Her Incessant Nagging Endangers Our Wedding Plan

Dear Agatha,

I am 33 in a relationship with a 28-year old lady. We are both in love and have taken the decision to spend the rest of our lives together, a decision that will be formalised within the next year.

Sadly there hasn’t been any week since we started courting that she hasn’t picked quarrel with me over one issue or the other. And most of the time she is always in the wrong but I still make the effort for peace to reign.

Agatha, I am not cut out for this. I desire to have a home where I will long to come to after work, not a house that has a woman who takes delight in nagging at every opportunity and is very stubborn too.

Though, am not perfect but at her age, I expect her to be able to overlook certain things and move on with life. It seems she simply enjoys nagging and making it obvious to everyone that is around her that she finds everything wrong.

I am thinking of changing my mind because I can't stand nagging of any kind.

Ayo.

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Dear Ayo,

I understand your situation and the attendant fear of making the wrong choice. There is nothing as irritating and bothersome as having a partner who nags at everything and is insensitive to the feelings of the other party.

Marriage is a journey of a lifetime, one that has no place for mistakes and sentimental decisions. Although founded on sentiments, it is entrenched by objectivity and realistic options of the situation at hand.

There is no way you can ever be happy if your choice gives you nothing but trouble.

If she has consistently picked quarrel with you at every given opportunity, then it shows a flaw in your relationship. This must be properly addressed if you hope to go far in your marriage.

What makes a home isn’t the structure or the quality of the décor, but the peace that envelops the place. Anywhere can be a house but not all houses are homes. If you seek a home, be careful whom you bring into it to share your space.

Solving issues like this takes time and patience. Being completely different persons, from dissimilar homes and cultural orientations, your views of life would expectedly differ unless both of you put a lot of efforts at working on your differences.

A lot of the time we are reflections of our family background. What type of home did she grow up in? What type of woman was or is her mother? Chances are if she grew up in a home where the woman of the house nagged and complained about virtually everything, she would take her cue from her. To understand this, take out the time to investigate her mother by asking her pointed question about her childhood days. It would also help you a lot to ask people she grew up with leading questions about your fiancée’s mother.

Although this information would not change her immediately but it would arm you with the knowledge of how to tackle the issue on the premise you are still interested in keeping the relationship.

Electing to change her would require you to ask how she felt all those years when her mother nagged her father or them over very mundane issues.

This is an issue where going physical or anger isn’t a panacea. What would work is using the memory of the past to create guilty and awareness of the likely consequences of what is most likely to happen if she continues in her current attitude. Without you spelling it out to her, her memories once tuned to the old channel of her youth would remember all the many times she wished she had another mother, how her mother’s attitude negatively influenced some aspects of her wrongly, which till date she doesn’t like.

Recalling the past would help her in more ways than anything you do, appreciate the harm she is doing to her own life and relationship with you. Only fools would want to live life through the negative examples of others.

This method would help her confront the reality of the negative training her mother impacted on her without you saying a word for or against it.

This way, you help send her back to the school of morals and ideal conducts without either of you fighting over the matter or exchanging hurtful words. The past holds a strong answer and lessons to our future. For the discerning mind, the past if properly deployed often points us into the right direction because it comes with heavy experiences.

She may not instantly be reformed but I bet you over time, she would stop nagging for fear of having a negative home or unhappy husband like hers while growing up.

We need help to change and sustain our zeal to do what is right. This means you must also hear from her why she thinks nagging can change things when a simple ‘please’ would have been wonderful.

Again, you have to show her the way by your example of courtesy. If you have any reason to disagree with her, give her the benefit of courteous approach as opposed to her rude attitude. Life is a big school of different faculties and departments. Its courses can never be exhausted in a lifetime. There are always different ways of doing the same thing. One of the cures to her problem is to expose her to another way of making known her displeasure. If she gets it right, nobody would notice she complains. You notice because she is crude and rude about it. If she were nice about her complaints chances are you would have done things her way before realising it.

As patiently as you can, sit her down to discuss your observations, feelings, regrets and wishes with her over her constant nagging as well as the fear it is generating inside of you. Tell her that one thing love cannot endure is nagging and for your sanity you might be forced to give up your love to have peace in your life.

Even the Bible warns against a woman who nags and since this is the only time you both have to work on the problem, don’t be afraid to say precisely what you mean. It is the only way you both can be happy.

Good luck

Show Me Right Way To Love

Dear Agatha,

Please tell me how to love my boyfriend; I do not feel anything but I want to because he is nice, and I don’t want to hurt him.

Edith.

