Her father is being difficult

Dear Agatha, Of recent, I have been following your page and thanks for your concern about people’s needs. Not too long ago, I met a lady when we went for our National Youth Service orientation in Enugu. That was where it all started from. When I saw her, I was convinced she would be my wife. She is from the South-South geographical area of the country while am from South-East. In the camp, I took my time to study her and found out that she has everything I wanted in a woman. She read Statistics while I studied Sociology/Anthropology. I couldn’t hide my feeling from her neither did I want to waste precious time. I opened up and told her of my desire to marry her. She didn’t say anything me at first. She thought I was joking. To demonstrate my sincerity, I told her to inform her parents about me which she did after the two weeks break the National Youth Service Commission gave us. When she came back, she told me that her parents said it was too sudden; that we have to give ourselves time which I agreed to. After two months, I thought it wise to let my pastor and parents know about this plan, I went ahead to inform them about the development. My parents asked me to bring her home which I did. We spent some days in my parents’ place. They took a liking to her because she is not only God fearing but also obedient and respectful. Six months later, I asked her to go back to her parents to remind them of what she earlier told them, which she did. This time, her father told her he wanted her to go for Master’s programme and that she can bring me home after enrolling for the programme. I agreed since I also desired to do mine. Unfortunately, the university she applied for her programme requested her discharge certificate which was yet to be issued then. This made her to miss the admission for that year. We both considered the time we were going to waste hence decided make out time to see her parents. I told her to let her father know that our marriage will not stop her from pursuing her programme since both of us hope to be lecturers in the nearest future. She did but he refused. I then told her to appeal to her mother which she did. The mother agreed I should come over to see her father. Last week I went after informing my parents of my desire to see her parents; I traveled to North-Central where my girlfriend’s parents stay to meet with them. On arrival, my girlfriend told me she only informed the father about two hours to my arrival. When I met the father, a pastor, he welcomed me well and after some exchanges, demanded to know what my mission to his house was all about. I told him. He confirmed he only got to know about my journey two hours before I came. I apologized on behalf of my girlfriend. At the end of it all, he told me that before we can get married, he would like the vision of his daughter becoming a lecturer accomplished and that he would want to pray over it. I accepted but the problem here is that it would take up to two-three years for her to be through. Agatha, I would like you to know that my girlfriend and I are no longer kids; we are 29-26 years of age respectively. I’m confused with this condition. What do I do now? Confused Man. Dear Confused Man, At 29, you may be an adult but when it comes to marriage, are you really prepared for the challenges that go with it? As a man who plans to get married, what can you point to as your modest achievement? How do you propose to sustain you and your family in the later years? Having just finished your youth service, your concern now should be getting a job to support your vision of settling down. From the content of your letter, you are still dependent on your parents. If this is so, you are wrong to want to get married now. You must earn your respect as a man first before bringing a woman into your life permanently. Without the ability to maintain a home as a man, you risk losing the respect of not only your woman but that of her family and friends. It is the duty of the man to provide for his family. Have you in all these given a thought to the children that would come when the two of you get married? You can agree to delay the process of having children to enable both of you finish with your studies but there are some children that defy family planning. They come irrespective of whatever prevention the woman has taken. If the father gives the go ahead for you to marry his daughter and she gets pregnant almost immediately, how do you plan to provide for your family? Would you have to rely on your parents or parents-in-law to help with the upkeep of your home? Love alone cannot feed and sustain any relationship and marriage. Yes, it is the vehicle that brings two people together, but it needs the assistance of money, good plans and wise decisions to get it going. Honestly, you are not equipped in these other areas for the journey you are so desperate to embark on. True, your love for your girlfriend comes from the heart but your desire to spend the rest of your lives together must be backed by viable plans that will make both of you truly independent of your parents. This is what her father is trying so hard to prevent. The fact he gave you audience should, despite the very short notice, demonstrate his willingness to encourage the relationship. But he is not about to let both of you commit the unpardonable mistake so many young couples make; that of not planning their lives before walking