I’m Fed Up With Boys

Dear Agatha,

I am facing the greatest challenge of my life. I am 19 years of age and have a boyfriend who beats me so much while he still seeing his ex-girlfriend. What baffles me is his claim that he loves me. Because of the way he is treating me, I decided to pack up the relationship. 

During this time, I met another boy who also claims to be in love with me. Unfortunately, I discovered along the line that all the stories he told me about himself were nothing but lies. I have made up my mind to quit the relationship. Meanwhile, my ex-boyfriend is pleading with me to come back and give him a second chance. I am fed up with boys. I don’t know what to do.

Sandra 

Dear Sandra,

Sincerely, you don’t need this kind of experience at your age. You have too much going for you to allow any man at this stage in your life turn you into a punching bag.

If you begin your life enduring abusive relationship, what would you do when you are older and married? No matter how irritating women get, no man has the right to beat them because of the love they share.

Frankly speaking, this isn’t the kind of man you need in your life. At 19, you need a man to love, appreciate, understand and support you to build confidence in yourself. In a situation where you are already being subjected to violence in your relationship, you unwittingly expose yourself to the danger of an unbalanced emotional relationship. 

But that is also not to say that you may not be guilty of encouraging this violence in this relationship. To be very candid, not many men have what it takes to withstand the violent nature of the tongue of most women. If violence has become the hallmark of your relationship with this man, he alone cannot take the blame. You must, for the sake of posterity, check on your own attitude, character, disposition to him and relationship as well as your conduct with other people, especially men. 

Just as it takes two to tangle, so also it takes two to destroy something very special. Granted that he presents himself as less than a man by beating you, it is in your interest to also be truthful to yourself if you intend to go far with another man. It is always easier for us to shift all the blame to another person, conveniently ignoring our own contributions to the situation we find ourselves in. 

What makes him beat you and when does he do that? What are the situations between the two of you that give birth to this violence? If you are in the habit of hauling insults at him, disrespecting him at will, ignoring his dislikes and pretending you only has the wisdom to conduct this relationship, there is bound to be conflict and a man who has the propensity towards violence would find himself beating you even before he has the time to think out his actions properly.

To help prevent a re-occurrence of this ugly incident in your future relationship, it is pertinent and in your interest too, to take a holistic view of this relationship. It is the only way you can do what is right; see your own faults and delete those things in your life that will not agree with most men. This will also help you to decide whether ••the cause of his violence is from you or not, just as it would also enable you decide whether you should consider taking him back.

And if you do decide you want to go back, it is also important both of you sit to discuss your welfare in this relationship. Like I said, a real man doesn’t go about beating his woman. A man can still assert his authority in a relationship, put his woman under check by merely looking at her without even saying anything. It all depends on the level of maturity of the man and how much respect he has earned from the woman.

Use the opportunity of his coming back to beg you to put some sanity into the relationship. If you love him enough, forgive him, but be wise in ensuring you don’t go back to the same situation. 

If you must, don’t rush into it. Insist on being friends first, something you obviously didn’t insist on before now. If you are both friends first before being lovers, relegating sex to the background and erecting all the right structures that make relationship absolutely rich and interesting, violence will eventually be relegated to the background. 

As a woman you must learn to be patient, supportive and understanding in any relationship.

As for the second man, you didn’t give yourself enough time to know him, recover from the pains of your previous relationship before rushing into it. 

Generally, you must have a clear idea of the kind of man that would make you very happy before contemplating any relationship. You are obviously having all these problems because you lack a vision for your life.

Having a master plan for your life would go a long way in helping you to build your love life along positive lines. To do it right, ask God for help.

Good luck.