With Auntie Agatha gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com Tel: 08054500626
Dear Agatha,
Thanks for your kind assistance to the society. God will continue to reward you abundantly in Jesus name.
I am one of your favourite readers and I must confess that I learnt a lot which is why I have to come to you and members of the public with my own. Like all others now that I have come to you, I am confident you will also put a smile on my face.
My relationship started with this girl in 1998 when I was posted to Jos during my youth service year.
She was still in secondary school then, now a graduate. Unfortunately, she betrayed my trust after all the promises we made to each other.
She is now an orphan. She lost her father long before I met her and her mother in 2003.
Due to the natural love I have for her, I promised to marry her, but to my pains and disappointment she got pregnant for another man who is unemployed and lives off his parents.
When I was initially told she was pregnant for another man I wept. I searched my heart for whatever I might have done wrong to her. This is a lady I have never maltreated, have never offended and have always accorded so much respect.
Because of her, I have closed my heart and eyes to any other woman. You can therefore imagine my hurt and pains especially since I have promised to marry her. I have all it takes to make a woman comfortable and everything to keep her company when I am not around. To say the least I wept bitterly. However, I still made attempts to see her to know why she did what she did.
To me she was the perfect girl of my dreams. That was in 2004.
Thereafter, I made up my mind never to trust any woman again.
I would have succeeded at this if she hadn’t come back into my life in 2006. In tears she came to plead for my forgiveness and to explain that she had given the baby to its father’s parents following due legal process in the court.
Against my better judgement and for the sake of the true love I have for her, I decided to take her back. After settling everything in court, she came to stay with me for four months. During this period, we planned our wedding ceremony, including prepaying for everything we needed for that day.
Since her parents were dead I called her sister to inform her of my intention to come and formally ask for the hand of her sister for marriage. She gave me a date.
Unknown to me another embarrassment and humiliation awaited me. For reasons best known to her, she acted as if she didn’t even know me or my friends who came with me. She didn’t offer us anything, not even water to drink. Confused, my friends demanded an explanation from her over her very cold reception.
Her response even surprised me the more. She claimed she was confused and before we knew what was happening she started crying. We were still trying to solve this riddle when a woman came into the room to ask her to hurry up as she was to accompany her to the market and that it was getting late.
The drama cumulated with her asking us to leave since she had to accompany the woman to the market.
I was shocked to my marrow. My friends and I agreed something was wrong somewhere but the puzzle resolved itself with the appearance of the father of her child in their house as we were about to enter into the car we came in with.
Immediately my girlfriend saw him, she stood still. After he left, I demanded some explanation from her but she still insisted she was confused but promised to come to my house to offer full explanations.
That was the last I saw of her.
It has been over a year. Though I am currently on a foreign assignment, I am still finding it very difficult to approach women due to this inherent fear I have that I would again be betrayed. I feel women are betrayers.
My reason for writing you is that a friend of me called to say this lady was charmed by the father of her child. This he achieved by summiting her picture to an herbalist. According to this friend, the potency of this charm has waned and that she is now asking for me.
Because I had earlier warned my friends never to give her any information about me, they haven’t told her where I am.
Please, Agatha, what do you want me to do? Unfortunately, despite everything she has done, I still love this girl but afraid of another disappointment and sincerely I don’t think my heart can withstand another of such treatments from her. Please tell me what to do.
Eli-One
Dear Eli-One,
The ultimate choice is yours to make because you are the one who can correctly measure your feelings for her, know what makes her extra special to you, know most things others don’t know about her and know what you want from life.
Concern over a good choice of a spouse comes from the effect a wrong choice not only have on the individual but other persons who have one or two reasons to associate with the person.
For instance, there is no way you would function properly and optimally in your job if your love life or home is in shambles. You need a good, understanding and trustworthy woman by your side to keep you going. This is why we sometimes say love is not often enough to make a couple absolutely happy.
You may love this woman with every fiber of your being but can you trust her to stay faithful to you always? Does she have what it really takes to make you comfortable to leave her for a long period of time, like in this situation where you are out of the country?
