Many expect my wife but doubt if…

Dear Agatha,

You are a great councillor; keep it up dear.
I need your help. I will be turning 27 years of age soon and presently not in any relationship. I have been out of relationship for almost a year and half. It has been a wonderful period for me since it has afforded me the opportunity of focusing on my career without any distraction. 
Irrespective of the relative peace I have enjoyed these past years, I have come to realise the need to be in a relationship that will lead to settling down. My family and colleagues have been putting pressure on me, demanding to know when I would be bringing home a woman. A lot of people assume I am married because of my nature. I trust God so much that He has always been there for me in times of difficulties he always come to my aid. However there is this girl I met who thinks I am too difficult and stubborn because I don’t accept the kind of relationship they think I want. Unlike most of them, I belief in marriage and think both parties should respect and value each other.

Unlike so many guys my age, my experience with women is limited. I started my first relationship in my final year and when I discovered it wasn’t working between the lady and I, I opted out.

I need to be in a relationship but don’t know how to go about it. Please help me. 

Confused Boy.

Dear Confused Boy, 

The best place to begin is by having a clear vision of what you want in life. It must be crystal clear to make it possible for you to know the kind of woman you need to help you carry on the dream. 

To achieve this, you must learn to look beyond the physical appearance of the woman you want for a wife. A lot of times, appearances can be very deceptive and frankly, it takes more than a pretty face to make a marriage work. It takes love, care, tolerance, attention, respect, understanding, patience and responsibility to make a marriage work.

For your marriage to work, the desire has to come from deep within you. It has to be something you want because it is the only way to acquire the kind of determination every marriage needs to scale through the difficult times.

You also have to accept one basic truth about life, the imperfection of us all. This is where the sacrifices in marriages grow from. You must at all times be ready to make the sacrifice marriage requires to be stable and you can only do this for a friend. Therefore ensure the woman you plan to share your life with is a friend, one who will always have the understanding you need to make your home a happy one.

To get that kind of woman, resist the urge of placing sex on the front burner. Begin by offering her friendship before anything else. This way, you get to know her without the encumbrance of sexual emotions, which often than not stifles a relationship even before it takes off.

Above all learn to be very honest with yourself at all times. What you cannot accept in the long run, don’t out of fear of losing the affection of a woman, pretend you can, because overtime the issue would eventually make the relationship very difficult to conduct.

Just be practical in your search and above all entrust God with your dreams.

Good luck. 

I am considering taking a second wife

Dear Agatha,

I am an engineer by profession. I have a good job and live comfortably with my wife and son. But I have this recurring problem, which always leaves me helpless.

I am an only child, not because my parents couldn’t have more children but for the reason that all my siblings died at very tender ages. Incidentally, my father too was an only child. 

Because of this situation, my kinsmen are always very protective towards me. They always take special interest in matters concerning me because I have nobody to stand by or for me. Even though I managed to survive the odds of my situation, it wasn’t a cup of tea being alone in the whole world. I survived through the grace of God. 

My wife and I are also facing this same problem. After six years of marriage, we have only a son. We have been to different medical doctors and through series of fertility tests but nothing was found wrong with either my wife or I.   

Because of the loneliness of being an only child, I am considering taking a second wife. This is irrespective of the love I have for my wife and my position in the church, which I know I would forfeit if I take on another wife. 

I don’t want my son to go through what I went through as a child.  

Agatha, I am at a very terrible crossroads. Please at this point, I don’t know what to do, advise me.

Worried Man.

Dear Worried Man, 

Your problem is not physical but spiritual and I honestly empathise with you because like a great number of us, you are an innocent victim of forces and consequences you know nothing about. 

Because what you are contending with is a foundational problem, even if you marry all the women in the world, unless there is a dislodgement of whatever powers are holding your paternal lineage hostage, the children would also die like all your siblings. If nothing was found medically wrong with both of you, what makes you so sure you would be able to produce more children from other women? 

Besides, you would only be adding to your very complex situation by bringing in another woman into your life. Ask those who know, polygamy has never been a solution to the problem in the sense that every person involved in the arrangement would do anything to be in the vintage position. 

