How Do I Keep Our Relationship Platonic?

Dear Agatha,
May the Lord bless you for the impact you are making on the lives of youths of this nation.

I am an avid reader of your column. Following the advice you gave to a 16-year-old girl like me not to have a boyfriend, I also decided to avoid having one. 
There is this male friend of mine who I am close to. We met through a mutual friend of ours at a traditional wedding ceremony we both attended. It has been six months now. I discover him to be very caring and a very good friend. He treats me as the sister he doesn’t have. He is single and he has never mentioned anything concerning relationship until now.
According to him, he has never had a girlfriend but hoping to have one some day. Recently, we were chatting on line and he confessed his feelings for me. I have not given him an answer yet. I want to decline but not in anyway that will hurt him or jeopardise our friendship because he is too emotional. Though, I have feelings for him, I can control them.
Please Agatha, how do I tell and make him understand that I am not ready for a relationship yet? Please I need your candid advice.
Mellanie.

Dear Mellanie, 

If this man loves you, then he should wait for you to mature and ready to settle into a relationship. At 16, you have too much on your plates in terms of getting education as well as learning about the ways of life. 

At your age, any mistake can effectively derail you. Besides, this is the best time for you to devote to your studies. If you miss this time, it will be very difficult for you to combine other things with your academic activities especially if what goes wrong involves you having to drop out of school to have a baby. Relationships and men never go out of fashion unlike others things that happen in life. 

Provided you are not rude to him and his friendship with you is wholesome, unselfish as well as understanding, he won’t feel offended by your stance. On the contrary, he would give you all the support you need to be what you want to be.

It is only a man who has an ulterior motive for being a friend to a woman that gets offended when she turns down his request for a deeper relationship.

Be very frank about it and learn to have confidence in the friendship you have built in the last six months. Without trust and confidence in your friends, there is always the tendency to fall into the wrong conclusions about them. 

Despite your resolve not to go into a relationship, there is no harm in having platonic friends. It is a way of building your confidence as well as trust in members of the opposite sex.

What will hurt him most is not in your telling him you are not interested in taking the friendship to the next level but shutting him out of your life on account of his interest in you. Your handling of this situation is one of the things you have to learn in life because he is the one of many men who will come to ask for your heart.

You will do well in your life to be practical, bold, truthful and clear-minded about your vision for yourself. This way, at every point, you will know what to say and do. Also, don’t ever stray from the presence of God. Good luck.