Dear Agatha,
Thanks for being there for us.
I have a relationship that has lasted almost a year now. It all seemed good at inception, but things later became unclear as I found it increasingly difficult to decode what my man wants from the relationship.
We are both in our 30s. Looking back, I really cannot say I have been happy in the relationship as it seems I have been the one working to keep it going. At a point, I called him to let him know that we haven’t been able to achieve our expectations for the relationship; that we should consider going our separate ways for good. But he wouldn’t hear of it and promptly promised to make amends.
Six months into the relationship, he started talking of plans to see my people. Shortly after, I couldn’t resist his sex advances anymore; six months into the relationship, we had sex for the first time. Surprisingly, I became pregnant. Even though we took measures after sex, the child still stayed. We both agreed to keep the pregnancy and formalise the union before the stomach starts bulging.
Few weeks later, I had problem with my accommodation, he suggested that I move in with him, while gradually planning for the traditional marriage.
Agatha, my dilemma is that things seem to have changed suddenly. He no longer has respect for me, approaches me in manners that are abusive, unfriendly and insulting. I have realised that he is very harsh. Communication is totally lacking in our relationship. I don’t know what to say or do to change his attitude towards me.
He stays glued to the television watching movies day in, day out ignoring my need for him. Even when I requested for his presence, he tells me he will join me soon, but keeps away still. He rejects my sex advances and avoids body contact with me.
I have tried to fathom what could be responsible for this, but have not found any answer. I know I am clean, so he cannot be irritated by my appearance. I am afraid for this union because it is a caricature of the kind of life I envisaged with him.
Furthermore, we both work. I give him breakfast of bread and tea in the morning, he has his lunch while at work and for dinner, I prepare either pap and beans cake, noodles or yam and egg or vegetable or rice. This has been the routine. I would like to experiment with other dishes as we appear to be fed up with the same meals every week but Agatha, I have no clues on what else to prepare.
Please, how do I get the love and affection of this man back? I can’t imagine myself spending the rest of my life with a man who sleeps on the same bed with me, yet refuses to touch me even though he knows how much I desire having sex with him. If things continue like this and we get married, one or two things or both will happen. I will either be unfaithful to him by having affairs outside or would be frustrated and kill myself. What we have right now is just a house and not a home. It’s so boring. What do you advise? There is so much distance between us; we can’t even freely share our thoughts.
Worried Woman.
Dear Worried Woman,
There is so much that go into building a good relationship. It is a tortuous journey and one which requires absolute patience, wisdom, diplomacy, sacrifice, determination and understanding to make it work.
One year is too short for both of you to get the required understanding to push on.
I like to compare the process of getting to the ideal relationship to the process of washing the bitterness off a bitter-leaf. Without patience and dedication the washer will not get it right. The same technique is required of a relationship and marriage. There is no rushing the process or a short cut to tolerance. As a matter of fact, relationship requires more than mere tolerance to make it work, it requires stupidity on the part of one of the parties to get it into shape.
In this instance, you would have to learn to be tolerant to make your relationship with this man work.
Frankly, you both didn’t give yourselves and this relationship time to grow a proper tap-root before the pregnancy came.
A relationship planned for eternity requires more than what both of you invested into this relationship to make it work.
Before both of you destroy something that has the potentials to be good, there is the need for you especially to go back to your drawing board. This is because often time, the past provides us with pointers on how to navigate the future. Rich in experience, the past is our heritage for a better tomorrow. Can you remember what first attracted you to this man as well as the thrills of those embryonic days of your relationship? Why him from among the many offers you had? That you settled for him shows that there is more to him that your current situation is permitting you to remember.
The essence of this exercise is to remind you of those things that never change about us. No matter how situations and states of our minds deceive us into thinking otherwise, those first feelings we feel for our partners never really change. They remain buried in our minds and only need certain level of concentration to bring them back and remind us of those things that are most important.
The real challenge is our willingness to go down memory lane when present circumstances crowd our minds with negative thoughts.
This kind of reflection would also help point you at the mistakes you have also committed along the way. Because of the intensity of your emotional pains as well as the disappointments you currently feel at his behaviour, chances are you may not even think you are to blame for anything.
Can you think of your contributions to this impasse? How much has your attitude affected his’? During the process of emotional pollination and integration, we import not just the positive but also the negative. The influence of our negative importation most of the time inform the reactions we get from our partners who out of disappointments begin to exhibit attitudes that end up becoming our major cause of irritations.
