How do I know good girl for marriage?

Dear Agatha, 

It’s always great reading the advice you give to people, and I confess I have been learning a lot from them. I badly need your advice on this issue eating me up.
 I am a 34-year-old self-employed graduate who hasn’t experienced a true man and woman relationship in his life until early this year. Although I am not a virgin but my father’s abusive nature as well as the kind of upbringing he exposed us to makes it difficult for me to approach any woman for a relationship. My father treated us like babies hence chatting women for me is a huge problem. 

I wish to marry a lady who would love me for what I am. How do I know if I meet one? I am confused whether to marrying a graduate like me, or secondary school leaver. Please I need your urgent reply. 

Confused Guy.

Dear Confused Guy,

There is nothing much in talking to a lady. All you have to do is to be your natural self. Don’t try to impress because that is where the problem usually begins. By being your natural self, you give her the chance to see the real you, know what your limitations are as well as your strength. This way you give her the choice to develop natural likeness for you or not.

Irrespective of whatever kind of training you had as a child, the fact that you have been able to talk and sleep with a woman shows that your problem isn’t your inability to talk to a woman but ability to manage a relationship beyond the physical side, a backlash of your relationship with your father. Because you lacked the warmth of a fatherly love as well as freedom to discover who you are, get into pranks like all children do, the knowledge of growing your relationship is missing.

To have a good relationship with anyone, you just have to learn to be friends with yourself first. Get to know who you are first; discover what makes you happy and complete as a person and a man. You also have to think of the kind of life you want, only then can you have a clear image of the kind of woman who will make you happy. It is only when you are at peace with yourself that you can conduct a successful relationship. To get the full benefit any relationship you enter into, look beyond sex and physical looks into the nature of the person involved. Look for friendship first in any woman you see. It is essential that you are able to communicate with each other easily. It is imperative that you are able to talk, get to know each other as two friends. This must be followed by a natural desire to find out the unique nature about the other person’s personality. 

In this package is contained temperament, patience, understanding, support, selflessness as well as loyalty. It is about the quality of faith both of you have in God as well as the determination to put the interest of the other person first. 

Unless you put in extra effort to forget the way your father treated you, it will always come between you and happiness. At 34, you should step out of that time in your life and crave a life of your own outside what your father did to you. It will become your personal tragedy if you allow the shadow of the past to always act as barrier to a happy future. The only way you can show your father that his kind of training wasn’t the best is to be happy by making a choice of the right woman to help you give your children the kind of warmth you were denied as a child. This is where your victory is as a man and one who didn’t have a nice childhood. 

A woman who loves you would put your happiness, comfort and interest before hers; won’t bother herself with what you are but who you are.  Paper qualification is immaterial to a happy union. Marriage is a very personal thing. A woman doesn’t have to be a graduate to make a good wife. The only qualification to have a marriage is true love for one’s spouse. True love breeds respect and support for one’s partner. Look out for a woman who has the fear of God and who loves you. Once a woman is in love with her man, there is nothing she cannot do to make the man happy. 

Good luck.