Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Caught my hubby pants down with his best friend…

With Auntie Agatha,gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com,Tel: 08054500626 Dear Agatha, My husband and I are both pastors. We have been together for five years, while our marriage is nine years old. We are both quite successful. We both hold bank jobs and are both managers. For this reason we hardly get to see, because by the time he is back, I may still be in the office or he is still at work when I am home. And on Sunday, we are always busy with one religious activity or the other. Since meeting him, the only friend I have known him with, his roommate and best friend, has been his only companion. Despite concerns from friends and family members, over the little time my husband and I spend together, I wasn’t worried about him dating another woman. He was committed to me despite feeble complains he sometimes make about my long hours away from home and him whenever he is on leave. It was the least of my problems and a testimony of how much trust I had in my husband. Besides, we are very good friends making the envy of all those close to us. All the years we dated, I never caught him with another woman. I was really very secured in our relationship until I came back home unexpectedly one day to find him and his best friend right in the middle of my sitting room making love. How was I to know that my husband is bi-sexual? Since catching them in the act, he has been everywhere begging me to understand, that though he married me against his nature he has come to love me in his own way and willing to make the marriage work. This is one issue I cannot discuss with my mother or any member of my family. How do I handle this? There is no way I can continue with him, knowing what he is into. But what excuse do I give the church and my children? The past five weeks have been traumatic for me. I have never experienced this kind of issue before. I have heard stories like this, but never dreamt it could happen to me. Who do I turn to? Who do I tell my story? What do I tell the world about the real issues in my marriage? I used to think I had the best marriage in the world, but as it is now I don’t even know the nature of the person I married. I am so confused now. My confusion is so profound that I am even yet to feel the pains of all that is happening to me. I can’t even bring myself to explain to my friends the reason I am living in a hotel room with my children. What do I do? Even if I can bear the thoughts of going back to him, how do I handle his friend? To cap it all, I just discovered I am 10 weeks gone. Please, Agatha, help me the best way you can. You are my only source of hope now. Idowu. Dear Idowu, Until you attain an emotional equilibrium, take sometime off and travel out of town. You need a place to think and sort out your feelings for your husband and home. If I tell you your story is strange, then I am telling a huge lie. Strange things are happening in our contemporary world, something that never was in the old days. If couples are to react to these strange things the way they come, the marriage institution will simply vanish one day. Many couples are coping with very strange things and making tremendous sacrifices these days to keep their marriages. I appreciate the shock and confusion now lacing your life. No woman would remain sober on discovering her rival is a man – the friend of the family she has come to trust. The truth is that if you had been more observant, you would have noticed long before now that there was an unusual closeness between your husband and his best friend. Honestly, there is no way you can be rational or logical given how you feel and the amount of emotional pains you are going through. You need time first to unclog. The best way to begin is to be truthful to yourself. In what ways did you contribute to this problem? Doubtless, he was into this long before you met him, but don’t you think you could have helped in weaning him if you had shown more devotion to him, spent more time with him? The fact that you had a happy marriage with him points to your hidden power to wrestle him from this habit. Your constant absence from home could have kept the other man in his life. No matter how discrete they were, having you around him would have watered down significantly the amount of time available to him and the other man to be together. Whoever the sex of a woman’s rival is, a married woman must never leave her husband alone as you left yours. Absurd as this may sound, the issue here is, would you have taken him back if he was having an affair with a woman? Or is your anger based on your rival being a man? Like I said, a lot of things are happening in marriages these days, so reality demands candidness in resolving the issues. Remember this is your marriage and life. While other women may simply take the exit door, you don’t have to if you think you have the strength to weather and calm the storm. The real challenge in broken homes isn’t the now, but the later. Life is a funny mix. The reasons of today may not be too good later, which is why a lot of caution and tolerance have to be put into any decision such as the one you are about to make. In asking yourself your own mistakes, you equip yourself with the room to negotiate so many things. For instance in your nine-year-old marriage, what are the things you would miss most, those things peculiar to him which you know no other man can give you? If this hadn’t happened, how would you describe him as a person or husband? In the main, how has his sexual preference affected your relationship with him? If you didn’t catch him, would you have known his ‘girlfriend’ is a man? During all those time you didn’t know, did it affect your sexual life or quality of your time with him? Did he at anytime deprive you of his time, attention or presence when you craved and demanded for it? As a lover, how would you score him? These are issues if not properly handled will come back to haunt you later in life. Be sure, whatever you do is based on reason and not sentiment. Don’t do something you will later on regret or ask yourself why you did it. Unless of course you are determined to weather the storm of life on your own, the next man may not really be different from the one you are leaving. These days, both men and women are acquiring some very strange habits, things unheard of before now. The face as you must have found out is a fine mask to hide the bizarre. The fact that you have children and pregnant for him means leaving him doesn’t stop him from being part of your life. We get to a stage in life when we just have to deal with what it offers us instead of running away. Remember he remains the father of your children, hence a limit to what you can say about him or your marriage else you destroy your children in the process. The strength of everyman and home is the woman. What if your daughter-in-law comes to announce to you that your son is bisexual, will you ask her to leave him? Life is not about its beginning and the end, it is the in-between challenges we encounter that matter the most. And, as a pastor, will you tell your female member with this kind of challenge to end her marriage? Your duty would be to encourage her to pray her husband out of it, isn’t it? God does have a way of making His servants pass through situations they liberally tell people to pray over. So what is stopping you from doing same thing? Who says you cannot pray your husband out of this habit? After all, he started it on one day, so he can stop it on another day. Your responsibility as a pastor goes beyond you, it extends to all those God has given you to pastor. There is no escaping the desires of God in one’s life. Pray to God to help you focus on what is right and not what is important at the end of the day. He that has called you has the ability and power to remove those things, you are worried about now, from your marriage. So turn to Him for hope and solutions. Every marriage has its cross and sacrifices. God is your strength, so hold on to Him. Good luck.