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Dear Edith,

There is no faking true love. It is either you have it or not and no matter how much you seek to protect this man from being hurt now, you will eventually hurt him more when he finds out that he has been wasting his time with you.

The danger of this is; he would hate you for playing him for a fool. Even though love is an emotional thing, when treated with too much sentiment, it causes pains and setbacks. It will get to a point, you will no longer be able to carry on with the pretences especially if you eventually fall in love with someone else. It is a natural thing for one to gravitate towards a fond heart. By the time you discover yourself in love with another person, your true feeling for him would unmask itself making it obvious to him that there was no time you ever felt the things he did for you. Then it would appear as if you jilted him for a new lover.

The best you can do for this man is to be honest with him so he can move on with other things.

Tell him you wished you could work up the right feelings for him because of his nice nature. Assure him that there is nothing wrong with him just that when it comes to the issue of love, who one falls in love with cannot be helped.

This way, you both would be able to retain your friendship.

Good luck.

What’s Sweet Relationship Formula

Dear Agatha,

My question is this; what are the various ways of developing emotional stabilities, maturity needed for the sustainability of a successful relationship?

Knowing Man.

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Dear Knowing Man,

The starting point of any successful relationship is to begin with your own self. Every person must first develop a self-relationship with him or herself before approaching or accepting a relationship from another person.

This is based on the old time rule that what you don’t have, you cannot give. If you don’t understand the basic fact that we all come with defects from the factory of the Almighty God, it would be difficult to understand and accommodate the shortcomings of another person. Each time we criticise anyone of making a mistake, we indirectly criticise our own faults because every mistake we notice in others are reflections of our imperfections.

Therefore for a relationship to prosper, we must learn to be very understanding and tolerant of each other. Rather than criticise mistakes in others, we should learn how to help the person improve on his or strong points since each of us also comes with a uniqueness hard to replicate in another person.

The secret of life and successful relationship is to take the extra time out to discover our mate’s strongest point. This takes devotion and understanding to achieve. Without a conscious effort to invest time and devotion to a relationship, nothing meaningful can be achieved overnight.

One must always put his or her mate’s feelings first before every other thing. This is not negotiable being in love is like living in our mate’s body. Since, we cannot ignore our own needs, feelings and comfort; so must we also prioritise the needs and interests of our mates at all times.

To achieve this, a strong two- way line of communication must be opened. Both parties must have access to discuss and dialogue with the other as freely as possible. A situation in which only one person does all the talking, and the other, all the listening, only serves to destroy a relationship because the one who is doing all the listening will either get tired and quit or withdraw into the shell expressing little or no interest in the relationship. When this occurs, it is the relationship or marriage that suffers depreciation.

Importantly, the couple should at all time premise their relationship on friendship founded on trust and loyalty. When a couple exposes a relationship to suspicions, nagging and undue stress, the relationship becomes foggy and consuming.

Whenever a confusing situation arises, it is essential both parties come together and discuss it as friends. Besides, when couples begin as lovers, it destroys their ability to think straight as well objectively. At the onset of a relationship sex is a liability rather than an asset. Sex only becomes an asset after marriage.

Furthermore, a sexless relationship allows the couple to build firmly on the vitals such as devotion to each other. It is from friendship that tolerance, care, loyalty, patience, sacrifice and forgiveness all come from. When a couple is able to tolerate each other and develop the patience needed to look beyond the physical attribute of each other to the special gift embedded inside the person, even when a disagreement occurs, that special thing makes it impossible for them to go their different ways because they each see in the other complementary qualities.

Being a man, you must also develop the ability to ignore and exercise restraints in dealing with a woman. Most women are given to action before thinking. A woman would have spoken her mind or opinion on something before she has the time to think of the implications of her action. A man who lacks maturity or the understanding to manage a woman will find himself constantly provoked into physical action by a woman’s attitude.

Being the head of the home, you should always bear in mind that most women have the ability to stir a man into anger within seconds hence for the sake of peace and healthy relationship must develop the necessary defence to ignore an angry or nagging woman.

One of such ways is simply to retire to bed, if you have the extra shock absorbers to fence off her verbal attack or to quietly leave the house until her anger abates. When a man is able to conquer the temper of a woman without lifting a finger against her, he wins for himself respect from her as well as instill some level of discipline in the affairs of his home.

Above all, both parties should learn to be respectful of their different positions and responsible for each other.

Good luck.

My Mother Is Barely Dead, Father Wants To Remarry

Dear Agatha,

I am a married 38-years-old, who is worried about the decision of my father to remarry well into his 60s, and this, barely three years after my mother died.

My father’s new bride is in her 40s, with children from a previous marriage.

