Online Romance, Religion May Deny Us My Parents’ Assent

Dear Agatha,

Please help me. I met him online. We love each other a lot. Just that he is Muslim and I’m a Christian. He lives in Sri-Lanka, while I live in Nigeria. What do we do? His parents support us, but I know my parents won’t.

He wants to come over in six months time for our engagement, but I am confused. Should I tell him to change his religion?

G. Girl.

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Dear G. Girl,

You knew all about his religion before falling in love with him. So why are you now bothered about it? Or is it that you are not sure about what you feel for this man?

Asking him to change his religion is very unrealistic and certainly doesn’t offer any meaningful solution to your religious differences. It would only serve to deceive your parents who at the end would be hurt when they discover what you have done in your desperation to marry the man you say you have fallen in love with.

Instead of trying to deceive your parents and yourself in the process, take time out to ask yourself why you are in this relationship, what you find most interesting and essential in this man?

Deep in your heart, do you think you love him unconditionally enough to let go of everything that is familiar and proud to advertise this love? Your fear about confronting your parents with his religion as well as your willingness to make him tell a lie should sound as an alarm to you. If anything at all it shows your feelings need to be subject to further scrutiny to avoid preventable mistakes in your life. Marriage is a lot more serious than you are making it out to be. For any marriage to work, it requires plenty of honesty, tolerance as well as immeasurable sacrifices.

Besides, what do you know about him, his culture, his people and their ways of life? Have you seen him, interacted with him to know for sure he is the right man for you?

Your parents’ opposition may not come from your religious differences as such, but from all the other considerations that make a marriage succeed.

The first thing for you now is to ask him to come, not to pay your bride price, but to give both of you a fair chance of sizing up your acceptability of each other.

What you have of each other is an Internet image, which could just be a puff of cloud. No viable marriage can be built on idealism; it needs plenty of bitter doses of reality to make it work.

So, get your priority right before taking that essential step. If the feeling is real and right, both of you would cross this very bridge when you get there.

Good luck.

I Want Her Against My Mother’s Stand, But…

Dear Agatha,

Please help me out of these challenges. I cannot help myself although I am a regular reader of your column. I met this lady last year in school, and we fell in love.

Even though she has been significantly instrumental to the success of the relationship, there are some critical issues confronting us as a couple.

The first has to do with my mother’s opposition to the relationship. According to my mother, being her first son, she cannot allow me to marry from outside our tribe.

Another source of worry is how the relationship has impacted negatively on my academic performance, as my GP is 2, while hers is 2.75.

Furthermore, she wants me to rent my own apartment to give her full access to me. Even though I had tried to resist it as a result of the accident my father had last year, which in a way, has affected the standard of living in my family, she is still very determined to make sure I do as she says. Her pressure is beginning to affect me. The only way I can move on in the banking industry is to have good grades.

Since the commencement of my relationship with her, my academic status has depreciated. I sincerely want to leave her, but don’t know how. She has made up her mind on marrying and spending the rest of her life with me whatever the reactions of my mother towards her may be. Meanwhile she is also in the same level with me.

Please what can I do?

Dafe.

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Dear Dafe,

How is the relationship affecting your academic concentration? Is it that she doesn’t give you the time to read or that you are unable to make the distinction between how much time to devote to your studies and other things?

Sincerely speaking, you are your own problem. If you know the reasons for your being in that school, you won’t give her any chance to upturn your life in the way you claim she is doing. As a man, you must be able to dictate the pace of a relationship. If your studies were important enough to you, you would know how appropriately to divide your time between your business in that school and the pleasure of the flesh.

Whatever is happening to you now as well as in this relationship comes from your weakness as a man as well as lack of clear focus on the things that are most important to you.

Having realised the danger you put your future to, it isn’t too late to re-order your priority. Begin by sitting her now and telling her precisely what you think of her demands that you get a place of your own. Let her understand that you don’t have that kind of money and that for someone who wants to share in your life, you expect her to be more understanding of the extra financial pressures your father’s accident has placed on your shoulders.

Also discuss the problems you are having with your academic performance as a result of all the pressures she is putting on you. Make her understand that if both of you desire a fulfilled future she has to learn to accept and live with you on what you can provide for now, else she has the choice of quitting the relationship.

The danger of you constantly trying to please her is giving her false hopes about your ability and when it gets to the point of you not being able to cope again, you risk losing her to another person who has better chances of coping with her demands.

So, make up your mind now on what you want from life, because with this type of girl there is no telling what she is capable of doing later in life. There is no way you can continue to give or keep what you don’t have. Let her know you cannot afford those things she is demanding. To continue to give her the impression that you can is to postpone doom’s day and make yourself utterly miserable at the end of it all.

A wise man knows when to quit all pretenses with a woman. You are at that vital point in your life. If you don’t train her to live within your means now by allowing her the freedom to force her will on you, you may never be able to control her demands. The ball is in your court so make up your mind as well as the boldness to do what you have to do to avoid the greater calamity of jeopardising your future.

Good luck.