I love her but…

With Agatha Edo Email: womaneditor@independentngonline.com, gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com Dear Agatha, Please help me. I have been in love with a lady for seven years without any problem. We like each other and have agreed to marry. However problem started two years ago when she began to date another man, a development which led to her ignoring me completely. I have asked God to bring another woman my way if she isn’t His choice for me but my spirit keeps telling me she is my wife but she simply refuses to listen to me anytime I approach her. Please what do I do? Mr. Worried. Dear Mr. Worried, Why did she leave you after seven years for another man? Was there or has there been any disagreement between the two of you? What happened to your seven-year-old dream? One thing is to feel it down in your spirit that she is the right one for you; another thing is to be ready to make the sacrifices that come with entrenching an enduring relationship. Seven years are enough for both of you to have understood yourselves very well. At that age, your relationship shouldn’t be having the problem of abandonment whatsoever. What went wrong between the two of you? What did you two do to help stabilise the relationship? What were your own faults and how did you treat her as your woman? A lot of time, when a woman leaves for another relationship, it may not necessarily be because she is promiscuous or greedy, it may just be because her former man didn’t give her the kind of attention and care she needs as a woman. You may not realise it at the time she was with you but if you want to do yourself a world of good, take a step back in time to the beginning of your relationship with her. Go through every page of your seven years together. Take the time to pay detailed attention to those years, her constant complaints about you? The things she didn’t like as well as the quality of happiness you were able to give her! Deep down and in retrospect, would you say, you were very fair to her? There are so many things we do without us realising its implications until it is too late. Everyday is however a new opportunity for us to make amends in life. Whatever it is you haven’t done right with her, you have a new chance of doing right with another woman or with her if God says you two are meant to be. But the important thing now is to hear clearly from God. It is about what you feel but what God is saying is good for you. If she has given her commitment to another man, the right thing is for you to step aside and allow them be. To continue to hang around in hope that she would come back to you after two years of walking out on you is to deny yourself a chance at happiness again. Whatever made her decide against you after seven years must be strong and needs addressing in your life to help you in your new relationship. Your concern now should be not to make the same mistakes you made with her with another woman. Some things are not just meant to be in life no matter how much we desire them. She will continue to ignore you because she has found happiness with someone else and wouldn’t want you to destroy it. The best you can hope for from her is to be your friend but not when the issues that informed her leaving you appears to be still hurting her. It appears like a case of you crying over spilt milk. When appreciation comes too late in a relationship, a whole lot of things may have been damaged beyond repairs. By waiting in the wing hoping her relationship with her new man falls into pieces isn’t a solution. Rather, you should let go and pray the right prayer to God for intervention in your own life. You are not hearing clearly from God because your mind is preset into having her back at all cost. You can only hear from God when you are quiet and patient enough to give Him the opportunity to speak to you. This means your hurt, disappointments, and desperation must give way to appreciation of the ways of God. God doesn’t make mistakes. Give God all the glory that this break up didn’t happen after you have married; that would have been very devastating and its consequences very difficult to untangle from. That it happened before you both could say I do, should be viewed by you as an act of God’s divine mercy. Listen to Him with patience. Good luck.

Will my fiancee remain loving, caring after marriage?

