Dear Agatha,
I live overseas and really enjoy reading the advice you offer to your various writers. I’ve advised myself severally simply by reading your comments on various issues. I really want to thank you for everything.
I have an issue of my own I would like to get some advice on. I met Chinyere back in 2004 in Nigeria while on a trip home. We spoke frequently over the phone during the next few months and really came to like each other. The relationship flourished for the next two years during which time I came home several times to visit her and her family. I loved them so much.
Being overseas the past 25 years, and being 43 years old have not changed me much from my values, but I kept a secret from Chinyere. During my years overseas, I got married to a foreigner and we had two boys, now 16 and 13 years of age. My kids and I are very close. I was already divorced two years before I met Chinyere but I failed to inform her when I first met her of my situation. I even became wearier of telling her after we fell in love. I was scared she might leave me. But I knew I was making a mistake. I was listening to family members and friends, who also loved her so much that she might leave me if she found out I was married and had kids.
I was going to proceed with the traditional wedding in 2006, but I knew it would go against every fair principle that I knew and practiced. So I called to inform some friends and advise them to accompany me to her parents’ house so I can disclose this last information to them in front of my girl before the wedding. Well, as it turned out, one of my so-called friends carelessly or intentionally told her about my situation before I returned home. Chinyere didn’t even bother to call and find out what had happened. She stopped taking my calls.
When I visited home that summer, she said our wedding was off and still refused to tell me what happened. I later learnt from her parents how someone had called and informed her that I was married to a certain white woman and had children. I don’t know what else they told her. Until today, Agatha, she never told me what really happened. She refused to marry me, and has not married herself. I’m 43 yrs of age, unmarried, while she is 31.
I need some closure, Agatha, and I need your help because it’s really been long but I still think about her all the time. I need help moving on with my life. It’s been awhile we talked. I don’t really know what else to say to her after pleas from my family and I and even some members of hers have fallen on her deaf ears. How do I move on?
Tobechukwu.
Dear Tobechukwu,
Doubtless you were wrong not to have told her about your former marital status and the children. Irrespective of what you feared, you should have been man enough to confront her with the ghost of your past by telling her about the children she supposed to inherit as hers.
She trusted you with her heart and life by agreeing to marry you. The shock of finding out that the man she is supposed to settle down with is hiding something as important as children and a history of a broken home, destroyed the trust she has started to build around you and the relationship. Sincerely, you cannot blame her for refusing to listen to you at the time you came. You had all the opportunities of telling her about these children.
The news of knowing you have children must have been very traumatic for her especially as she didn’t know much about you even when she agreed to marry you. Leaving far from her also didn’t help matters especially with the stories of the desperation most African men display to stay in their host country. She could have come to so many conclusions, wrong in your perspective, but right in hers. One thing is clear, whatever trust she had in you or the possibility of having a happy union nose-dived from the point your friend told her crashed. By now she is probably wondering what other unpleasant surprises you have in stock for her. Her reason for canceling your wedding plans may be her inability to reconcile with your present image as a father. She may not have envisaged life with someone who has tried matrimony and have children.
Unless she is ready to come out of whatever shell she has built around, there is little or nothing you can do. She has to learn to forgive you before you can talk of a future together. Try putting yourself in her shoes to appreciate what she is going through.
However be that as it may, relationship heals on the wheel of forgiveness and trust. Granted you were very wrong not to have told her from the beginning about your collapsed marriage, truth is, she should have given you the chance to explain why you kept such vital information from her.
Although you made the greater mistake of not telling her but in retrospect, it has given you a chance to assess the kind of person she is. True love and friendship make it easy for couple to let go of some painful memories. If she has the same kind of love you have for her, irrespective of her initial shock and pains, she should have long forgiven you of the offence because that is what time does, heal our pains as well as disappointments.
Having pleaded with her as well as have her family members intercede for you, make the last attempt to see her by sending her a text message asking for an appointment with her. If she fails to respond or listen to what you have to say, accept the fact that it wasn’t meant to be and move on with your life. If this is what God wants there is no questioning His authority.
He sees the end from the beginning and knows what is best for us. Submitting to His supremacy is the only way you can be happy because certain things we think are best for us end up not being in our interest. The key to happiness is to completely trust God and submit to His will for you at all times. That is the only way to wipe away all your tears.
Good luck.
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