My father is a chronic womaniser, a reason I don’t agree with him. He didn’t just acquire his predilection for philandering, or after the death of my mother. Rather, it is something my siblings and I grew up to know about him.

Though caring, his womanising is legendary, to the extent that his antics with women were brought close to us, the children.

My mother used to cry about the situation; but endured this habit for our sakes, which is why I still can’t understand why she died when she did. She died at the time she ought to be enjoying the fruits of her patience and endurance with a man who obviously lacks respect for her feelings.

Now, he wants to bring a strange woman into the house, someone who could be after his money, or looking for someone to foist the burden of her life on. Although I have not met the woman, I am not interested in doing so. I found it difficult to understand why my father needs a woman at his age, when he has cooks and servants to do his bidding.

Had he been more disciplined, perhaps, my mother would still have been alive, enjoying the dividends of her marital life. So, why should my father now share his life with another woman, whom I suspect may have been in his life all these while?

I need your help. A lot of his friends think I am being unreasonable in my oppositions to his desire remarry, but how can I accept another woman in my mother’s place?

Agatha, how can I forget that it should have been my mother enjoying by my father’s side? And how do I get him to stop this woman from bringing her children into my father’s house or benefiting from his resources? I am of the opinion that everything he has belongs to us, and that this woman must not be allowed to enjoy from the labour of another person. What do you think?

Olajide.

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Dear Olajide,

You sound very selfish and unreasonable. Being married yourself, you, more than anyone else, should understand the essence of having someone special to share your life with.

Even though your father started out with your mother and may have made all the mistakes in the world, your mother loved him enough to have put up with him and his excesses.

She must have derived a lot of happiness from their wedlock to choose to make the choice she made. Not even for the sake of the children would a woman endure abject pains and humiliations.

If her years with your father were that terrible, do you think she would have put up with him for almost 35 years, given the fact that you are now 38, three years after she died?

Do you think your mother would be happy wherever she is that your father is lonely and helpless in the hands of all the women he is in contact with? Which would be best for you all, having another wife to care for him or being left to the devices of his numerous girlfriends?

Your father may have made all the mistakes in the world, but he is at an age where he direly needs the companionship of a woman. You and your siblings are all probably out of his nest, growing your own families. He is alone and lonely. No matter how much you try, the void created by the death of your mother can never be filled; only the love of another woman can prolong his life and help him get over the pains of losing someone he shared the best part of his life with.

That he is re-marrying doesn’t mean he has forgotten your mother or would this woman, who is soon to become your stepmother, ever be able to erase the memories of your mother from his heart. Your mother’s place in his life and heart can never be voided. Remember that your mother is his first love, and would remain so until he dies.

His choice to marry this woman must have been influenced by some special qualities similar to that of your late mother. If he is indeed a legendary womaniser as you have described him, I am not sure he would have waited for three years before contemplating marriage again.

That you have not met this woman shows that she may be a recent development, and not one of the many women who may have graced his bed while your mother was alive. Waiting for three years shows that the exit of your mother must have affected him more than you all give him credit for.

Before this woman was your mother, she was his friend, confidant and wife. The impact of her death won’t affect you as deeply as it is affecting him. You lost a mother but you now have a family to help you get over her memories. He has nobody you, the children, are busy with your families, careers and individual lives, to bother with his own feelings and welfare.

Surely, you cannot deny an old man his right to happiness and peace on account of bitterness on your path?

Yes, you have every right to be angry or hate the woman who is coming to share part of his life now, but fairness demands you give her a chance to prove herself.

That she is divorced doesn’t make her a gold-digger who is after your father’s wealth. It is a general assumption that may not apply in this case. It isn’t fair to label her before giving you and her chance to meet.

You may discover to your shame that she is a woman capable of taking care of her children without the help of your father. At any rate, the decision to help out with her children is your father’s, not yours.

That your father is soliciting the understanding of his children in this matter is because he loves and respects you all; otherwise, he doesn’t, because it is his life and happiness that is involved.

No servant can give him the type of care a woman he marries would give him. He isn’t stupid to have chosen to settle down with this woman among the many he has in his life. To have settled for her means he sees what you and your siblings are not seeing. He is an old man with solid experiences on his side.

You cannot love him more than he loves himself, and at his age, he has gone past the point of sentiments to the stage of cold reality. Only experience can make a man look beyond love to essentials.

Show him the same respect he has accorded you all, else, if he marries this woman without your supports, you all risk sending him to an early grave with your infightings and scheming.

If you are now accusing him of being responsible for the death of your mother, don’t let other people accuse you of being responsible for his death too.