What guarantees do you have that the other man would not charm her again to begin to misbehave?
Taking her back into your life isn’t the issue. It is more than that. Have you ever tried to find out why she got involved with this man in the first place? Something must have brought about their making of that baby while she was still with you. If she were really in love with you, do you think she would have gone to the extent of sleeping with another man, let alone having a baby for him?
To be honest, there is no way both of you can ever be an item if she doesn’t first settle the issue of the bond between her and the father of her child. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if he existed in her life before you but that she got pregnant for him while she is supposed to be involved with you.
Currently, she is touting charm as being the second reason for her dumping you, what would be her next reason? We always have a good reason from our own perspective to the things we do. She would never run out of reasons and excuses. For this reason, you must know what brought them together to guide you in your final decision.
An understanding of the attraction between them from the beginning would give you a crystal picture of the type of likely challenges you would be encountering with her.
Also you must endeavour to understand the intensity of the other man’s feelings for her. Who he is and what he is capable of doing. If he truly charmed her into maltreating you when you went to her family in company of your friends to demand for her hand in marriage, then he is capable of other sinister things. You may think he doesn’t matter once your lady marries you but there is no way he would not continue to feature in your lives by virtue of that child that binds them. Children are a very magnetic lot capable of making two sworn enemies become friends overnight when their interest and life is at stake. Can you handle the use of that child as a prawn of blackmail by the man to always get close to your woman?
This is an angle you have all to tackle as clearly and logically as possible if you hope to be happy with this woman and your marriage to her. While it would be cruel to deny her the essential opportunity to see her child, it is also in your best interest to set the rules in your own marriage from the moment you decide to have her back in your life. The peculiarity of a situation makes patent solutions inevitable. You must fashion out a plan that would give you the most happiness in your marriage because your situation is different from that of many other couples who have children from other people before they met. Something has to go from her end to give you the assurance required by you to accept her back. Ask her what she is ready to give up for now?
With this type of woman, it is best, you don’t allow the sentiment of your heart rule you else your pains would become perennial.
If she is claiming confusion as her major reason for all the pains she is causing you, it is also important you demand to know what her dreams for her tomorrows are. That she is a graduate doesn’t confer on her the literacy demanded to maintain a good home and relationship. Encourage her to tell you about her ideal home and man. Her response would give you the answer to the question you are too afraid to ask her but which is making you this apprehensive about taking her back into your life.
Her family’s attitude also comes to play. Why would the sister give you a date when she knew there was nothing on ground? It is also necessary you understand their sentiments and thoughts to prevent more embarrassments especially if the man is from their area and you are not.
If the family didn’t support the other boy, the embarrassment you and your friends suffered on that day would have been avoided. So it is not just a matter of her looking for you but of her giving you a soft landing in her family circle.
But in all these, go first to God to ask for His directions and help. You need Him earnestly to be happy in life. To achieve this, you must let go of whatever sentiment you have for this lady for the will of God. To forgive her is one thing; to be sure she is worthy to be your wife is another thing. So don’t mix them up.
Don’t rush into any decision until you tackle all the outstanding issues at sake as well as the support of God in whatever you eventually decide to do.
Good luck.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
I can’t live to trust him again…
Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626
Dear Agatha,
I have been married for 24 years now. Two years ago, I discovered my husband has a love child and when I went to him to confirm if the information is true or not, he told me he wasn’t ready to talk to me about it.
But recently he woke me up not only to confirm the existence of this child who is 22 years of age, but also to inform me of his intentions to invite him over to the house.
I was shocked that for 22 years not only has he kept such vital information from me but that he has also being unfaithful for that long. I plan to end my marriage because I don’t think I can bring myself to trust him or believe anything he says again.
Mrs. Idagu.
Dear Mrs. Idagu,
Definitely the presence of a 22 years stepchild in a marriage of 24 years of age should shock you. You won’t be human if you don’t feel betrayed and pained at what your man has done to you.
You are equally right to feel that you can never trust him again as well as wanting to put as much distance between you and the man capable of hiding such important information from you.