What happens if the new woman you are bringing in is unable to provide you with more children? Keep marrying until you succeed? Do you know the more incriminating spiritual problems these women may be experiencing in their families? Do you know the diabolical powers that could come into your peaceful world to worsen what you feel is already a complicated situation in your life? Spiritual problems, unlike physical problems need wisdom and plenty of God’s involvement to obliterate. For your own sake as well as your family’s sake, especially the innocent child involved, don’t depend on your wisdom or understanding of issues alone. Take everything to God first through prayers. 

It is not just enough to decide on bringing in another woman. Have you sat down to consider the increased headaches you would be contending with by acquiring more women in your life? Also consider the peace you would be forfeiting by having more than one wife? How rich are you to fairly meet all their demands?

Two issues are at play here. One is the fact that all the surviving children in your family are men and secondly, that every attempt to increase the number always result in the deaths of subsequent children.

The question you should ask is why is this so? At what point did this begin to happen in your lineage? Did the trend start with your grandfather? Before this trend, what was the situation? How many children did your great grandfather have? Were they all girls? If there were boys, how many of them outside your grandfather survived?

Go back into your family and investigate the reasons for this. Is there a particular family god your ancestors worship? That you are today a Christian doesn’t stop you suffering the consequences unless there is a proper deliverance. 

Many a time, we ignorantly think because we have given our lives to Christ, it can prevent the consequences of our ancestors’ decision from falling on us. Our past remains our heritage. There is no way we can talk about our present and future without the past. The past remains indelible.

If one’s past has a major fault, it follows that one’s present and future would have some of those deformities from the past. 

You are today facing this challenge because something isn’t right about your past. Deliverance sessions enable ancient doors, closed doors to be opened for the Holy Spirit to restructure the damage. To put the past where it belongs, we must take the step in our present to give the future a new meaning.

If your grandfather isn’t alive, go to your father to tell you some things he remembers about his family. If there is nobody in your family to turn to, your kinsmen must have one or two useful information to give. Jot down whatever information you get, no matter how insignificant it appears. What you consider unimportant may be the key to your problem. 

If possible, visit your ancestral home. No matter how far removed your relatives maybe from you; you must enlist their support in this battle to be free from the past.

To begin with, go to God in prayers. Remember you wear the shoes hence in the best position to know how it fits. If you don’t cry out, demand for God’s personal intervention, nobody can do it for you. Your cry would lead you to your source of help. 

Call the leadership of the church and ask for spiritual support. If possible, ask them to accompany you on the journey to your ancestral home. There is no doubt you need all the help to overcome this problem and the more spiritually inclined people in your church that stands in gap for you, the better. 

While you research the cause of the problem, it is also pertinent to look at the average life span in your family especially if your grandfather and father are dead. If however they are still alive, enlist their support through proper education of this unwholesome trend. 

The most important thing you need is to have complete faith in God.

Your son doesn’t have to end up an only child. You can adopt a child to grow with him, to answer your name and to remove whatever restriction has been placed on you. The attack is targeted at your natural ability to have another child outside the one allowed. They cannot stop you having another child through adoption. 

This is a better, more peaceful and rewarding option than the issue of multiple marriages you are contemplating. 

Nobody would know the difference between your biological child and adopted child if you treat them equally and fairly.

Good luck

When he couldn’t respect my covenant, I bowed out

Dear Agatha, 

I am 17 years of age in a relationship with a boy of 21. He deflowered me. Feeling extremely bad about it, I made a covenant with God never to do it until my wedding night.

Instead of my boyfriend to respect my wish and feelings, he took to forcing himself on me at every opportunity he gets. Of recent, as part of his attempts to blackmail me, he went back to his ex-girlfriend I discovered he dated behind me for five months.

She got pregnant and he assisted her in terminating the pregnancy after which he came back to me begging for forgiveness. 

Despite what he did, I forgave him but I discovered he was still the same person who wanted me to go back on my covenant not to have sex until my wedding night. When his pressures and accusations became too much for me to handle, I terminated the relationship. Now he and his friends are going about calling me a wicked person. I am really worried about what they are saying about me prompting me to write and ask this question, was I wrong in asking him to go?

