I have no feelings for him

Dear Agatha,

I really appreciate the great job you are doing, I pray  the good Lord will continue to give you more wisdom.
I’m 30 years old. There is this young man I met while at the university. We graduated the same year. He proposed while we were still in school and since I didn’t have feelings for him, I turned down his proposal but we remained good friends. 

As friends, I always assisted him financially whenever he needed such help.  That was five years ago.

On the 1^st of May this year, he sent me a text message requesting I visit him. He also said he hasn’t gotten over his love for me even though he knows I don’t love him. I insisted he should be the one to visit me first if he loves me as he claims. He did. 

Along the line he brought up the issue of marriage again knowing full well I had no man in my life.

After I narrated the whole story to my mother, she approved of our union even though his salary then was a little above N20,000.00. 

Recently, he got a better job, and he said he would come at the end of this month for the list of requirement for the traditional marriage. But each time I think of settling down with him, questions like, will he make a good husband? Will I be happy marrying this young man? If he had a better job would he have come looking for me; keep popping up in my mind because deep down in me, I know I don’t love him, but
considering the fact that I’m not growing younger coupled with the fact that my parents are already involved, and so coming up with a change of mind might embarrass them especially as I don’t have someone else.

Agatha what do I do?
I also noticed that all my life, I have  only  loved  a guy  I met in a school where I once taught who also loved me but because of his financial status then, I refused to accept his proposal since he was yet to graduate when we met, I saw it then as a sheer waste of time waiting for him to graduate, go for his service before getting a job and I was  28years old then, done with my service, just waiting to get a good job and settle down. 

Besides, I was also older than him though the age disparity never bothered him.
My worry now is if I eventually go into this marriage with this  young man, will I be happy  living with him or is there any tendency that I may get to develop love for him as we get to live together and won’t he turn his back on me when he eventually makes it real good? 

I have always prayed to God for the discerning spirit to recognize when that special man comes, but it seems not to be and this is the main reason why I have patiently waited all these years despite pressure around me.
Agatha what do I do?
Worried Lady.

Dear worried Lady,

Don’t go into a marriage to please anybody or because everybody expects you to. This is your life and nobody but you can make such an important decision of who to spend it with.

Marriage is a life commitment. You have to be in-tune with your partner for the relationship to work in the first place.

It is either you love him now or not. It is a fallacy that love will grow in your heart for him as the years roll by. It won’t because there is nothing in your foundation of feelings to build on.

Besides you will be making a very costly mistake that will destroy both of you in the end.

Furthermore, you will be doing this man a great injustice by marrying with these kinds of thought in your heart. Trust me, given what you feel for this man, it will be almost impossible for you to accord him every respect he deserves as a man or give him the kind of peace a man needs to progress in life.

Every man needs respect, support, understanding, loyalty, friendship and prayers from his wife. As a woman you can only pray for a man you love and respect. Also, there is no way a woman can be  loyal to a man she doesn’t like or want around her.

The reason you are still able to endure his presence is because you are still living apart. The moment, you two start living together, chances are, you will develop an irritation far beyond your imagination for him because you don’t love him.

Love is what makes the difference between a couple. If you go ahead with this wedding without first dealing as sincerely as possible with what you feel for him, you risk destroying not just this man but yourself in the process.

The sensible thing is to free him for that special woman who will love him enough to make him happy and fulfilled as a man who finds a wife, not just a woman, which is all you can ever be given your lack of feelings for him.

Besides, it is best to suffer disappointment now that you both aren’t married, giving you two the freedom and presence of mind to pursue other relationships than after the wedding ceremony.

Divorce isn’t a good thing. There are so many complications associated with it. Furthermore as a woman, unless the grace of God steps in, you might end up never getting a man to marry you. If single girls are finding it difficult these days to find husbands, how much more a woman who has a history of a broken marriage against her name?

There is also no way you can avoid consummating the marriage so what happens if conception occurs? The child will also suffer from your inability to face the truth concerning your feelings for him now.

Don’t forget that child had no hand in whatever decision you are refusing to make now so, won’t be fair to make a child suffer at the end of the day.

Given the experiences of your parents, they would rather face the shame of a defective relationship than have you go through a broken marriage.

Don’t worry about their embarrassment; rather be concerned for your sanity and happiness in life. Let your mother know how you feel about the man you brought home to them.

Be bold enough to admit your lack of love for him. All the other issues you raised aren’t as important as your complete lack of feelings for him. A loveless heart is the perfect brew for violence, recklessness and disloyalty to the man and marriage vows.

A time would come in this marriage when you would be disloyal and rude to him as a result of the coldness in your heart for him.

To avoid you falling into the trap of having an affair outside your home, fighting him at the slightest excuse and turning your home into a battle field, don’t allow him go beyond this point.

Call him and let him know that your feelings for him have not changed; that you cannot marry him knowing you will never be able to love him as a good woman should.

However, you also need to examine yourself very well. Although you didn’t say it, but your constant act of superiority won’t help you one bit. You need to pray for better understanding into how issues of life work. You lost the man you love to your dwarfed knowledge of life. If it isn’t too late for you to make amends, look for him, if only to free yourself and emotions to be able to love another man.

This is important if you hope to remarry and be happy in life.

You are unable to love another man because you still carry a touch for this man; you unwittingly drove out of your life.

Good luck.

I’m not too sure about her love

Dear Agatha.

