Thursday, July 24, 2014

Is it right to demand for sex?

agatha
With Auntie Agatha
gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626
Dear Agatha,
I got married in October last year to a man whose view of sex is completely different from what I was taught by my mother.
Also this may sound strange in our modern world, but my mother told me it isn’t right for a woman to demand for sex at all.
Although I didn’t marry as a virgin but the man I was to marry and who deflowered me never made a big deal of being the one always asking me for sex. We didn’t marry because his mother said I was too prudish for his kind of person; that my outlook would make her son marry another woman. To prevent this from happening; she told him to get a woman who could equal him in everything so he won’t have an excuse like his father did for marrying another woman.
She was kind enough to explain to me and beg for my forgiveness arguing that her intentions were premised on my own happiness. I didn’t know how to fight that hence we went our different ways.
Fortunately, I met my husband about three months after that incident. Five months after, we got married.
Since then, I always waited for him to make the first move. If he doesn’t, I would never ask even when I desired it.
For about eight weeks now, he hasn’t come near me. I know he loves sex, the reason I got worried enough to ask his best friend who is also close to me if his friend was having an affair.
It was through him I got to know that my husband’s grouse with me was; he said he would never ask me to have sex with him because of my attitude to it. According to this friend, my husband complained to him that even when I’m in the mood, I always wait for him to make the first move, an attitude he is getting tired of. He said staying off me was to force me to demand for his presence. The truth is, I don’t know how to because my mother told me that only morally bankrupt women demand for sex from their husbands.
It is difficult for me to change but I also don’t want to lose my home. What do I do as I would feel cheap asking my husband to have sex with me?
Confused Wife.
Dear Confused Wife,
It is your right to demand for sex from your husband any time you are in the mood for it.
There is nothing cheap about a wife demanding her rights from her husband. If you don’t ask it of him, who will you go and demand it from; another woman’s husband? You are only short charging yourself because customs and religion expect you to remain faithful to your husband through thick and thin.
While your husband can go outside his marriage to release tension, you cannot because of the moral repercussion that follows a woman who engages in the act of immorality.
If your mother’s advice worked for her, don’t expect it to work for you because your father and your husband are two different individuals. There is no way your husband can ever accept the conditions under which your mother fared with your father.
Besides, you also have your life to live. It is unfair for your mother to think that you would escape with what she got away with in her marriage.
In addition, times are changing. While men of your mother’s era regarded women who demanded for sex from their husbands as being morally improper, today’s men have come to realize that a woman feels the same things they feel and that today’s women are not so frightened as women of yester years were, in expressing their desires.
So you see you and your mother are living in very different worlds. To expect your husband to act as if he is the only one always on heat isn’t doing your marriage any justice. He may not be complaining, but your attitude robs him of the pleasure of having his wife also crave for him.
Just like a woman desires her husband to show her love and attention; the average man also desires the attention of his woman too. He wants her to make him feel wanted, special and loved too. Though men don’t express what they want like women do, it doesn’t mean they are not desirous of every attention their wives can shower on them.
By refusing to make your demands of his attention, you are unwittingly telling him that you can live without him and that his attention on you isn’t something you like.
Although this isn’t your intention at least going by what you wrote but there is no way he would know how you feel if you continue to pretend that you don’t care if he sleeps with you or not.
One of the reasons a man and woman get married is to have sex as often as desired. It is God’s way of sanitizing the society of moral issues that come with having indiscriminate sex. Unlike what your mother thinks, sex isn’t just a tool for procreation purpose alone; it is also meant to create relaxation and a special bond between couples.
It is a natural stress reliever which helps to induce quality sleep after a hard day’s job. There is no limiting the value of sex in a marriage. It can be used by either party as a tool of apology, healing and mending broken hems in a marriage. It is also a good tool of communication that enables the couple tell each other certain things words cannot describe.
So in denying your husband the knowledge of knowing how you feel, you create not just doubts in his mind but leave him very confused about your interest in him as well as his ability to stimulate the right response from you.
You are lucky he isn’t in an affair; only giving you the chance to clear the confusion he has in his heart about your love and need of him.
You are also fortunate he told his friend who in turn has given you what can best be described as an ‘expo’ on what to do to bring your husband back into your bed.
Honestly, this isn’t time for you to debate or struggle with yourself on whether your mother is right or wrong about what she told you.
If she didn’t want a man sleeping with you, she shouldn’t have agreed to you getting married.
Sex is one of the pillars that hold a marriage together; a vital one at that.
If you are shy to say it directly to your husband; go the way of most women by acting it. There are several ways a woman can communicate her need for sex to her man without saying it. This is the secret strength of women. When a woman wants a man, there are several postures she can adopt to make her message clear.
One way is to dress it. Go for a nightgown cut to seduce even the most principled man. Besides, your man doesn’t need to be convinced; all he wants is for you to give the sign and he is by your side.
Go for mood music to relax him and make him all anxious to complete whatever you have started. Finally go for a perfume that would stimulate his mind to full action; the kind that would enhance your natural body scent. Finally sit carelessly in front of him and pretend your mind is too engaged in whatever task you are doing to make you remember to sit appropriately. If other women outside use this to entice married men into their web; there is nothing stopping married women from using it to get their men to notice them. This isn’t just any man; he is your husband, one that has been given full authority by the law to view your most essentials. By giving him a full view of his most precious asset, there would be nothing preventing him from taking it.
Sex and desires require a lot imagination to make them come alive.
Any woman or man who sits on the fence and expects to get the best out of it is only deceiving self. You cannot pretend not to mind when deep inside you want all the things that make you complete as a woman.
It is also important you explain your actions to your husband after you have captured him back into your arms. Let him know why you have been acting that way. It will help clear whatever doubts or worry your actions have generated in his mind.
Just as it takes two to fall in love; it takes two to make every aspect of marriage work. Your marriage is what you make of it especially as a woman.
Good luck.