Confused Girl.

Dear Confused Girl, 

Don’t allow him or his friends blackmail you into going back on your decision. It is gratifying to know that you realised the inherent danger of what you did and took steps to prevent more mistakes in future. From his attitude, it is obvious that he desires you for his bed and nothing more. If he truly loved you, he would neither have cheated on you with another girl nor would he be pressuring you into sleeping with him.

Don’t mind whatever names they call you. What matters is how you see yourself and how God sees you. If you hadn’t the sense to terminate the relationship, he would have also treated you like he did the other lady whom he got pregnant and aided her in terminating the relationship. 

At 17, you don’t need such people around because of the negative influence on one’s life. This boy and his circle of friends are capable of anything, hence the need for you to be careful and mindful of your association with them. 

Learn to ignore whatever they say. It is all part of growing up. A lot of grown up women with determined spirits like you were also called names by naughty minded men at one time or the other, making yours a non-issue. 

If you have to be wicked to protect your life from all the attendant problems that come from indiscriminate and too early sex, so be it. It is better to be called wicked girl than to be called a girl of low moral values. Just be consistent and determined in your chosen part. What should be most important to you now is your education, not men and their problems. At your age, men are huge distractions capable of derailing your dreams in life. 

Involvement with them in the wrong way makes concentration more on productive issue of passing your examinations very difficult primarily, because you are only maturing yourself and lacks the strength of mind not to be affected by the thrills and pains that come with relationships. If adults get derailed by these emotions, you can imagine how difficult it would be for you to combine these emotions of relationship, disappointments, sexual pressures, fear of pregnancy or Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) with studying to pass your examinations. This is the point where lot of young girls and boys get completely derailed for life, so be very careful not to be one of the statistics. For this reason, have them only as friends for now to give you time to plant good fruits for your future. I am sure you have learnt one or two lessons from all these. Always remember them when next another man comes before you are ready to have a relationship with any man. And don’t ever forget to tell him from the beginning of your decision not to have sex until your wedding night. Only the one that agrees and supports your intention is for real. And please, establish a relationship with God because you need Him in your life to always be on the right path. 

Good luck.

Who do I choose between the two girls?

Dear Agatha,

I have been facing a lot of confusion concerning my life. I have been in a relationship with this lady for years now. Before we added a year to our relationship, we had a problem that led me into a messy relationship with another lady. 

I call it a stupid mess because I am not benefiting from it. Instead, it is draining my pocket, which is making me lose concentration at school and at work. Currently, I am between two ladies and don’t know whom to settle for. The second lady deflowered me. My feeling for the first lady is pure and clean, devoid of sex while my feeling for the second lady is woven around the aroma of sex being my instructor. I always call on her whenever I feel like having sex.

Because of this, I don’t know who to give the marching orders out of these two women. Please help me make the right choice.

PA.

Dear PA,

The choice before you is that of what is most important to you in life and subsequently in that woman who would give support to your dreams in life. Sex is what everywoman can give a man. Even if she lacks the kind of experience you find in another woman, if you worth your salt as a man, you can teach the woman in your life how to please you in bed. But peace of mind is only what a few women can give their men.

Every couple has the ability to patent its sex in such a way to give pleasure forever. It is just a matter of imagination, honesty and pure sense of adventure.

This is however different when it has to do with attitude and character. These are what make sex between couples different from what they have experienced with causal friends. Sex has its own power of communication and the value of this aspect of sex can only be enhanced when the relationship is enveloped in friendship. This is what gives it a different kind of flavour. Therefore, you need more than desire to enjoy sex. What is happening between you and this lady is raw want, especially as you are experiencing sex for the first time. The thrill of a woman’s body is what is influencing you right now and the only power of communication you and this woman have unlike your first relationship where you both have mastered the act of communication that comes from pure friendship.

What you should do now is get out for a little while. You need time on your own to revalue your relationship with both women. Revisit the reason for your disagreement with your first girlfriend. What led to it? Why did you jump immediately into another relationship? First take a deep look at your relationship with your first girlfriend. Are there areas you think she is lacking? In what way are you also contributing to the problem? Just like it takes two to tangle, it also takes two to destroy something beautiful. At this crucial point, you need to be very honest with yourself to avoid regrets later in life. 

