She Doesn’t Want To See My Face Again…

Dear Agatha,

There is this lady I met several years ago, during our youth service year in Kano. Being from the same place, we gallivanted towards each other and actually became a pair before we left Kano. At the end of our service year, I decided to spend some time with my family in the village while she headed for Lagos. We agreed that I would only spend a week, but due to an accident I had on the way, I ended up staying a whole year. I was unconscious for the first six months. And when I came round, I wasn’t exactly myself.

By the time I was strong enough to get up, a lot has happened. I give God the glory that I was okay physically. I was told only two of us came out of the vehicle alive and that the other person died of the injuries he had during the accident. Till date, my parents celebrate God for letting me live.

Memories of my time with her made me go against the counsel of my parents to stay back with them. They were afraid they might never see me again, but I assured them that the God that preserved my alive is still on His throne.

Back in Lagos, I tried to locate her at the address she had given me. Fortunately my things were recovered at the scene of the accident. Her phone number wasn’t going through, so I decided to surprise her by going to the address she gave me. When I got there, I was told she had left the place for another place. When I requested for the address, her siblings refused to give me. In addition they were very hostile and I wondered why, especially since I was meeting them for the first time.

When I went again to beg for her address, they set their dog against me, making me wonder all over again what I had done to deserve this kind of treatment. I was on the verge of giving up when one of her younger sisters came to me to push piece of paper into my hands with the instruction that I should not tell anybody where I got the address. I got there to discover my girl has had a child. I needed nobody to tell I fathered that child. When she saw me, she ordered me out of her flat, using all sorts of unprintable names to describe me. Nothing I said made sense to her just as her reactions to me didn’t make any sense either. She said I should go back to the lady I got married to in the village. 

Agatha, this is the sixth month I have been begging her. I have done everything to make her and her family members see reasons, but nothing has worked. I don’t know what to do anymore. I love this woman with my whole life, but why is she refusing to listen to me? What did I do to incur her wrath? Please help me to make sense out of all these. 

Godstime.

Dear Godstime,

When it is God’s time for her to listen to you, she would have a change of mind and give you the audience you need to properly explain yourself to her. Don’t give up; continue to plead your case. If the situation persists, write her a lengthy letter with pictures, if available, of you while in the hospital. Attach the receipts and name of the hospital you were admitted into.

Understandably she is not too happy with you for abandoning her when she needed you the most. To have abandoned her to face the humiliation of finding out that she is pregnant for a man nobody in her family knows and who is nowhere to be seen, can be very painful and embarrassing for any woman. It makes her appear irresponsible and lacking in moral decency. It is no picnic for a woman who finds herself in such a messy circumstance.

Given what she thinks of you, she may think you are now interested in her because of your baby. She has to be convinced that you still love her for herself and not because she has a child for you.

Her immediate family too has a right to be angry because of the image of an unmarried, pregnant and seemingly abandoned daughter conjures up in the minds of the larger family members. Through her conduct, she portrayed her immediate family as lacking in moral discipline.

Get some of your family members to go with you to see her people. The presence of your people would convey the seriousness you attach to the relationship and her importance in your life. I am sure, by the time they listen to your side of the story and are confronted with the evidence of your travails, they would change whatever opinion they have of you.

Don’t worry, things would eventually work out for the two of you.

Good luck.