How can I keep my home?

agatha
With Auntie Agatha
gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com Tel: 08054500626
Dear Agatha,

I’m 42 and very lucky to have gotten a man who married me last year. His first wife died about three years ago in an accident. He is 55 and has two children who are undergraduates.
I have lived a very careless life but meeting him changed so many things about my attitude to life.
Although I still have some of my old friends but I’m careful since I got married of what I discuss with so many of them who ironically are married.
This is because most of my friends treat their husbands in ways I don’t like. Apart from cheating on their husbands to earn promotion or as prove of their financial autonomy, many of them also use charms to turn their husbands’ attention away from their atrocities.
Because I also did in the past, using such charms to arrest the attention of the men I dated; lure them away from their homes at ungodly hours of the night, get them to spend stupendously on me, I know what so many women out there are doing to men.
I did a rethink when these charms could not make any of them men marry me. The more I tried, the more disappointed I got which eventually made me to confess my sins and change my ways.
It was at that point, I met my husband who is such a wonderful and understanding man.
But, something happened about three weeks ago that is making me apprehensive. To be truthful, I have never lived with any woman who has been supportive of her husband. My mother walked out on my father because he didn’t have the kind of money she wanted to live large. None of my aunties is a first wife. They have multiple husbands.
The kinds of friends I have are also not the kind whose lives I want to emulate any longer.
Although, my husband has severally complained about my attitude to cooking and house keeping, what he said last week really got me worried. He said apart from sex, there was nothing to make him aware he has a woman in the house; that his food is still being cooked by the house-help and the house is still being taken care of by the paid help.
I didn’t realize that his underwears were all dirty. The house help went to see her ailing mother and had to stay an extra week because she couldn’t leave her mother in the condition she met her.
Usually she scouts for his dirty clothes and wash them. Since I had never done such; I didn’t realize he had exhausted all his underwears until that day. I felt bad when he asked of what use a woman is to a man who doesn’t know how to care for her husband.
If I hadn’t made her cook stew and soups for a month before she left, he would also have known I can’t cook.
Agatha, please help me. I really want to be a good woman and wife to him. I just don’t know where to begin or how to go about it especially as I have a career to manage. I don’t have the time to work and still care for the home.
Also, how do I get pregnant before it is too late? In truth he is not complaining but, I don’t want him to, before I get pregnant.
Please help me because I have come to love him very much. If I confide in my mother or friends, I know what they would tell me to do and I sincerely don’t want to even consider their option of using charm to turn blind eyes to my weakness. I want to change also for me.
Tolani



