Thursday, November 26, 2009

His Deformity Opens My Love With His Doctor


Dear Agatha,


Four years ago I met and fell in love with this man who became everything to me. Not only was he one of the most handsome men I have ever met in my life but also one with the most beautiful heart as well.

Despite his status and upbringing, he didn’t mind my humble one and went out of his way to ensure he gave me everything to be relevant in his life. He took over the payment of my fees and maintenance, got me a car and a driver.

He didn’t stop there, he also ensured that my parents were relocated and my father was given a good job to enable him play his role as the head of the home.

Unfortunately something terrible happened on his way to Ondo State for his best friend’s wedding. He had an accident that not only disfigured his face, thought that has been taken care of through constructive surgery but also affected his left leg. He now limps.

All these happened last year. While he was in coma, I was by his side and even followed on his abroad trip when his parents decided to fly him out of the country. He insisted he wanted me by his side. I was there too when the doctors say he would be unable to recover and use of his leg. I was there to hold his hands and wipe away the tears.

Honestly, I would have gladly spent the rest of my life. But now, I have fallen in love with someone else, the doctor in charge of him when he was in coma.

I don’t know how it happened, but I am hopelessly in love with him. He has the right looks and has promised to take me abroad, to escape the repercussion of leaving my current boyfriend.

When I told my parents about this new man, my father not only threatened to disown me if I leave him, but has also said he would terminate his marriage to my mother who doesn’t see anything wrong in me falling in love with this doctor. My siblings too are on the side of my father. Except for my mother, none of my siblings or friends is talking to me any more. They all think I am leaving him because of his deformity, but have all refused to listen to me that I am really in love with this doctor.

I don’t know what to do. I am so confused. Meanwhile, the parents of my former boyfriend have requested from my father a date for our ‘introduction.’ Knowing my father, he would give them a date. I don’t want to be around for the introduction but don’t want my parents home to break up as a result of me.

Please tell me how to tell my former boyfriend that it is over and how to make my father see reasons with me that I didn’t plan to fall in love with the doctor. My mother says I should simply ignore my father and my former boyfriend. And that once I travel she too can come over to be with me.

Confused Girl.


Dear Confused Girl,

I am very surprised that your mother is supporting you in all these when she should be in the vanguard of those discouraging you from making the worst kind of mistake in your life. The journey you are about to embark on is one with serious spiritual consequences, the kind that would forever haunt you and give you no rest whatsoever in life.

While you can run away from the physical consequences, you cannot run away from the spiritual one. Granted, you didn’t plan to fall in love with this doctor but what about your responsibilities to the first man who took you from nothing to something? What do those years you were together mean to you? What happened to the love you professed to have for him? What is your concept of love? If you were in his shoes how would you feel if he comes to tell you at this critical time in his life that he has found someone else to love? Would you have left him if he didn’t have the physical challenge he now has? How would your mother feel if he were the one leaving you with a physical challenge? How would she feel if this man were her son and you the woman about to break his heart and destroy whatever confidence he has left of himself as a man?

If your siblings and friends are all against you, it is because they know you so well, enough to know that your reason for leaving him has to do with the physical challenge he now has. Even if true that you are in love with this doctor, the fact remains that given what this man has done for you, leaving him at this point in time for someone else isn’t right. This is the time he needs you the most when you have to fall back to the friendship of being together to help your relationship to grow. This is the time to pay him back with the sacrifice of your heart all the care and love he gave to you and your family.

Where is the heart you claimed to have given this man before the accident? The truth is you never loved this man but only followed him because of his looks and money. Now that the look has been deformed, you don’t want to have anything to do with him forgetting that what happened to him could happen to anyone, including the doctor now in charge of your heart. Life isn’t predictable at all. Today you may have all the aces while tomorrow things can change to favour the person you think is down today.

Remember this man hasn’t done anything but to love you with his heart, time and resources. Insisting you went with him abroad shows how much he loves you. It couldn’t have been easy for him to convince his family to accept you from the beginning; someone in his family must have warned him against gold diggers. To have gotten them to support you must have taken a great deal of sacrifices on his part. It takes a rare man to do that for a woman he isn’t married to.

Leaving him now would only serve to justify so many things he didn’t tell you about his personal struggles with his family on account of his love for you.

While you have the right to make your final decision, pause to think of the past, the unconditional love he gave to you, the doors of opportunity his relationship with you opened for you; your meeting the doctor is an example of such an opportunity. It is alright for the doctor to promise to take you abroad to escape the repercussion of leaving this other man. If you know what you are doing is right, why would you want to travel as far as London?

In your interest it would, listen to what your father and siblings are saying because it isn’t all that glitter that is gold. The wrong things are those we hunger after the most. Of these two men, who do you think would willingly give up his life for you; give to you unconditionally? Who sees the beauty inside of you and not what you look like on the inside?

Your problem mainly is the value you are playing up, that of worshiping physical beauty. The moment you know that physical looks fall under the category of perishables, those things that lose value as each day breaks, you will know how to choose carefully.

Don’t make the mistake a lot of women before you have made to their shame and regret. The grass is never greener at the other side as a matter of fact. Often time it isn’t as green as the one on your side. This guy has shown you more than words can say he loves you. Yes, you may not love him as much as he does now but given time, when you allow yourself come to see more of the beautiful heart you know he has, you will be the better for it. Listen to the old wisdom in your father’s position, as your mother is full of destructive thorns. She would be your ruin because she is only concerned about what she would gain from your relationships, not your happiness. You are considering this other man only because your mother is supporting you and not because you are really in love as you seem to think. Believe me, not all women qualify to be called mothers.

When issues like this come, the best place remains the feet of God. Please go to Him for wisdom and strength to do what is right to avoid tears and regrets later in life.

Good luck.