Yes, the first impulse is to end the marriage but when you reflect on all you have been through as a person and as a couple, you will discover that going your different ways may not look so enticing at the end of the day.
So many things and factors make marriage the mixture of the bittersweet experience it is. The patterns are often too complex and confusing for us to interpret correctly. Trying to attribute a particular pattern to the institution often than not leaves a person very mystified and tired.
Because marriage draws its strength from the complexities of the human mind, it is only logical that from time to time, it would suffer major setbacks as well as hurtful experiences.
Doubtless, the fact that he could hide such a fundamental information from you all these years, makes this case extremely full of twists and turns but not enough for you to make you forget all the struggles, aches, peace and joy you have invested into the survival of the choice you made more than quarter of a century ago.
For you to have stayed with him all these years, something very right must be going on in your marriage. You may not have taken note of the reason until now but doing so now would help you recover all that you are about to throw away because of the disappointment you are now feeling towards your husband and marriage.
But take time out of all the pains and betrayals that have now characterise your marriage and go back to the very beginning. Trust me, this is the time your marriage needs such sentimental trips to the beginning of it all.
What was the attraction then? I am sure a lot of men must have come to you, with all sorts of proposals before he came to you. For you to have settled for him, you must have seen something different, a special feature that makes him completely different from all the other men whose offers you turned down.
Can you recall what that is or why you found all the other men unsuitable for you?
This is the crucial time you need such aids to help point you at the right directions. You need to have something very tangible to hold on to, something very personal between the two of you to make you want to stay and fight for your happiness. If you continue to focus only on your pains and sense of betrayal, it might not be easy for you to ignore the pains of this moment or the determination not to group this child with the father.
We all go through very dry spells in life and marriage especially. At almost every turn, the institution manifests thorns and needles that keep puncturing into emptiness all our carefully laid out plans.
Without doubts, stepchildren weren’t part of your plans when you married him but now that it has happened, there is nothing you can do to change reality.
This is one of the nightmares of many women, but one majority of marriages is daily contending with which means you don’t have a patent for it.
Given the age of your marriage and this child, chances are he and your first child would be within the same age bracket, which means you must thread your reactions with a lot of caution. Wisdom demands you allow him come into your home first, give you both the necessary opportunity to talk as two adults without the presence of his father.
For the sake of your children in particular, you must not do anything that would aggravate the situation especially against the background that he is a son and for the reason that your husband is one of those men who doesn’t talk much. It is always very easy when provoked to lump things together. If you are too hostile to his son and him, he may be driven to become hostile to your children irrespective of the salient fact that they are his children too.
The momentary hurt of your rejection of him and his son may make him also reject you as well as your children. For this reason be careful because whatever you do now would boomerang on your children. African men and their families are always very sentimental about things like this. If you don’t handle it with care, focus would shift from what he did to righteousness of your reactions. Those who may have supported your cause would be forced to offer protection to this young man against your children.
Whether you walk away from this marriage or not, it won’t change the paternity of your children or their relationship with this young man.
Besides, natural inquisitiveness of the young may not make them support your decision to leave their father because of this man. The excitement of meeting and getting to know him may pit you against one or two of them.
After 24 years of marriage, where do you want to start? Why do you want to leave your home at this time for a marital offence that is as old as time itself? What would be your gain? Would it change the way the man feels about his child or make the child vanish into thin air?
In addition to meeting the boy, insist your husband making him talk about it. Let him know you are very hurt and disappointed at him. That your pains don’t come from knowing he has a child but that he could keep the information from you for 22 years. Tell him his attitude makes you completely afraid of the many other things he could be hiding from you.
It would afford him the opportunity to explain the reasons for his actions as well as provide you with clues to how his mind works and his assessment of you.
That he could keep the information from you all these while might not only be out of fear but something deeper. Do you know what it could be? Knowing it could be the key to a lot of the challenges you are going through in your home. Besides you ought to know who the mother of your stepson is, his history as well as person. Don’t forget he shares a fundamental history with your children, an important one you must never take for granted.
This might be the best opportunity for you both to revisit some unpleasant scenes in your marital journey. What are your own faults too? Can you imagine why he went to this other woman so early in your marriage? What were you like then?