I’m madly in love with my teacher

With Agatha Edo,Email: womaneditor@independentngonline.com,gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com,08054500626 Dear Agatha, I am a 17-year-old boy in SS2. Since October last year, I have been in love with my English teacher. She is so beautiful and intelligent. Her skin is so beautiful that I spend hours fantasising her. I always find myself starring at her endlessly in the class as well as find all sorts of funny excuses to get her to notice me through questions. To ensure I get her attention, I go out of my way to study her subject making her best. Since every teacher is proud of a good student, she warms up each time I stand to ask or answer a question. These days I find myself comparing her beauty with that of my girlfriend. As a result, I have asked my girlfriend to go. The nights are the worse as she is always in my dream. I have had several wet nights because of her. This is becoming embarrassing. My elder brother recently came back from school and discovered that I am having wet nights because of her. He says I always call out her name in my dreams. When I told him who she is, he said I should forget it for my sake. She is the reason I come to class and school. Forgetting about her is like telling me to forget myself. I love her more than anything else in the world. My question is should I ignore my brother and go ahead with my decision to approach her? What I feel for her is too strong for me to ignore. She maybe older than me, but I am a man who is in love with her. Please help me. I am willing to be her slave if only she will say yes to me. Besides, I think she likes me because anytime I am not in class, she asks after me and is forever smiling when she asks me questions. This is why I think I should approach her. Agatha, I am very worried about my wet dreams because my mother who comes to check on us at times may find out my secret and report to my father. Lekan. Dear Lekan, You still have a long way to go in life to bother yourself so seriously with issues concerning women. At your age, a lot of women will still come and go in your life until you settle down. Besides, this isn’t the kind of thing you should be thinking at your age. This is the time you concentrate on studying and passing your examinations. At 17, there is nothing as important as this. The woman you are lusting after has done her bit which is why she is able to be your teacher. Without education, you will amount to nothing in life. Sentimental feelings do not sustain in life. As a man, you owe it more to yourself than anybody else, to become a success story. I appreciate that at 17, your hormones are still too strong for you to overcome, but the fact remains that you need to put them under some sort of control else you will end up being embarrassed. You must understand that you have too much going inside your head and body; some so strange you don’t even know where they are coming from. What is happening now in your life is a typical case of you not knowing what is wrong. If it would help, over 70 per cent of men have gone through similar teenage crushes. You will overtime outgrow this. It simply shows that you are a very normal male but like your brother suggested, you must forget it to avoid getting into trouble with the woman or your school authority. As a teacher, it is her duty to be concerned when her best student is absent from class. You give her joy as a student so the least is for her to encourage you through smiles and special attention. You make her work worth its while. And if you really like her, you should concentrate on making the best results, at least if not for yourself but for this woman you have come to really like. Consider passing your examinations in flying colours as your special gift to her. Not only will you make her happy, but you will at the end of the day be proud of what you have been able to do for yourself in life. This is one way to show her that you are responsible as well as a one with a very sound ambition to make it in life. There is really nothing stopping you once you have graduated from coming to ask her out if she is still single. At least education and success would have in some ways bridge the age differences. But until then keep your feelings to yourself. The best way to treat what you feel is to fight it. Stop thinking about her because the more you think about her, the more your body expresses a wish to conquer her. The best way is to have a new focus for yourself. Think of what you want to be in future; think of the consequences of failing and the implication it would have on your for life. It is a reality pill that will help you concentrate on passing your examinations. You must try to fight it to avoid giving yourself a complex where women are concerned. One day, trust me, you will ask yourself whatever it was you found so attractive about her when you are much older.