the aisles. As a married man and pastor, he has more experiences to last him a lifetime. He doesn’t want you making the error of bad judgment of what the marriage institution is all about. He is deliberately putting these obstacles on your way to ascertain your feelings for each other and to give you time to be prepared for the challenges ahead. Unless, your parents are super rich, you must also consider the issue of getting a job. There are no assurances that you will get employment immediately after your programme. You still need to look for work. Even if your parents are rich, a reasonable man, who knows what he wants from life and desires to protect his wife and children from the politics as well as interferences from his family; will not rush into marriage immediately after school like you are thinking of doing. Your marriage might not survive the first years if you are not clear on how to take effective charge of your home as a man. To do this, you must be able to play your role as husband, father and friend to your wife and children. If both of you are meant to be, three years will not make any difference; rather the years will only enforce your feelings for each other. You can afford to rush into a relationship but not marriage since it is a lifetime contract. The complications of a rushed decision to marry are always too severe to contemplate. Had you gone to him as an accomplished young man; one who has a job, he won’t be insisting she finished with her education first. He is doing this to ensure your girlfriend has some measure of security in life. You may not appreciate him now but in later years, when the wrinkle of managing your own family becomes etched on your face, you will come to appreciate the tact and wisdom of your father-in-law to be. If nothing, you have been able to achieve one thing; getting to meet with them and establishing your love for their daughter. That should do for now. Rather than wonder at his attitude, surprise him with your initiative and ability to sustain a home. By the time you present him with the physical evidences of your report card as a man with vision; not one with just passion he would agree. Good luck.

Was I wrong to have made peace with my mother?

Dear Agatha, I am at a cross road. I lost my father about a decade ago. My siblings and I were shared amongst my father’s sibling for proper care. I was fortunate to be taken to an uncle who took good care of me. Besides, God also blessed me with intelligence which, made me excel and graduate from the university at an early age despite the three years I lost due to the death of my father. To cut the long story short, my uncles hate my mother and all tried everything to turn the children against her. Things became worse when she had to leave the family’s house to live with another man she had other children for. My uncles never failed to remind me at every point how much they spent on me and who my mother was, I graduated and got a well paying job. Unfortunately, the stories I was told over the years about my mother have made me to hate her with passion; the reason I didn’t invite her for my wedding. Strangely, my guardians were happy that I wasn’t in good terms with my mother. They now hate me as I have decided to make up with my mother and doing what they think is unthinkable by taking my mother to them to ask for their forgiveness if she has offended them in anyway. Did I do wrong making up with my mother? Worried Daughter. Dear Worried Daughter, You aren’t wrong to have made up with your mother. Apart from being the only parent you have left in the world, she remains the only mother you can ever have. No matter how much your uncles care for you, they can never replace your mother’s position in your life. Besides, what did your mother do to warrant the kind of hatred they have against her? Do they have any evidence that she killed their brother? If they do, why didn’t they hand her over to the Police instead of poisoning the minds of her children against her? Whatever your mother may have done is all in the past. I am sure if they have the evidences that she had a hand in the death of their brother, they wouldn’t have allowed her to stay in the family house before she left to remarry. Whatever their reasons maybe, they were wrong to have tried to disassociate you from your mother. She is your mother irrespective of what they think of her conduct or attitude. They didn’t do well by asking you to ignore her existence to the extent of excluding her from your wedding ceremony. If she were that bad, I am not sure she would have remained in the family after the death of your father. If she left of her own accord, it means whatever they had against her wasn’t so fundamental. There is no way they would have allowed her stay a minute more than necessarily if in truth, she had anything to do with the death of your father. Although, you didn’t give her age but not every person is gifted with the power of resilience. She had to remarry because she couldn’t cope with loneliness. If your uncles were expecting her life to end with the death of their brother, they thought wrongly. A woman has as much right to go on with her life after the death of her husband as a man. Since nobody appears willing to tell you exactly what she did, it might have been a case of one of your uncles aspiring to inherit your mother after the death her husband. That she is your mother and wife to their late brother