This calls for absolute sincerity because it is the only way this matter can be buried for good. What sort of home did you give him back then? Though it is no excuse for him to do what he did, but most men only need the slightest reason to misbehave.
If you fail to look deeply into the past, to appreciate all the mistakes you both made in your early years, you may never be able to move beyond this point.
Some of the major mistakes and damage we do to our marriages go back to the very beginning, especially the first seven years. Those years set the major pattern in our marriage. Once the euphoria of the wedding becomes over and a couple settles down to the process of marriage, if care is not taken, those nascent years may drown all their hopes leaving the marriage an empty shell of regrets and broken promises.
While not trying to pre-empt him, your combined mistakes of those early years may have brought about this problem and the fact that you both managed to stay together all these years doesn’t mean the problems caused by your early attitudes went away.
If you are truthful, you would notice that the people you are now aren’t the same people that signed the wedding register 24 years ago. The years have redefined your person and this isn’t because you are getting older and wiser, rather it has more to do with the disappointments. Most times we have learnt to adjust our attitudes along the line of not wanting to be disappointed anymore than we are instead of along the line of understanding that as individuals trying to build a home, pains and disappointments are parts of the natural processes.
Wherever it would come from, forgive him, because leaving your home would only create an opening for another to enjoy your investment and hard work. You have worked to make him achieve whatever he has achieved – this is your time to reap. Nothing is worth leaving your labours for another to gain.
Don’t give another woman the satisfaction of getting into your home from the back doors.
Above all, learn to pray because God has all the answers.
Good luck.
Dear Agatha,
I have been married for 24 years now. Two years ago, I discovered my husband has a love child and when I went to him to confirm if the information is true or not, he told me he wasn’t ready to talk to me about it.
But recently he woke me up not only to confirm the existence of this child who is 22 years of age, but also to inform me of his intentions to invite him over to the house.
I was shocked that for 22 years not only has he kept such vital information from me but that he has also being unfaithful for that long. I plan to end my marriage because I don’t think I can bring myself to trust him or believe anything he says again.
Mrs. Idagu.
Dear Mrs. Idagu,
Definitely the presence of a 22 years stepchild in a marriage of 24 years of age should shock you. You won’t be human if you don’t feel betrayed and pained at what your man has done to you.
You are equally right to feel that you can never trust him again as well as wanting to put as much distance between you and the man capable of hiding such important information from you.
Yes, the first impulse is to end the marriage but when you reflect on all you have been through as a person and as a couple, you will discover that going your different ways may not look so enticing at the end of the day.
So many things and factors make marriage the mixture of the bittersweet experience it is. The patterns are often too complex and confusing for us to interpret correctly. Trying to attribute a particular pattern to the institution often than not leaves a person very mystified and tired.
Because marriage draws its strength from the complexities of the human mind, it is only logical that from time to time, it would suffer major setbacks as well as hurtful experiences.
Doubtless, the fact that he could hide such a fundamental information from you all these years, makes this case extremely full of twists and turns but not enough for you to make you forget all the struggles, aches, peace and joy you have invested into the survival of the choice you made more than quarter of a century ago.
For you to have stayed with him all these years, something very right must be going on in your marriage. You may not have taken note of the reason until now but doing so now would help you recover all that you are about to throw away because of the disappointment you are now feeling towards your husband and marriage.
But take time out of all the pains and betrayals that have now characterise your marriage and go back to the very beginning. Trust me, this is the time your marriage needs such sentimental trips to the beginning of it all.
What was the attraction then? I am sure a lot of men must have come to you, with all sorts of proposals before he came to you. For you to have settled for him, you must have seen something different, a special feature that makes him completely different from all the other men whose offers you turned down.
Can you recall what that is or why you found all the other men unsuitable for you?
This is the crucial time you need such aids to help point you at the right directions. You need to have something very tangible to hold on to, something very personal between the two of you to make you want to stay and fight for your happiness. If you continue to focus only on your pains and sense of betrayal, it might not be easy for you to ignore the pains of this moment or the determination not to group this child with the father.