Take retrospective look at your relationship with the first lady. In all your months together, how much impact and changes has brought into your life? If you were to live without her, what would you miss most about her? Do you think, deep down, this other woman would be able to give you the kind of happiness she gives you outside sex?

By keeping in view your dreams in life and x-raying your relationships with these women, you give yourself the chance of knowing whom to settle for. The woman must have the ability to awaken in you a desire to excel through her unconditional support, patience, loyalty, friendship, respectful, tolerance, prayerful and understanding. Any woman who isn’t patient, lacks the selflessness to make a relationship work, isn’t prepared to tolerate the expected ups and downs would not have the kind of sensitivity needed to propel a man to attain his best in life.

A man needs more than a bedmate, he needs a friend to always come home to. One who will always understand that it takes more in life to make a dream come true and is forever on her knees praying for her family to succeed and who has the right kind of respect to cope even when tempers are high.

As man, you must look out for that woman who has the ability to cope when you are not around or when things are not going well. She must be a reservoir of strength for those dry days as well as the willingness to give her best to make her man and family happy.

Only a woman, who has mother qualities in her, can make things happen for her man and home. But one who strives solely in sex cannot be trusted to withstand those bad times we all experience sometime in our relationships. 

Therefore, be careful you don’t throw away gold and settle for dust. Do ask God for His guidance in all these.

Good luck. 

She avoids avenue for peace after any quarrel…

Dear Agatha,

I am a Ghanaian and have been reading most of your works on the nigeriaworld.com site, and I must say it’s a great deal of insight God has given you. God bless you more. Agatha, I have been in relationship with this girl for the past one year and two months, and I must say that it has been great until last month when we started having little squabbles over trivial issues. I have realised my woman to be quick tempered, gets angry over issues of no importance.

I am in the habit of calling her most of the time and for reasons of official responsibilities, I am unable to call her, she becomes very furious and very unmindful of how mean she can get when she is in this mood. In that kind of mood, she has severally threatened to end the relationship, and would in fact remain inaccessible for days.  Agatha, I love this lady so much that we have plans to get married. How will married life be with this attitude? How do I make her stop going into hiding for days when we have a disagreement?

I do need your advice.

Worried Man.

Dear Worried Man, 

Thank God you are not in the dark regarding the character of the woman you intend spending the rest of your life with. At least she is honest enough not to hide her true nature from you. The choice is now yours: would you be able to cope with her kind of person or not? If she has been good all these while until a month ago, then what do you think could be the issue? Has she been complaining about anything in particular all these while, perhaps your attitude or character? More often than not, people close to us take their attitude from our reactions to issues concerning them. If this is a recent development, you should begin the search from your end. Have you demonstrated the kind of concern expected from someone who claims to love her? If she has consistently complained about an issue, take your cue from there. Ask her when she is happy, and most likely to listen to you why you are both having these little issues between the two of you. Be careful not to make her feel like she is the reason for the problem in the relationship. Even if deep down, you think she is more of the problem, present it as a joint one. This way, you give her the opportunity of opening up and telling it as it is. Allow her to bare her mind completely because that is the only way you can get an idea of why she keeps behaving this way and know too how to help her beat the habit.

After she has spoken, also tell her your worry about her behaviour and how much it is beginning to affect the dream you both have of sharing your lives together. Don’t pretend at this point; let her know you are really apprehensive of the future of the relationship, and that you are in fact at the point of reconsidering your stance over the relationship. Because she is the one dishing out the menu, she may not know how much hurt she is serving you unless you draw her attention to it. In situation like this, give her time to change after the discussion. Furthermore, don’t delude yourself that she would completely change, it doesn’t happen that way. She would only make the effort but you have to make up your mind on the percentage of sacrifice you think you can make for peace in this relationship. 

