My Girlfriend Is Pregnant For Another Man

Dear Agatha, 

I am facing the most difficult moment of my life. My girlfriend of two years got pregnant for her secret lover. All these happened while I was away for my national youth service. 

I discovered her duplicity when I recently came back home and was making love to her. While romancing her boobs, I noticed I was taking in a substance with soured taste in my mouth. I pretended not to notice it at first, being not exactly sure what was coming out of her boobs but when it kept coming, I stopped to investigate what precisely I was sucking only to discover that it was coming from her nipples. 

When I asked her what kind of liquid was coming from her breasts, she initially denied knowledge of it, but I pressured her to know what could have prompted the breast milk. I kept mounting pressure on her to confirm what my suspicions were. From my experience I know a woman lactates when she is pregnant and during breast-feeding.    

When she kept maintaining her stance, I asked her to leave my house that night; so, she started shedding tears and later confessed that a guy she started dating when I was away got her pregnant. Up till now, I am still in a state of shock as I find the whole episode still so confusing and disturbing. Please I need your candid advice please.

Iyk.

Dear Iyk, 

I understand the shock and sense of betrayal. It is normal, given the fact that as a woman she is expected to remain faithful to the relationship. 

Sincerely, how you handle this situation would depend on what you feel for this lady and how sorry she is about the whole incident. 

To help you understand where to start from, it is essential you X-ray thoroughly this relationship from where and how you both started. What was the arrangement between the two of you especially when you were leaving for the youth service? Was there a defined agreement between the two of you on where you were both taking the relationship to or was it an open ended thing? 

While I am not condoning her unfaithfulness to you, sometimes when issues like this come up, it helps a great deal to put everything in the right perspective. Sometimes, we assume too much in our relationship, presuming the other person should know what we feel or think. Unfortunately, this attitude more often than not brings along with it some avoidable problems into our lives. This is why some people misbehave or betray their partners because they innocently got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Not everybody understands the language of signs; for the majority, it is always better that feelings are spelt out in words to avoid misconception or ambiguity.

If both of you had the understanding that your relationship was meant to be permanent and that while you were away, there should be constant flow of communication between the two of you, with you assuring her of your love for her and encouraging her to come over for a visit, then her behaviour is completely out of place and uncalled for. 

But, if it was based more on assumption rather than concrete promises, believing she is always there and that you can come and go as you like, then you really can’t blame her for what happened because as a young woman nearing marriage age, there is always this morbid fear of being left too long on the shelf. The gamble to have someone solid in her life rather than the promises represented by you, may have forced her into the situation.

While not trying to make excuse for her, like I said earlier, it helps to give a robust outlook to issues in a relationship if more mistakes are to be avoided. 

Now that you know she has been unfaithful to you, to the extent of getting pregnant and terminating it, do you still consider yourself as having feelings for her? In the first place, what kind of feelings do you have for her? Are you reacting because she slept with another man or that you feel really betrayed and hurt by the one person you love? 

Be honest with yourself by properly defining what you feel for this lady. It is the only way you can untangle this knot before you. If you know you haven’t done the proper thing until this moment, telling her how important she is to you and how you would want both of you to start planning for the future, accept what happened as an emotional accident waiting to happen. Find it in your heart to forgive her and do what you should have done long ago, learning to put the right structure in place. Relationship building takes a lot of efforts, sacrifices, self-will and determination. It is more of an awareness of what works for you than what others think. If you are determined to make this relationship work despite her slip, it will work but if you lack a direction yourself, there is the tendency to be swayed by what others think. 

Most times it takes just a little amount of interest to turn a dry land into a fertile one. 

Just allow the grace of God to direct you on what is right. If she is sober and begs for forgiveness, it maybe just what she needs to be the best wife.

Good luck.