Dear Tolani,
There is no greater teacher like experience. Having lived on the two sides of life, you should by now know which side benefits you the most.
Also, at your age, you should have since realized that nothing in life can be achieved without one form of sacrifice. Your former life required you to part with money to charm men to do your bidding; it was a kind of sacrifice you willing made to keep you happy in that world.
Having made up your mind to change your ways positively, you also have to keep making so many kinds of sacrifices to keep you happy in your new life.
One of such sacrifice is making a choice of what makes you happy the most; your home or career? The life of a woman is in being able to balance all the roles she is expected to play in the life. Apart from being a career woman, you now have a home and husband to care for. At 42, you are in a position to know what works for you the most.
To grow a home isn’t a day’s job; it requires a lot of patience, willingness to adapt, honesty and a combination of prayers and the right attitude to make the home work smoothly.
No matter how busy a woman gets outside her home; her presence must be felt in the house when she is either at home or out by those who live with her. If after a year, the only thing that makes your husband know he has a woman in his house, is the regular sex; then he might as well pay a woman to supply him with that.
Sincerely, the house help has no business cooking his meals or washing his underwears. That is strictly within your jurisdiction. Don’t forget that the house-help has always performed these duties for him. If he were satisfied with that, do you think he would have had a need for you in his life?
The truth is, even if you don’t do it as good as the house-help the fact that you are even trying would give him confidence and peace in his decision to have you in his life. What this man is demanding from you is to try to justify his need of you in his life. Your presence is not just to keep his bed warm; it is also to make him relax and enjoy the comfort only a wife gives to a man.
If he is still eating the food of his house-help a year after he married you; then he really doesn’t have any use of you in his life. Whether you realize it or not; he knows you are not the one cooking his meals because he is accustomed to the taste of his house-help’s cooking. He is getting impatience because you are not even making any attempt to please him as a husband.
Another mistake you are making which unfortunately you don’t realize and which may become your undoing isn’t the fact that you don’t have a child for him but, your inability to water down the memory of his late wife from his sub-consciousness. He married you to give himself a reason to live; to enjoy matrimony and to forget the pains he feels anything he remembers her.
This is the void he has brought you to fill in his life. That you haven’t given him any reason to be happy as a man would make him go back to a time another woman looked after him, cooked his meals, took interest in his personal needs and hygiene.
If you don’t buckle up; you would soon give him all the reasons to be constantly comparing you with his late wife; when that happens, you can bet he would end the marriage as soon as he finds another woman who knows how to be a wife.
Once the house-help comes back, ask her to teach you how to cook. If that would be difficult for you to do; pay someone to come to your house to teach you.
It is better you are mocked now by one person than have the whole world laugh at your inability to sustain your marriage.
Unlike cooking, you don’t need anybody to teach you how to wash clothes. Thank goodness washing machines are not the luxury they were decades ago. Invest in buying one to enable you wash his clothes on demand. It would go a long way in making him happy.
No matter how busy a woman gets; once she makes up her mind on something, there is no stopping her. You can still create time for your home out of your busy schedule if you want to. It is a matter of you knowing what you want the most in life.
Good luck.

I caught him with another woman two weeks to our wedding

agatha
With Auntie Agatha
gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com Tel: 08054500626
Dear Agatha,
My wedding will take place on the 14th of June this year. I’m a month pregnant already.
Last weekend I went to my fiancĂ©’s house only to find him with another woman right inside his living room.
They were making love. I was too shocked to say or do anything I remained rooted to the spot at the door. He was kind enough to be remorseful and beg me while the girl quickly put on her clothes and left. She too was all apologies.
He hasn’t stopped begging since then; even told my mother to beg me; that he cannot explain what came over him.
The truth is much as I love him, nothing would ever make me trust him again. I thought I knew him well enough to marry me; thought he was different from all the other men I have known before I met him three years ago at a friend’s birthday party.
I feel pains because the promises he made never to look at another woman let alone sleep with one are just empty promises.
Though he has been very supportive and expressive about his love for me since we started; has shown remarkable understanding for my poor background; going out of his way many times to make things easy for my folks and siblings, I cannot forgive this betrayal.
He has scattered the dream I have of having my man only to myself.  I want a perfect man, one who belongs to me and only me. I don’t know how to proceed with him now that I found him with this flaw.
Please help me because I don’t have time and having second thoughts about getting married to him and keeping his baby. I’m also thinking of getting rid of this pregnancy.
I’m 32 while my boyfriend is 37 years of age.
Annie.


