you away from this man because he has only one point agenda, to destroy your life.
You are not a commercial sex worker. So why should you offer your body in exchange for his sponsoring your further studies? If he has no qualms betraying his wife, what makes you think after sleeping with you, he would keep his side of your bargain?
Besides, going to the university isn’t a day’s project. It takes at least four years, if there are no strikes or cult fracas for an average course to be completed. How often would he require you to sleep with him or give enough sexual compensation for him to help you through your study?
Do you plan to draw up a contract to that effect that once you sleep with him, he must keep his side of the bargain?
And how many men would you be able to sleep with? Because having the funds to further your study is just one of the many problems you would encounter at the tertiary institution. With the bug of corruption and ineptitude at its height in this country, how many lecturers would you have to sleep with to have a credit pass even when you know you have the brain to scale through?
Life is full of ups and down. Yes, this offer appears tempting, an answer to all your family’s financial predicaments, but at what cost to you?
What happens if you get pregnant? The best protection has been known to fail at very critical times, have you thought of the possibility? What responsible man would propose such an offer to a woman he has respect and feelings for? Were you his daughter would he encourage you to date a married man? This man is an opportunist. He wants to use the situation provided by your parent’s penury to abuse you; rob you of your pride as a woman.
Your parents may be poor, but that doesn’t mean you cannot make it in life without sleeping your way to success. Granted, the prospect of you furthering your study now looks bleak, but with patience and determination, you will one day get to your dreamland. Without you compromising yourself, what can you do on your own? If this man didn’t come with this offer, what other alternative do you have in mind? Being poor shouldn’t stop a determined mind from dreaming and making plans for the future.
What vision do you have for yourself? Your acceptance of his offer would depend very much on how much value you have placed on yourself.
Sleeping around may sound like a means to achieving your dream but in the long run, how proud would it make you feel as a woman? Your body is precious not to be feasted on by every man who comes your way. As you go along in life, you will discover many of his kind, men who think every woman has to exchange the pleasure of her body for something.
Once you begin it, there is no stopping you from doing it with another man because it would become, for you, an easy tool to getting what you want, but which would leave you the victim at the end of it all. Have you thought of what would happen if along the line, you end up destroying the chance of your happiness in future? As a woman, what is most important to you in life, when you are no longer young and attractive to men? It is the consequences of this time you should always consider when proposals like this are put before you, the time you wished you could live your life all over again.
If you don’t mind the attendant hardship and reactions of peers to taking on menial jobs to fund your way through school, it is the best option any day. Not only would it give you the ultimate satisfaction that you have what it takes to change your destiny for the best but your honour as a woman would remain unquestionable. If you must sleep with a man, it should be out of your own free will, something you are doing because your emotions are involved and not something you are doing because you feel helpless about the situation you find yourself.
Don’t be afraid or ashamed to sell pure water if the need arises to sponsor your way through school, rather than capitulate to the demands of this man.
If you trust God implicitly, He will always make ways for you and your parents. There are girls from families worse than yours but who didn’t compromise to be successful in life. Despite the moral decay in the society, success isn’t measured only by material things but also by the moral credentials of the person.
Good luck.
Posts