Thank you so much for you concerns over the problems of people. I’m always impressed by your opinions. I want to share with you my own problems.
There is this lady I pursued for a relationship for upwards of four years from the very early moment that we entered into the university.

 She was always giving me the cold shoulders because of a relationship she told me from the very first day I made my intentions known she was into. She said she wouldn’t want anything to destroy it.  

That was her story until our final year when she called me to give me the answer I always desired from her. When I demanded to know what happened with her relationship, she told me the man involved wasn’t interested in marrying her again as he has answered to the call of priesthood. 

I was glad at this piece of news. However, I have become increasingly worried of recent following the ASUU strike. She has not been calling me as frequent as I think she ought to be doing. This is making me doubt her even though I know she is a stickler to her words as well as truth.  

Besides, I don’t want any situation where after committing myself to her,
she ends up disappointing me.

Worried Boyfriend.

Dear Worried Boyfriend,

The foundation of everything in life is trust. There can be no progress without an element of trust. You must have to trust in your own judgment to belief in what this thing is all about.

For a relationship especially, once there is draught of confidence in the person and his or her words, it becomes absolutely impossible to motor the pedal of the relationship.

No matter what your doubts are, learn to have faith in her words which you yourself acknowledged as her bonds. You don’t have to wait for her to be the one calling you; you also have a huge responsibility to her. If the truth must be told, she is going through clouds of doubts too. Like every normal human being, she may easily come to the conclusions that you may not be as smitten as you were about her when you first approached her considering the reason for finally accepting your offer of a relationship with her.

It is too early to become worried. As a man who cares for his woman, your major responsibility and concern should be to find out what is happening to her, not use her silence to question her loyalty as well as commitment to you.

She too could be putting you on display; to know what your reactions to her would be should she not call you as often as she ought to have done.

Besides, when in doubt of anything be bold enough to ask openly to avert the negative consequences doubt visits on a striving relationship.

The danger of pursuing this line of thoughts is that you would be bringing back all her pains of the disappointment of her previous relationship. Don’t ignore the fact that she didn’t give him up of her own free will. She lost him to the service of God. There is no way she won’t from time to time remember her loss. She told you the whole truth concerning that relationship because she knew she could trust you with the information as well as gain your support to be herself.

Give her all the understanding she deserves by trying to see her or call. Find out if you could come over to visit her, to see how she is doing. This is what a relationship is about. You must be willing to make the essential sacrifice for the sustenance of your relationship.

Also, you must find ways of getting to understand her the more by asking the right questions concerning her own challenges and hopes in life.

That she is now your girlfriend is just the beginning. For a man who invested four years chasing after a woman, you should take the relationship more serious than you are.

If you wait for her to make the next move, she might not, given the fact that she is yet to heal from the loss of her previous relationship. Should you be cold or doubting of her sincerity, she could be more reflective of the wisdom of coming to you instead of going to a completely neutral person.

This could really make her more dissatisfied and discouraging of staying in the relationship.

And if you doubt the depth of her feelings or reasons to think she came to you on a rebound, be bold enough to ask her. Just as she has a right to be happy, you too have a right to assurances from her.

By making clear your fears concerning the viability of the relationship, given the circumstances she came to you, you signal your willingness to give this relationship a solid chance of survival.

Providing the platform will enable both of you move on without the excess baggage of doubts, regrets and disappointment. It will also help you two focus on the important things that should be put in place to grow your relationship.

It is a matter of knowing how much you want her and to go about it.

At every point, learn to objectively discuss your doubts.

Good luck.

She couldn’t even wait for my return

Dear Agatha,

Please help me. I have been in a relationship with this girl for two years. We were very close until late 2011, when I left for South Africa. I returned to Nigeria to find out she’s dating someone else. I have tried to ease her off my mind since I returned three months ago but to no avail. 

Although she didn’t tell me anything, I can see the writing on the wall. I’m confused that I can’t find a replacement!  

Confused Guy.

Dear Confused Guy,

There is nothing you can do at this point but to move on. she has made her choice; you cannot force someone who isn’t willing to continue in a relationship to go on.

In addition it isn’t every relationship that must end in marriage.

Experiences like this only help to define life better. If you are astute, you will know what to avoid in your next relationship.

Furthermore, not every relationship has the resilience to withstand the loneliness necessitated by long distance. The truth be told, a man or woman used to having sex on demand and whose body cannot stay without it for a long time will not be able to cope with the knowledge of having his or her partner so far off. If your girlfriend falls under this category, she may really have wanted to wait for you but had to do what she did to prevent the greater scandal of her sleeping with different men hence her decision to settle for one person.

Also, it would depend on the understanding you both had before you traveled. If your relationship was an open-ended one, it would be asking for too much to expect her to wait for you.

Whatever might have happened, move on but not before you are completely healed of the emotional pains of this relationship. The reason for this is simple, if you go into a relationship in your current state of mind, you will not only end up hurting the innocent woman but also yourself at the end of the day.

So clean up your act by asking her pointed questions on why she left you the way she did.

This is necessary to enable you rest the ghost of this relationship once and for all.

No matter what you do, be patient enough to heal so you can have the broadness of mind to begin afresh. If you should go into a relationship in your present state of mind, you might never be able to give your best considering that your mind is still fixed on the circumstances your ex left you.

Irritating as this may sound, the naked truth is that she is happy with the choice she has made; you owe it to yourself as well to be happy by making the decision to let by gone be.

Good luck.

Share a problem With Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com Tel: 08054500626