Claiming another man’s child, my undoing

With Agatha Edo,Email: womaneditor@independentngonline.com,gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com,08054500626 Dear Agatha, About 22 years ago, I agreed to marry my wife despite knowing she was pregnant for another man. When I met with her again after two years of living abroad, she was having issues with the man over his readiness to marry her immediately. She wanted him to marry before the pregnancy became obvious while he didn’t think he was prepared for it, although he didn’t deny being responsible for the pregnancy. It was while they were arguing over this that I came back from the United Kingdom. She and I had been friends before I left. It was while I was away she met this other man. Since doctors in England had ruled out my being able to father a child, I persuaded her to pass off the pregnancy as mine. It wasn’t so difficult since she was already having issues with the father of the child. Besides, she stood to gain more as my wife. I immediately put all plans in motion to marry her. Although the man and members of his family came to protest and claim the pregnancy; I and my wife denied them. My wife denied ever being pregnant for him. She told him, she was only testing him and that he failed when he said he wasn’t prepared to marry. I practically pushed the man out when he came to my house and even got the police to arrest them for disturbing my peace. Although he swore something would make me and my woman come looking for them if the pregnancy was indeed his; I ignored him. Twenty-two years down the road, something terrible has happened. Immediately after the child’s graduation, actually at his graduation party, my son ran mad. We had to bring him home when his friends called from England to inform the mother and I of the incident. Since then we have done everything humanly possible to make him regain his mental state of mind but nothing is working. If anything, he is getting worse. Recently, the mother went spiritual. At the different places she visited, she was told that until she returns the child to his biological family, we will not know any peace. The worst, they say, is yet to happen. According to them, I will end up losing my wealth if I insist on keeping this child. Already my wife has started developing signs of mental illness herself. A few days ago, she spent all day talking to herself; things that don’t make sense to me. At other times, she would be begging for forgiveness from people I can’t see. I am running out of my mind. I don’t know what to do at all. Even if I want to return the boy, he is all I have got. What do I tell my family members? Who will be my heir and won’t it expose me to the world? In addition, I don’t even know how to locate the man and his parents. I have invested too much in that boy to hand him over to anybody. If he were with them, they wouldn’t have been able to give him the kind of life I have given him. Is there any other way out? Can this situation be remedied? Please help me, Agatha. Bashy. Dear Bashy, All these could have been avoided in the first place. It was wrong for you to deny the father and his family the right to this child. It would have been a different thing if the father denied paternity of it when the mother informed him of her state. What he did was only to protest his readiness at the time to marry her, not that he wasn’t responsible for the child. It was wrong asking her to marry you when you knew she was already pregnant for another man. Although your wife acted with greed by agreeing to pass off another man’s child as yours, as the man you ought to have known better. In this other man’s shoes, how would you have felt, knowing that your first fruit in life is with another man? What you did is equal to killing him while still alive. Since you knew the fraud you and your wife had committed, you shouldn’t have treated his family especially his father when he came to see you with disdain. Forcing him out of your house when deep down you knew you stole something so precious from them was adding to the consequences of your act. Not only did you steal from them but also humiliated the entire family with both your money and influence. Even if this other man and his family didn’t take any steps to retaliate, God who sent that child into that family and who hates injustice in whatever form, would certainly do something to ensure nobody re-orders his original plans for that boy. Allowing you to train him was for a purpose. His family may not have your kind of money to give him the opportunities your money gave him but the fact remains he belongs to another man, not you. Rich or poor, he is the child of his father, his first born and son. To steal him away from them on account of being rich is wrong. That you are unable to impregnate a woman isn’t an excuse at all. You could easily have adopted a child who has no family to claim it. Had you done that, you would have avoided all these. Besides, why should what people think of you matter? The important thing in life is to stand on the side of God always. Doubtless children are a special gift from God but when they don’t come, God has also provided alternatives in abandoned babies and orphans. These children are meant to be loved and cared for. If you were so bothered about what people would say, all you should have done was to send your wife and the adopted baby outside the country to mask the history of the child. No matter what it will cost you in terms of pride and money, please do everything possible to locate the father of the child to plead for forgiveness. Once one is determined, there is no situation that cannot be resolved. You invested in his future because you wanted to not because the boy’s father or family asked you to. So you have only yourself to blame. When your wife calms down, ask her what the name of the man is as well as the village he comes from. She will know. There is no way she won’t know because if she is truthful to herself, she knows a day like this would come; when the father will come to ask for his son. The day is now. Once she tells you, don’t delay in erasing the mistake of the past. Since the child is not mentally healthy to handle the information, go to the family. I am positive once they are informed, whatever is responsible for the mental state of the child will become a thing of the past. It isn’t too late to adopt a child of your own. Besides, since this child has lived with you since birth, he will never forget you. At the end of the day, your efforts on him will always speak for you. After all, he is your wife’s son so, will never be away from your life. You will only enjoy him if he is healthy. Help him get better first before thinking of your own challenges. Good luck.