Has your being pregnant unconsciously affected the way you relate with him? For instance, has it given you the confidence to call his bluff on certain issues, taken it for granted that you have him whether he likes it or not? Sometimes we put certain attitudes without pausing to evaluate its implications on those close to us.
You appear more concerned about the sexual side of this relationship than in other areas. Has it occurred to you that the fear of being a father, his lack of unpreparedness could frighten him off sex for a while? And for some first time fathers, the thought of making love to their women when pregnant scares them for fear of hurting the baby growing inside the womb.
Planning for marriage and a baby at the same time isn’t easy. These are both capital intensive projects a man doesn’t venture into without making proper arrangements. He could be bothered about where to get money to sustain you and the baby. That you are both working isn’t enough for some men.
From your own admission, your culinary ability isn’t wide enough to excite any man. What you give him are things he can do on his own so what is the essence of your being in his house?
You need to cultivate is palate with dishes he would always want more of. It would do you a world of good to know what he likes and learn to do it differently. A talk with his mother or sister would give you clue into what he wants.
Most men are like babies and like a mother, you have to think ahead, guess what makes them most happy. Look for an elderly woman to teach you the secret of good cooking; not with modern seasonings but with those native spices that never fail to bring on the smile to even the most difficult man to please. You have to help remind him of his mother’s cooking. Also get another person to teach you contemporary cooking. You just must find a way of getting him to stay excited.
Don’t force communication. It is always best to lead by example. Open up on yourself. Engage him in general talks before moving on to personal talks. To do it right, find out an issue he is passionate about and use it as a spring board for your communication.
On the issue of sex, you can get him to do your bidding without talking or making it obvious. Get music, the right kind of night-gown, the right kind of pants, perfume and the right touch of make-up here and there to get him rushing into your arms. He may not like a woman making the first move but you can help fire his interest.
Above all, learn to pray for your home; your husband and unborn children. For most people, it all started as a house, it became a home through determination to weave our own pattern of memoirs into it. Home doesn’t happen in a day, it takes years of investments to achieve. If nothing, thank God for the early start, at least you have no illusion into what you are getting yourself into.
Thanks for being there for us.
I have a relationship that has lasted almost a year now. It all seemed good at inception, but things later became unclear as I found it increasingly difficult to decode what my man wants from the relationship.
We are both in our 30s. Looking back, I really cannot say I have been happy in the relationship as it seems I have been the one working to keep it going. At a point, I called him to let him know that we haven’t been able to achieve our expectations for the relationship; that we should consider going our separate ways for good. But he wouldn’t hear of it and promptly promised to make amends.
Six months into the relationship, he started talking of plans to see my people. Shortly after, I couldn’t resist his sex advances anymore; six months into the relationship, we had sex for the first time. Surprisingly, I became pregnant. Even though we took measures after sex, the child still stayed. We both agreed to keep the pregnancy and formalise the union before the stomach starts bulging.
Few weeks later, I had problem with my accommodation, he suggested that I move in with him, while gradually planning for the traditional marriage.
Agatha, my dilemma is that things seem to have changed suddenly. He no longer has respect for me, approaches me in manners that are abusive, unfriendly and insulting. I have realised that he is very harsh. Communication is totally lacking in our relationship. I don’t know what to say or do to change his attitude towards me.
He stays glued to the television watching movies day in, day out ignoring my need for him. Even when I requested for his presence, he tells me he will join me soon, but keeps away still. He rejects my sex advances and avoids body contact with me.
I have tried to fathom what could be responsible for this, but have not found any answer. I know I am clean, so he cannot be irritated by my appearance. I am afraid for this union because it is a caricature of the kind of life I envisaged with him.
Furthermore, we both work. I give him breakfast of bread and tea in the morning, he has his lunch while at work and for dinner, I prepare either pap and beans cake, noodles or yam and egg or vegetable or rice. This has been the routine. I would like to experiment with other dishes as we appear to be fed up with the same meals every week but Agatha, I have no clues on what else to prepare.
Please, how do I get the love and affection of this man back? I can’t imagine myself spending the rest of my life with a man who sleeps on the same bed with me, yet refuses to touch me even though he knows how much I desire having sex with him. If things continue like this and we get married, one or two things or both will happen. I will either be unfaithful to him by having affairs outside or would be frustrated and kill myself. What we have right now is just a house and not a home. It’s so boring. What do you advise? There is so much distance between us; we can’t even freely share our thoughts.