We all go through very dry spells in life and marriage especially. At almost every turn, the institution manifests thorns and needles that keep puncturing into emptiness all our carefully laid out plans.
Without doubts, stepchildren weren’t part of your plans when you married him but now that it has happened, there is nothing you can do to change reality.
This is one of the nightmares of many women, but one majority of marriages is daily contending with which means you don’t have a patent for it.
Given the age of your marriage and this child, chances are he and your first child would be within the same age bracket, which means you must thread your reactions with a lot of caution. Wisdom demands you allow him come into your home first, give you both the necessary opportunity to talk as two adults without the presence of his father.
For the sake of your children in particular, you must not do anything that would aggravate the situation especially against the background that he is a son and for the reason that your husband is one of those men who doesn’t talk much. It is always very easy when provoked to lump things together. If you are too hostile to his son and him, he may be driven to become hostile to your children irrespective of the salient fact that they are his children too.
The momentary hurt of your rejection of him and his son may make him also reject you as well as your children. For this reason be careful because whatever you do now would boomerang on your children. African men and their families are always very sentimental about things like this. If you don’t handle it with care, focus would shift from what he did to righteousness of your reactions. Those who may have supported your cause would be forced to offer protection to this young man against your children.
Whether you walk away from this marriage or not, it won’t change the paternity of your children or their relationship with this young man.
Besides, natural inquisitiveness of the young may not make them support your decision to leave their father because of this man. The excitement of meeting and getting to know him may pit you against one or two of them.
After 24 years of marriage, where do you want to start? Why do you want to leave your home at this time for a marital offence that is as old as time itself? What would be your gain? Would it change the way the man feels about his child or make the child vanish into thin air?
In addition to meeting the boy, insist your husband making him talk about it. Let him know you are very hurt and disappointed at him. That your pains don’t come from knowing he has a child but that he could keep the information from you for 22 years. Tell him his attitude makes you completely afraid of the many other things he could be hiding from you.
It would afford him the opportunity to explain the reasons for his actions as well as provide you with clues to how his mind works and his assessment of you.
That he could keep the information from you all these while might not only be out of fear but something deeper. Do you know what it could be? Knowing it could be the key to a lot of the challenges you are going through in your home. Besides you ought to know who the mother of your stepson is, his history as well as person. Don’t forget he shares a fundamental history with your children, an important one you must never take for granted.
This might be the best opportunity for you both to revisit some unpleasant scenes in your marital journey. What are your own faults too? Can you imagine why he went to this other woman so early in your marriage? What were you like then?
This calls for absolute sincerity because it is the only way this matter can be buried for good. What sort of home did you give him back then? Though it is no excuse for him to do what he did, but most men only need the slightest reason to misbehave.
If you fail to look deeply into the past, to appreciate all the mistakes you both made in your early years, you may never be able to move beyond this point.
Some of the major mistakes and damage we do to our marriages go back to the very beginning, especially the first seven years. Those years set the major pattern in our marriage. Once the euphoria of the wedding becomes over and a couple settles down to the process of marriage, if care is not taken, those nascent years may drown all their hopes leaving the marriage an empty shell of regrets and broken promises.
While not trying to pre-empt him, your combined mistakes of those early years may have brought about this problem and the fact that you both managed to stay together all these years doesn’t mean the problems caused by your early attitudes went away.
If you are truthful, you would notice that the people you are now aren’t the same people that signed the wedding register 24 years ago. The years have redefined your person and this isn’t because you are getting older and wiser, rather it has more to do with the disappointments. Most times we have learnt to adjust our attitudes along the line of not wanting to be disappointed anymore than we are instead of along the line of understanding that as individuals trying to build a home, pains and disappointments are parts of the natural processes.
Wherever it would come from, forgive him, because leaving your home would only create an opening for another to enjoy your investment and hard work. You have worked to make him achieve whatever he has achieved – this is your time to reap. Nothing is worth leaving your labours for another to gain.
Don’t give another woman the satisfaction of getting into your home from the back doors.
Above all, learn to pray because God has all the answers.
Good luck.
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