Dear Annie,
There is no such thing as perfect being. We all come with defects from the manufacturer’s table so to expect any person to be perfect is asking for the impossible.
Yes, what he did was very wrong, a betrayal of your trust and pending vows but it isn’t always the best reason for any woman to call off her relationship on the basis of what you witnessed unless it has become something of a habit with the man. I say this because men are prone to having affairs on the side. If you on account of what you witnessed call off the relationship and wedding; what assurances do you have that the next man that comes into your life will be faithful and stay perfect for you? Would you also call off that wedding or marriage if you find out that he has flaws in his character that you cannot deal with? How many relationships would you call off in your quest for the perfect man?
At 32, you are not getting younger. Every second that passes by makes you older than you started with in the morning. Every day we spend on earth is a march towards our transition. No doubt he has offended you but rather than find out why he did it, you are investing too much time on issues that are not so important.
With what you have said, it appears that you may be the real challenge in this relationship. Frankly, your standards will be very difficult for any man, even an Angel to cope with. Every man needs a woman who has a warm heart, personality and who knows how to enjoy life despite all the flaws of life. Look at the diamond, despite its brilliance and worth, it never comes in perfect shape. Its imperfection gives this precious stone its uniqueness and strength.
If we were all perfect, we won’t need God in our lives because we would be like him. God is the only perfection we need to be perfect.
This incident that happened may just be your awakening call to X-ray your character and attitude. A man can live with a perfect woman for some few minutes, but not a lifetime. You have to come down to the level of mere mortals to survive in our imperfect world. The danger of wanting your perfect world, is that you will never be able to appreciate the value in others or experiences the different facets of life. Our world has different hues of colours which no artist has been able or will ever be able to capture. If you look at the rains, it comes in so many colours, some bright, some dull, some beautiful, some ugly, some visible and others invisible. But they all combine well to give rain the strength of its beauty.
This is what you should be looking for in your man; the strength of his character, his uniqueness, the things that make him different from the rest of the men you have dated. He will never be perfect but he can be perfect for you if you look beyond the issues you are currently bothering yourself with.
The danger of insisting on perfection is, when you also need understanding with your inherent flaws, nobody would give it to you.
Condemn him for being so careless and disrespectful of your love for him but never ask for the impossible from him. Given what you witnessed, you have every right to be apprehensive; a reason you should sit him down for assurances on how much he loves you as well as a discussion on the future of your relationship. Let him assure you that it will never happen again. Beyond that, there is really nothing he can do to undo that which he has done. It is only when he hesitates to do it, picks a fight with you that you should worry.
Every step of marriage is laced with forgiveness and understanding. There is no way you can appreciate a person without first understanding the true essence of who that person is. Pure understanding gives birth to forgiveness.
It is also what gives love the special power to overcome terrible situations like you witnessed in the living room of your boyfriend.
The fact that you are even contemplating hurting that innocent child growing inside of you doesn’t tell a good story about your person. From where I sit, if you aren’t careful, you risk ruining your life and marriage by yourself. Begin to divest certain things you take so seriously so that you can be happy in life.
Being wife and mother require a certain sense of humour and relaxation to make the job enjoyable else, you may become too overbearing and a monster to those who should love you.
There is no demanding perfection from a child whose curious mind wants to explore, love and get approval for a job well done even that job is  breaking one’s most valuable vase.
A crawling child isn’t bothered about dirt but about the fun of playing in the sand or hitting the remote control on the floor or hard surface. A young baby doesn’t care how expensive one’s phone is when he or she decides to drop it inside a bowl of water. To them, it is all in the spirit of play and discovering their world which an imperfect mother would understand but a perfect one would condemn and apply strict sanctions.
Give yourself a reason to live. Marriage is a journey of many temperaments, adjustments and sacrifices. It is journey of many ups and down; of falling and rising, of broken hearts and smiles. If your heart is too perfect, you may not survive it. It requires a heart that is flexible; that can get hurt, broken, bleed, squeezed, swell and heal all at once. It has to be imperfect to fit into all the modes required of it.
Sit down and ask yourself if you can grow such heart in place of the one you have now as it is the only way for you to be always be happy.
Also be mindful you don’t have too much of time because at 32, your biological clock is ticking away.
Go to God to ask for His help in sharing your life and space with another human being. This is very important because you will soon be a mother even if you don’t want to be a wife.
Learn to forgive and forget. Once you are able to do that, you will know what to do about your wedding day.
This is important; life is about forgiveness and forgetting an error.
Good luck.