doesn’t make her lacking in human or emotional feelings. Don’t neglect the fact that before she became wife and mother, she had a life. And as adult there are limits to what she can be forced to do. If as a child you noticed the hostility towards her, then the place must have been very uncomfortable for her. Expecting her to stay on would have led to her early death. Given the situation she found herself, the choice to leave was the best at the time. You have done right by making up with your mother because one day, you will also become a mother. Even if you think her guilty of any offence, it isn’t your place to judge her. That is between her and her creator. As a child to a mother, learn to love her and give her all the respect she deserves as a mother. One day when you are older and more experienced in the way of men and women then you will appreciate that it isn’t everything in marriage that glitters; there are many instances in marriage when the people involved wished for some form of freedom to be happy. You are married and no longer under their control. Bring your mother near but go on with your peace moves. Hear whatever your mother has to say on the frosty relationship between her and your father’s family. Remember there is usually no smoke without fire. You can never know how deep her pains are until you ask. It couldn’t have been easy enduring the pains of not seeing her children, of being shut out of their lives. Do the right thing by trying to settle the disagreement by going to your uncles to plead with them to let go of something that has been so long. Resist anger in the process of trying to buy back peace but if at the end of the day, your uncles maintain their stance against your mother, go ahead and begin a relationship with your mother. Encourage your siblings to do same. Just think how you would feel as a mother some day if anybody influences your child to abandon you or exclude you from his or her wedding ceremony. She has paid for whatever sins your father’s family think she may have committed by not allowing her attend your wedding. Yes, they gave you education but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a mind of your own. If your mother didn’t give birth to you, they won’t have you. You can only be their niece, not their daughter. Even women, who abandoned their children at birth, still get pardoned by their children. No influence should make you abandon your mother. If for nothing else but for God’s command that mandates us to honour our father and mother so that our days on earth can be long. While they can afford to ignore her existence, you cannot afford such luxury because of the umbilical cord that binds every child to the mother. Perform your obligations to her to escape the wrath of God. This issue has long passed who is right to what is right. Besides, you weren’t in there with her so cannot tell what she endured or who is right. Good luck.

My widowed step mum brings home her sugar boy

Dear Agatha, I really need your advice on ways to handle this issue in my family. I am the first son of my late father who died in 2009. I have been away from home since 2007. I was in Nigeria for the burial and came back to my base to continue with my education. Thank God I am through and planning coming back to Nigeria soon to spend time with my family. My mother had me for my father while still in high school. He was already married then, and my mother being too young, there was no marriage plans between the two of them. I grew up with my maternal grandmother. When I got to high school, I had to look for my father. To be fair to my stepmother, she received and accorded me the respect as the first son. Even her children all gave me my place, including my elder sister, her first daughter. I love my stepmother as my mother. She destroyed all the negative myths I heard about stepmothers being wicked. Her open acceptance of me made nonsense of all I had been told that she won’t accept me being a boy, especially as she also has a son. Throughout my stay with her, never did she for once see me as a threat to her son. When my father died, she cried bitterly. Deep in me, I decided I would be her joy and take care of her. The issue now is: she is seeing a younger guy in my community and doing it openly. My siblings, especially my younger brother, have been really aggressive trying to put a stop to the relationship; almost fighting the young man. My elder sister’s husband and some family members have tried to talk to her about her bringing shame to the family as well as her decision to be bringing the boy to my father’s house. She fights and categorises anybody who kicks against the affair as an enemy. This has prompted everyone to hands off the matter. They have put the burden of talking to her on me, since everyone knows that she sees me as her first son and her favourite. We are very close; she listens to me. To be fair, she can get involved with whosoever, but bringing her lover to the family house isn’t right. Besides, my siblings are against the whole affair because the guy is too young for her. Since I have never met him, I cannot give an opinion on that. We have never had any misunderstanding before, but I am afraid this might cause trouble between us. Already, my uncles have slashed her monthly allowance, yet she continues to see the guy. This, in my opinion, means the relationship is more serious than many realise. Right now, they have all