He doesn’t trust me yet he wants marriage

Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, 08054500626


Dear Agatha,



I have read your column a couple of times and I am really impressed by the way you treat issues. I have an issue that is disturbing me seriously.

I have been dating this guy for about 10 months and have met some of his family members. He is nice and caring and has this rule of privacy.

I cannot pick his calls nor he mine. He has mentioned marriage a couple of times but has not met my family members apart from my younger sister. I have male friends he is aware of, but something happened when I went to see one of my male friends and the unthinkable happened. He, unknown to me, took my international passport from my bag. I only got to know when I left his house.

He denied seeing it when I called to ask if he had seen my passport. He only admitted to seeing and taking it when I decided to lodge a report with the Police. He said the cleaners found my passport and that I should come and collect it.

I went and he forcefully had his way with me. It was a very shameful thing for me. My boyfriend suspected something was wrong with me. I eventually had to tell him that I went to the other guy to collect my passport as well as what happened. I apologised for not telling him before going to the other guy’s place or that he called to inform me that he had seen my passport.

He didn’t react. I felt very bad and was moody throughout. He called me during that period but I noticed I was not excited to pick his calls any longer. He says he does not trust me again and yet he says he still wants to marry me.

This is my major problem. What kind of marriage would it be? I am afraid what happened will always be a reference point in our marriage. He might even use it to punish me, and I am not sure I am ready to continue the relationship. I am not sure of what I feel for him again. I have taken full responsibility for what happened. Please I would like to know your take on this issue.

Confused Lady.



Dear Confused Lady,

Precisely what is the reason for your anger against your boyfriend: the fact that he didn’t say anything or go to challenge the other man for raping you?

Sincerely, he is handling the whole thing well. A lot of men would not be so matured about this incident. They would naturally query your motive for going to the man’s house without informing him. Besides what kind of relationship exists between you and this man to give him access to your handbag? He should be the only drawing back, not you.

There is no way the other man would have forced you into such a compromising situation if you hadn’t gone to his place. You should have been alerted to the kind of person he is when he denied not seeing a passport you didn’t take away from your bag, called several weeks after to inform you that the cleaner saw it and that you should come and collect it when he could easily drop it for you. In addition, how many weeks does it take a cleaner to tidy a room? His conduct should have alerted you to the fact that something wasn’t right about him.

If you are bothered about trust, you haven’t actually left your boyfriend with too much room to trust you in the first place. If you are in a serious relationship with a man who is hinting on marriage and has taken the vital step of introducing you to some members of his family, why do you think you should still have other male friends, ones you actually take time out to visit in their homes? How do you begin to build trust in that kind of relationship? The onus is always on the woman to prove her morality.

Yes, he is aware you have male friends, but it isn’t the same thing as you paying them visit in their homes. None of these would have happened in the first place if you hadn’t gone visiting this guy in his home. When a woman or man has an existing relationship, the other person’s feelings should always be taken into consideration at all times. No matter how permissive the world has become, there are certain codes of conduct that go with conducting a transparent relationship.

Trust begins with the extra mile one goes in ensuring the other person’s feeling is put into consideration. For instance, how would you feel if a lady friend of his comes to visit him or he takes it upon himself to visit such a friend in her house? How would you react if he comes to tell you that a lady friend he visited took away his passport from his folder and later comes back to you weeks after to say the lady who initially denied having the passport now compromised him when he went to collect the passport she had persistently denied having?

While you have every reason to be angry at being raped by a man you trusted, it is unfair to put any blame on your boyfriend who is fighting a battle between his love for you and sense of betrayal as a man. For goodness sake you are his girlfriend, the one he is obviously considering marrying. It can’t be tea party for him knowing that another man took advantage of you in a situation that could have been avoided. What we are talking about here is his ego, his pride as a man. A lot of thoughts would naturally be going on in his mind. One of them is the natural question of: are you telling the truth concerning the nature of relationship between you and this man?

Another concern is his seeming helplessness in protecting you from what happened. The fact that he is still calling you shows that his feelings for you are very deep.

Something tells me there is more to this issue than you are saying. If there is anytime for you to be honest with your feelings for this man, it is now. You also have to be truthful about what you really feel for this other man. One thing is to take responsibility for what happened another thing is for you to be very truthful with yourself. If you have feelings for this other man, be nice to yourself and admit it irrespective of what he did to you because your anger against your boyfriend is misplaced. He wasn’t the one that asked the other man to rape you, so why are you very bitter against him? Unless you sincerely answer this question, you will not get the answer you seek.

Love is a funny feeling. Sometimes it happens in the most unexpected places and with someone we hate to love. Granted you may have been abused by him, but if within those minutes he touched a place in your being which no man has ever touched, stop getting angry with yourself and your current boyfriend, and sort things out immediately within yourself. A woman can only feel this bad about her man only if another man has touched her in that special place.

You won’t know precisely what is eating at you unless you take time out to be by yourself to think of your current relationship, what is missing and what you really want.

If at the end of the day, you really feel there is nothing for you in this relationship, move on because you have come to the realisation that there can never be anything meaningful and not because you are finding a reason to dump him. What you are doing now is finding a reason by trying to read his mind. And unless you say what is really on your mind no one can help you.

Honesty remains your only way out of this situation.

Good luck.