He forced me to do abortion, yet

Dear Agatha, 

Many thanks for your sincere and unbiased advice to the public.

Please I   need your help from this mess I put myself. I am in love with a guy of 30 years and this is our fifth year of the relationship.  I love this guy so much and he loves me too.  But my fear is that he is always getting angry so easily that he can one day kill someone. Besides, I don’t like his reactions to me at the slightest mistake. One day, he told me that I am a disturbance to his life. He is fond of keeping malice but no matter what he does, I still love him. Whenever we quarrel, I will always be the one to beg him, sending messages and calling for forgiveness even if he is the one that is wrong.

But something happened last month! I missed my period and told him about it, he told me to go for a pregnancy test, I did, the result was positive. Immediately I came with the results he started asking me why I should make such a mistake knowing that his elder brother is yet to get married and that he is the second child in the family. 

He thereafter gave me two days to think and know what to do about the pregnancy. On the second day, he came to me and started to quarrel with me again that he isn’t prepared for marriage especially as his elder brother is still single. He says there is no way he would marry before his brother.  

As he left, he told me to do what I wanted with the pregnancy. Thereafter, he started avoiding me, not answering my calls I felt sick at once. From that point, I started losing concentration so much that my work suffered.  

Part of my problem became how to tell my mother and siblings about my condition. Being the first-child of   our parents and with my father late, I decided to abort the baby. But to my surprise, he came back a week after asking about the pregnancy. I told him I had it aborted.  

He started cursing me that he regretted the day he met me, that why should I abort his baby; that my actions indicate that the baby wasn’t his in the first place. He ended by telling me it was over between us. After he finished that, I reminded him of his earlier statement that I should do what I wanted with the baby since he wasn’t ready to be a father yet or get married. Since then I have been crying and begging God for forgiveness but after all these things I still love this guy and I want him back. I love him so much that I cannot do without him, but he have refused my calls and also refused to talk to me.  I am in a big messed, please what should I do, because I have killed a human being.

Agatha, should I still beg him for forgiveness or should I quit the relationship after building all my love and my life around him? I don’t want to lose him no matter what.  What about my future?

Worried Lady.

Dear Worried Lady, 

Take a break from it all, because from the tone of this letter you are heading for a psychological breakdown. You need time alone to first reconcile yourself with everything that happened, make your peace with God before thinking of what to do with your relationship. To attempt to find answers to everything at once would spell disaster for you emotionally. 

The first thing here is the issue of the abortion. No matter what he said or didn’t do, you shouldn’t have terminated the life of that baby. Much as I understand your feelings and the little choice his attitude presented you with, like you that child had a right to live. Honestly I know exactly the thoughts that must have flooded through your minds when he rejected you and the unborn child.

 Many ladies in your shoes would do exactly what you did to avoid explaining the paternity of your child to your family members who since the death of your father had in some ways put their hopes on you, seeing in you an opportunity to fulfill one dream or the other. 

If it would help you focus, a lot of us too have at one time or the other exercised that right over our bodies, but God is a forgiving one who sees and knows more than we would ever know.

Begging for forgiveness is the best step you can take on this matter. He is the only one that can cleanse your guilt and make right what has gone wrong. Not only that, He did know from the beginning that you weren’t going to keep the baby, but like so many women you failed that test of true love and appreciation of this special gift from God. 

It isn’t so much for the abortion, but for the rejection of His gift, efforts and love. Seek Him through prayers; once He sees the regrets in your heart, He would forgive you. In future, if you must sleep with a man, don’t put yourself in the situation of getting pregnant again. Use preventive methods to put pregnancy at bay until you are ready.

Abortion could be an immediate solution to what many women think is a problem of an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, the fact remains that it carries with it a huge danger for the unmarried woman. In some cases, it could actually bring on the problem of infertility or a more fatal end, death! For everywoman that goes in for abortion, it is like committing suicide because the procedure could also take her life.

Pray to God that He heals you of any negative effect of that decision you took on your own. 

Frankly, you should have given him more time to think before taking the decision to end the pregnancy. Yes, he acted like a coward, denying you when you needed him the most, but try putting yourself in his shoes to appreciate the chaos of thoughts that went through his mind when you informed him about the pregnancy.

In the first place, there was no decision between the two of you to get pregnant, therefore coming to him to inform him about it gave him shivers. First, the thought of how to provide for you and the child instantly ballooned into a huge fear for him. Considering that it wasn’t planned, he didn’t think before acting out his fears. At the time he was mouthing those painful words, he had not sat down to consider the implications of what those words or the effects they would have on you. 

He said all those things in his confused state of mind without thinking at all. From his behaviour, by the time he sat down to think, marshal his plans, he was more than ready to live up to his responsibilities as a father. 

Sincerely both of you are guilty of the same crime, that of not thinking out your actions before acting. Had he taken the news like a man, thought of his option carefully, you wouldn’t have been forced to abort the baby and had you also given him sometime to thaw, informed him of your decision to end the pregnancy, you still would have been pregnant with the baby.

There is no relationship without a history of hurts, pains, choices and forgiveness. All these are what give character to relationship and life generally. 

If you still love him and think you can really forgive and forget the incident that brought both of you to this point, seek him out for discussions. However, in agreeing to continue the relationship with him, there is the need for you to go beyond the pregnancy thing. 

Ensure you bring up all outstanding issues you have either discussed or have been agitating your mind. He should be made to understand that everyone needs a measure of respect and that for you to continue to function happily in the relationship, he has to learn to admit his faults as well as treat you with some esteem. The danger of keeping quiet for fear of losing him is that he would never have the kind of regard you need as a woman to occupy his life. 

You will only be short changing yourself of the benefits of marriage by allowing him to escape with those habits of his you don’t like.

However, be careful that you don’t force yourself to continue in a relationship that would, at the end of the day, hurt you. Once it becomes obvious that there is nothing to salvage, let go and allow the will of God for you to prevail.

Also listen to what he has to say about you. This way you place your relationship on a new level of success. 

As for your future, learn to plan for it by staying close to God who has the master plan of your life. 

Good luck.