Every relationship has its measure of sacrifices to make it work. Her temper is something you can control by ignoring her. No woman likes to be ignored or treated as inconsequential. Each time her temper rises, walk away from her, refusing to sit around her to listen to whatever she has to say. If you are not around her, you won’t have to hear what she has to say. By the time her temper blows away gently, but firmly tell her the damage her temper is causing the relationship and how if she fails to control it, it might make you walk away from her finally despite the love you have for her. There is always a stage of building and consolidation in every relationship. You are both in the stage of constructing your relationship in the way you would both benefit from it.  Good luck.

Nasty days I had with my ex lessens my passion…

Dear Agatha,

My boyfriend has been desperate to put me in a family way until I prayed and fasted. During the week of my fasting, I got a text message from him that “you are a good girl; I don’t deserve to marry you because if I do, you will have problems and get older than your age because you won’t have peace.”

Sometime later, he called and I thanked him for the text message, only for him to claim ignorance of it. He claimed not knowing when he typed or sent the message. He began to beg me to forgive him. I told him at that point that we were not meant to be. 

Somehow, we got back because I truly loved him and couldn’t control my feelings for him. During the process of my coming back, I dreamt that I became pregnant and lost it. True, I actually got pregnant and he came to see my parents as well as inform them of his desire to marry me. Like in the dream, I eventually lost the pregnancy. 

In another dream, I dreamt seeing him with two children and later discovered he is not only a father but married too. Although he was planning to divorce his wife, I felt disappointed and too bad. He didn’t tell me himself, but I got all the information from dream. 

When I confronted him, he began to cry and beg for forgiveness. He says he lied because he didn’t want to lose me and that he knew I would never have accepted him if I know anything about him having a wife and children. I felt betrayed and wounded by a man I once loved but who now appeared like a total stranger to me. 

Two days after, I got a call that he collapsed in the office. When I got there, he was still pleading with me to forgive him as well as accept to be his wife. I told him it was over. His wife kept calling and sending me text messages, calling me all sorts of names. All these happened in 2009. After that I promised myself I wouldn’t have anything to do with any man for eight months. Right now, I have a lot of men demanding for my interest.

The problem is that I don’t have feelings at all. Some say, I am mean and scared of love. 

Agatha, I love children a lot and I get joy from them than I do from male company. Please advise me. Am I overdoing it?  I don’t want to disappoint any man by pretending I love him. 

Confused Woman.

Dear Confused Woman, 

This man didn’t disappoint you as much as you did yourself. Granted he lied to you when you both started but God stepped in to help you put things in their right perspective. 

You elected to ignore this help even when you confirmed from your conversation with him that the message you got was indeed help from above. You, out of your own volition, went into the relationship, got pregnant and miscarried like you were also shown in your dream.

Even when you ignored all these help signs, God for the third time showed you through another dream that not only is this man married but also has children. Something you later discovered to be true.

Honestly, you should be grateful that God prevented you from making a costly mistake of your life. Turning your back against men isn’t a solution to your self-induced disappointment. To continue to act this way, is telling God that you aren’t grateful to Him for His mercies and help. 

Since you have a relationship with God, one that employs dreams to warn you of what is to happen in the future, instead of determining your own case, why not first go to God in prayers with the specific request that He points you at the right direction to go?

If you want children, you must consider marrying some day. Marriage and children come together. Take your time to rediscover yourself. In doing this, consider what is important to you most in life. That should form the nectar of whatever steps you would take concerning your future. This entails discovering yourself first before knowing what kind of man you need around you.

You failed with this man because you didn’t bother to find out if he is right for your kind of dream. Had you devoted time to talking to him, he would have made one or two slips that will either show that he isn’t right for you or revealed that he is already married. 

Beyond this is your personal relationship with God. You are lucky the pregnancy terminated itself else you would have lived in regrets at your refusal to submit yourself to the will of God. For someone close to God, you should have known better than to sleep with him. There is no way you can be objective when sex is involved in a relationship. This is why it was very difficult for you to heed all the warnings God gave you concerning this man.

The lesson from this relationship is to depend more on God; less on yourself. Once you align yourself with the wishes of God for you, you won’t have to struggle with yourself over an issue you cannot control. The right man would come. And when he does, your joy and happiness would be unlimited.

Good luck.