With Agatha Edo Email: womaneditor@independentngonline.com, gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com Dear Agatha, Thanks a lot for the great priceless help you render to people. My Gmail is filled with all your responses to people’s issues. However, I will be getting married in September of 2013. I have been dating my woman for 10 years. She is still a virgin while I am not. I love her so much that I can go the extra mile to let the world see how much she means to me. But, my fear is if things will continue like this between us after marriage. The questions that keep coming to my mind are; will it always be this blissful between us, will I change from being who I am and will she still be the same loving and caring woman that I marry? This is because people change after marriage. My parents were not left out and today I can’t look at my parents and say their marriage is blissful. Worst still, people pretend during courtship but my woman is not a pretender. I would be grateful if a dossier of questions is prepared for her and me. Even the ones on sex though I know she has no experience except gist and information from her female folks. The last time I questioned her about our relationship and things like my likes and dislikes was six years ago. Now, I need questions for marriage, technically and from your experience as a marriage expert. People might wonder what I still want after 10 years of friendship. Though I have some answers based on my experiences with her but there are things I still need to know about the journey we are about to embark on. I just need assurances. The Chinese proverb says ’empty the cup if you want more knowledge’. Besides we have not seen for more than five times in four years. I need questions to ask her if possible to be our constant guide after marriage. This is because my mother told me how much my father loved her in the early part of their marriage but now I sense no more passion in my father’s eyes for my mother. I don’t want mine to be like theirs. I want to enjoy mine. This is why I want you to be part of my marriage, and ensure it runs smoothly. Moreover, God has given you knowledge of counseling, why deny myself the honour and privilege when the priceless things of this world are free. Omini. Dear Omini, God and not me should be part of your marriage because He is the one with all the wisdom and knowledge of how to navigate the stormy roads of marriage. I want to start by telling you that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage. Every marriage has its share of storms and challenges, which the couple must pass through to give marriage a character. And there is no such thing as having thorough knowledge of each other. There will always be things you will never know about each other. It is the complexity of the human nature. The important thing is for both of you to be focused and open minded about the things concerning yourselves and pending marriage. One way to do that is to learn from the mistakes of your own family. Your parents remain your first contact with the complications of marriage. From your observations of your parents’ union, what do you think went wrong with their dreams and happiness? Can you do a detailed appraisal? For instance, if you were to score your father, how will you grade him in relation with his treatment of your mother? This is important in the sense that we unconsciously ape our parents. Many a time, we do unfair comparison between our parents and our spouses. For you to enjoy your wife, you must avoid comparing her with your mother or sisters. You must also resist the urge to import some of your father’s attitude to your mother into your marriage. Life is about accepting the good things and doing away with the bad ones. If your father took pride in sidelining your mother from major decisions in the home and life, it doesn’t make it right. You and your woman must pattern your marriage to suit your needs and in line with your own peculiarities as individuals. These are things that you don’t plan for but which come unconsciously into the mind. From my experiences, these are the most potent threats to marriages. Without either planning for it, they end up importing their parents’ mistakes into their own marriages; in the process, a lot of conflicting signals that end up confusing couples find their way into their marriages. That is why seemingly happy couples end up tearing themselves apart few seconds after they sign the dotted lines. The maturity of marriage begins from a realistic approach to issues rather than sentiments; this is the way my parents did it. Therefore you and your woman must first come to a clear consciousness of the inherent issues you are inheriting from your sets of parents’ marriages. Both of you must sit to critique the union of your different parents with a view to doing away with those things inimical to the development and sustenance of a marriage. Whether you both accept it or not, this is something you must sit down to talk about. You may both think it isn’t your problem but experience has exposed it as the unseen third party in a marriage. Right from the nascent stage, both of you must be united in avoiding the mistakes of your parents in your own marriage. So ask her to tell you about the marriage of her parents. Their love story, the disappointments, how they survived and the point they are currently in. if her parents have enjoyed friendship from the day they met to this point of their union, you can be rest assured that she too will want to be happy in hers. Furthermore, you also have to know the kind of relationship that exists between her and her mother, father and siblings. A heart that is deficient in love will never appreciate one when given. Even if the heart jumps at it at the initial stage, overtime, it will find ways to reject it. Therefore you must know by asking and observing. The real reason you have to observe is because there are certain knotty issues you can only get the answers through observations. Nobody will tell you how the mother abuses the father or how disrespectful the father is to the mother. These are answers you can only get by getting close to the family. So no matter the number of questions I give you to ask her, the real substance of a person can only be deduced through observation of the people that make that person. This is because we are all products of our environment. A good marriage needs the visions of both the man and woman. For two to walk as one, they must have identical dreams. No matter how profound your love for each other is, if both of you are pulling the fabric of your marriage at different ends, it will eventually give way. A man or woman can be nice but if paired with the wrong spouse, things can go very wrong. This is the reason you must also fine-tune your visions to compliment each other’s dream. And since you both seldom see each other, there is also the important business of you two really sitting down to discuss your persons, likes and dislikes. A man and woman can be together for decades without really knowing what makes them happy whereas, a couple can meet today and become happy at their choices. For your marriage to work, both of you must adopt realistic and workable approaches to issues. Good luck