Worried Woman.
Dear Worried Woman,
There is so much that go into building a good relationship. It is a tortuous journey and one which requires absolute patience, wisdom, diplomacy, sacrifice, determination and understanding to make it work.
One year is too short for both of you to get the required understanding to push on.
I like to compare the process of getting to the ideal relationship to the process of washing the bitterness off a bitter-leaf. Without patience and dedication the washer will not get it right. The same technique is required of a relationship and marriage. There is no rushing the process or a short cut to tolerance. As a matter of fact, relationship requires more than mere tolerance to make it work, it requires stupidity on the part of one of the parties to get it into shape.
In this instance, you would have to learn to be tolerant to make your relationship with this man work.
Frankly, you both didn’t give yourselves and this relationship time to grow a proper tap-root before the pregnancy came.
A relationship planned for eternity requires more than what both of you invested into this relationship to make it work.
Before both of you destroy something that has the potentials to be good, there is the need for you especially to go back to your drawing board. This is because often time, the past provides us with pointers on how to navigate the future. Rich in experience, the past is our heritage for a better tomorrow. Can you remember what first attracted you to this man as well as the thrills of those embryonic days of your relationship? Why him from among the many offers you had? That you settled for him shows that there is more to him that your current situation is permitting you to remember.
The essence of this exercise is to remind you of those things that never change about us. No matter how situations and states of our minds deceive us into thinking otherwise, those first feelings we feel for our partners never really change. They remain buried in our minds and only need certain level of concentration to bring them back and remind us of those things that are most important.
The real challenge is our willingness to go down memory lane when present circumstances crowd our minds with negative thoughts.
This kind of reflection would also help point you at the mistakes you have also committed along the way. Because of the intensity of your emotional pains as well as the disappointments you currently feel at his behaviour, chances are you may not even think you are to blame for anything.
Can you think of your contributions to this impasse? How much has your attitude affected his’? During the process of emotional pollination and integration, we import not just the positive but also the negative. The influence of our negative importation most of the time inform the reactions we get from our partners who out of disappointments begin to exhibit attitudes that end up becoming our major cause of irritations.
Has your being pregnant unconsciously affected the way you relate with him? For instance, has it given you the confidence to call his bluff on certain issues, taken it for granted that you have him whether he likes it or not? Sometimes we put certain attitudes without pausing to evaluate its implications on those close to us.
You appear more concerned about the sexual side of this relationship than in other areas. Has it occurred to you that the fear of being a father, his lack of unpreparedness could frighten him off sex for a while? And for some first time fathers, the thought of making love to their women when pregnant scares them for fear of hurting the baby growing inside the womb.
Planning for marriage and a baby at the same time isn’t easy. These are both capital intensive projects a man doesn’t venture into without making proper arrangements. He could be bothered about where to get money to sustain you and the baby. That you are both working isn’t enough for some men.
From your own admission, your culinary ability isn’t wide enough to excite any man. What you give him are things he can do on his own so what is the essence of your being in his house?
You need to cultivate is palate with dishes he would always want more of. It would do you a world of good to know what he likes and learn to do it differently. A talk with his mother or sister would give you clue into what he wants.
Most men are like babies and like a mother, you have to think ahead, guess what makes them most happy. Look for an elderly woman to teach you the secret of good cooking; not with modern seasonings but with those native spices that never fail to bring on the smile to even the most difficult man to please. You have to help remind him of his mother’s cooking. Also get another person to teach you contemporary cooking. You just must find a way of getting him to stay excited.
Don’t force communication. It is always best to lead by example. Open up on yourself. Engage him in general talks before moving on to personal talks. To do it right, find out an issue he is passionate about and use it as a spring board for your communication.
On the issue of sex, you can get him to do your bidding without talking or making it obvious. Get music, the right kind of night-gown, the right kind of pants, perfume and the right touch of make-up here and there to get him rushing into your arms. He may not like a woman making the first move but you can help fire his interest.
Above all, learn to pray for your home; your husband and unborn children. For most people, it all started as a house, it became a home through determination to weave our own pattern of memoirs into it. Home doesn’t happen in a day, it takes years of investments to achieve. If nothing, thank God for the early start, at least you have no illusion into what you are getting yourself into.
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