decided to wait for me to take action. If her own children, her siblings and uncles cannot stop her, how can I persuade her? She is in her 50s, and from what I gathered from my siblings, she practically takes care of this young guy. I guess that informed the decision to slash her monthly allowances. Agatha, please I need your advice on how to tackle this. Stepson. Dear Stepson, Force has never been known to work with anyone in love. Rather, the more you all condemn her choice of a man, the more determined to keep the relationship going she would be. For a woman her age, it isn’t just a matter of desiring the relationship anymore, but that of personal pride and anger at the attitude of everybody towards her person and choice. Because of this, even when she realises that she may have made one or two mistakes, she will soldier on to deny you all the pleasure of reminding her that you all told her so. If it is almost impossible to make a younger person change his or her mind about a decision to date a particular person, what makes any of you think you can change the mind of an adult who has long past the age of consent; has been married and enjoyed unrestricted sex life? How would you react to being told that the person you are dating now isn’t good enough for you? For that matter, how would your younger brother feel if your mother decides to fight the lady he is intending to marry? Emotions are funny. When they come calling, reasons take the back set. Sex, love and romance are ageless. When they happen, the feelings are universal. Even in the animal kingdom, the bonds of love defy reasoning and understanding. This young man is the person she considers good enough for her. None of you must forget that. Whether you like him or not, her choice should be respected. She is her own person and considers all the noise about her choice of a man by the family as not only embarrassing but humiliating to her integrity. Her determination to go ahead with her decision is enforced by deep-rooted anger at the death of her husband whose mortal absence exposed her to the situations going on around her. She is fighting back out of bitterness, anger and frustration. She cannot fight death that robbed her of a life partner, and exposed her vulnerability as a woman. At 50-plus, she is at that delicate age when most women need the presence and companionship of their men. Our true nature cannot be denied. She is fighting you all because you have all refused to listen to her, taking into considerations her own feelings. The fact that she is widowed doesn’t mean her life must come to an end, terminate with her late husband. None of you knows how she really feels. This is the difference you must make when talking to her. Invite her out for a frank son/mother talk. Use your knowledge of her, her best food, perfume, colours to lure her out of the walls of defence she has naturally built around herself. Use the pet name she calls you or the memories you have both shared to get her to trust you enough to tell you her side of the story. Don’t even show any trace of antagonism for her choice of a lover; rather begin by asking if she is happy as a woman. Let her know you are really concerned about her happiness and that you aren’t against the man she finds it with. This will naturally make her relax because, though she is fighting everybody, deep inside her, she needs a friend within the family. As her favourite, you stand the chance of making her look at the matter more comprehensively. What others cannot achieve by fighting her and her lover, you can achieve by being sensitive to her moods. Hear her out. As gently as possible, put across the reasons for the feelings of others. Let her understand too that those fighting her love her and want the best for her. Present their real fears about her relationship with the boy. Offer to meet the boy. You cannot fight someone or make judgements about a person you don’t know. Get to meet him first. Engage him in a discussion that will enable you journey into his mind; know what he thinks as well as his reason for wanting to stay in a relationship with a woman of that age. Meeting you will definitely knock some senses into his head; know that he is being watched and that his intentions are not hidden from the family. Your presence will intimidate him enough to make him reconsider certain things about the relationship. After meeting him, meet with other members of the family to explain their need to be more understanding as well as a change in their attitude towards your mother. Then demand for a compromise, a decision others too must respect if peace is to return to the family. Let your mother know that, for reasons of decency and propriety, she should get a place for her lover. That, bringing him to the family house isn’t right and in a way insults the memory of her late husband. Inform her about what some people are saying about her decision to bring her lover into her matrimonial home. To ensure your argument hits the bull eye, tell her that there are insinuations by some mischievous people that she lacks respect for the name and memory of her late husband. Assure her that you won’t allow anybody bother her if he is kept away from the family house. Tell your uncle, as a way of ending the crisis, to restore her allowances. It is her money, so she has the right to use it anyway she wants. Maturity and wisdom will go a long way in restoring peace to your family. Good luck.