I am one of your fans. I read your column everyday. I am a 34 year old man and having some challenges in my relationship. There is this lady I have dated for seven years. She is presently 25 years. She is my first and only lover. I fell in love with her the moment we met.
Much as l love her, I noticed she tells a lot of lies and cheats on me as well.
Despite being her boyfriend, I treat her as would my younger sister through giving her well intentioned advices. I have tried all possible ways to stop some of those bad traits but to no avail. She would go and come back to me but will always take her back on account of the love I have for her.
She is forever talking about marriage and has asked me to marry her but I’m afraid she will take those bad traits of hers into marriage.
Early this year, she had a three-month Facebook relationship that ought to have led to marriage but the guy dumped her. She keeps telling me she has changed.
Please. I’m confused. I need to settle down. I have met other girls but my heart keeps coming back to her. Please should I go ahead with her? I need your advice concerning how to proceed with her and my life.
Saul.
Dear Saul,
Love is a strange chemical whose contents are not known to man except God who has the patent.
True love is a struggle against the tide of time; a challenge to make the one who has stolen your heart to conform to your way of thinking and doing things.
Often than not, it isn’t perfect and comes with heavy challenges that require one to be both patient and understanding.
It also requires absolute honesty to make it serve its purpose in one’s life. a love not properly cultivated, tended to, can turn out to be one decorated with strong thorns and pines that can pierce one’s heart out of the body. True love and responsibility are a twin voyage that must go hand in hand. One cannot be left behind else, the other becomes forlorn and very lonely.
Therefore, given what you know about this lady, do you think you can cope with her and that your love will change her if you eventually get married to her?
This is the busstop you get off fantasies and embrace reality.
If you started dating her when she was just 18, you cannot escape the blame for some of her behavior. The fact that you haven’t been able to impact positively on her or change her behavior after seven years of dating her, underscores your weaknesses as a man.
A man, irrespective of how much he loves his woman must be able to define what he stands for at every point in time to help the woman in his life moderate her excesses. Like babies, a woman, is prone to taking her man for a ride if he is unable at every point in the relationship to state in clear terms his dos and don’ts.
This has nothing to do with chauvinism but being clear about who is in charge in the relationship. Two captains can never be on a boat. Being in love isn’t the same thing as being weak and lacking in leadership qualities.
This lady is who she is because she discovered, she can always manipulate you to take her back whenever she misbehaves.
Having affairs and coming back should never be part of the bargain a man enters into with the woman in his life. This you must address immediately else you will never be completely happy in your marriage or choices.
Being too careful in a relationship doesn’t pay at the end of the day. Risk taking is necessary to gauge how far a couple can go in accommodating each other’s shortcoming.
She is misbehaving because you have made it absolute to her that no matter who she has been with, what she does; her place in your heart is unshakeable. To help her come to full realization of what she wants, let her know you are also capable of being resolute. When next she misbehaves, allow your heart to be bruised by resisting any attempts on her part to have an easy walk into your life.
You cannot continue to protect your heart from being hurt by always looking the other way when she comes back to you. Your life and heart aren’t hotels guests can walk into at anytime of the day without consideration whether it is convenient or not for the staff and management of the place.
By explaining to her that you have reached your limit of endurance, you force her to X-ray her lifestyle and make choices that are beneficial to her.
At this point, you also must be prepared to accept the inevitable if that is what it would eventually boil down to.
This is because by the time she realizes that you aren’t ready to tolerate her excesses anymore, she might want to move on to another man who is docile and lay back for her to manipulate.
Baring you teeth once in a while will show her that you too can bite if the need be.
Chances are, she is constantly going out of your relationship for something different because deep down she finds you boring and very predictable. Being unpredictable has its usefulness in building excitement into a relationship. It keeps the other party guessing at what to expect. That is why suspense filled films or books hold so much excitement for its readers or viewers; the reason, they rank among the best sellers.
Being so predictable makes a relationship so boring. By the time she discovers you are no longer ready to tolerate her, she will be forced to do some serious thinking that will see her either shutting down this relationship permanently or reinvigorate her passion for you.
Besides, she is now a grown woman; no longer a teenager. She has to be taught how a woman should conduct herself in a relationship. Therefore the next time she talks about marriage, let her know your concerns about going the whole way with her.
Be bold enough to share your fears relating to her person with her. Explain to her, that there comes a point in person’s life when love isn’t enough stimulant to marry a certain person; that, there are a whole lot of things that make marriage workable. The first being faithfulness. Under this comes trust. Let her know that trust is priceless and necessary not just for both of you but also for the sake of the children the marriage is going to produce. Make it clear that if you are unable to trust her ways, it would be difficult for you to ever completely accept the paternity of the child the marriage would produce.
This is particularly necessary because a woman who is fond of dancing in and outside a relationship can easily import another man’s child into her marriage.
If you have never considered this, do so now. It is a reality that would help you look at the bigger picture, rather than the isolated picture of her attitude on the canvass of your life with this woman.
By the time you are ready to be your own man, make decisions concerning who you are and what you actually want from a woman and life, gathering the strength to address the present challenge in your life will be easier.
The chemistry of love is one that has to be properly pegged to make it one of life’s most cherished gifts.
Don’t on account of what you feel now; mortgage your happiness in life.
Good luck.
Share a problem With Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com Tel: 08054500626
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