On the issue of this woman’s children coming to live in your father’s house, it is something you cannot avoid, but remember, they have been staying somewhere before now, and might actually be reluctant to move from where they are.

To assume they would automatically move to your father’s house is pompous, because for all you know, their father may be richer than yours.

That this woman is divorced doesn’t make her a failure or gold-digger. Being married yourself, you must know that marriage is never a smooth journey and that some people get to a stage where the option left to them is divorce.

That your marriage is succeeding is a grace of God and not because you are doing something different from those who made the choice to end it all. Leave the choice of who your father shares his wealth with to him; after all, he is the one who made the money in the first place. Importantly, help pray your father into making the right decision. If he is happy, it would lessen the amount of emergency trips you have to make to his house or the worries you will do about his well-being. It would be the woman’s burden not yours anymore.

Besides, life can be very lonely when there is no one to share it with, which is why the church and society lend their support to remarriage, when there is a vacuum created by either death or wrong choice.

Good luck.

Nigerian Girls Lacking In Active Sexual Expression

Dear Agatha,

I stumbled on your column while surfing for some materials at work and decided to confide my problems to someone with your understanding.

It is an impulsive action I feel would bring a sort of relief to me. I am in my 30s and married, so it isn’t as if I am not well positioned. However, there is this personal thing I’m unable to have due to the primary reason that Nigerians generally hide in the shadow of culture and the likes to shy away from the reality of their environment.

How do you explain my situation? I love my wife dearly and willing to do anything to make her happy but I have a very high libido she alone cannot satisfy. I am more romantic than she is, and Agatha, you know men like to be pampered especially in the bedroom. Unfortunately, Nigerian ladies are very shy and pretentious about issues like this.

Forget all the marriage sentiments for now. What I need is an equally matured woman in my shoes as a very good friend to help douse each other’s tension. So why are Nigerian ladies so pretentious, always pretending about what they really want?

Unsatisfied Husband.

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Dear Unsatisfied Husband,

If you really love your wife as you claim, why haven’t you taught her to make love all the ways that make you happy? The essence of two people coming together under the platform of marriage is to help each other improve on whatever areas they are deficient.

A good man would give unconditionally to his wife so also is a good woman. That your wife is unable to satisfy you means you are a selfish and lousy lover, one who is more concerned about his needs than the need of the two of you. Like you, she may be feeling very unsatisfied with the quality of sex you are both having but due to respect for
your person and sense of responsibility to the marriage decided to endure the situation despite her personal displeasures. How would you feel if this woman goes outside your home to have a piece of the action elsewhere? How will it sound if the person from whom she seeks the fun is another married man?

Sincerely, whether you want to hear it or not, you are the one with the problem here. A good man, whose feelings and concern for his wife are genuine, would first discuss his feelings and thoughts with the wife and thereafter seek ways within the marriage on how to resolve the issue.

No matter how pretentious a woman is that would be ready to lose her home to another woman on account of her inability to satisfy her man in bed. Love goes with respect and responsibility. There is no way you can claim to love your wife without the concomitant respect or responsibility that go with it.

What you should do is to sit her down and talk to her. Let her tell you about her sexual inhibitions and the areas of deficiency you noticed. Between the two of you, you can establish a patent for your sex life, one that would give your marriage a pep and constant freshness.

The woman you are looking for may end up not better than your wife but because she is a fresh face, you think her better than your wife. Just as another man may consider your wife better than his. Nobody is ever satisfied with what he or she has until it is too late in the day.

Rather than embark on a mission guaranteed to destroy your definition of happiness with your wife, help yourself make your marriage happier and more fulfilling. Knowing what you think of her sexual performance will energise her into accepting whatever suggestions you make in that direction. It will stop any argument if she has been doing so whenever you make a suggestion.

If women are pretentious, it is only because the men encourage them to be. Chances are your wife may have more ideas about this game than you do but is scared about what you would think of her if she goes full scale. Some men prefer to think their wives inexperienced in the bedroom than have her display all her acts. This way they convince themselves she has not slept with all the men in the world to acquire that experience whereas her experience may not come from sleeping around but paying attentions to details of the game.

Women would be more honest about their past history if men learn not to play the ostrich and also jettison their inhibitions about women who have no qualms expressing themselves. A lot of the time, the attitude of men pushes women into pretending to be novice in the bedrooms simply to massage the man’s ego and make him believe he is charge.

Rather than source for fulfillment in the hands of another woman, pull your wife out of her reserve. Give her the room to be the woman she has always wanted to be in the bedroom. Make her your prostitute you both have the licence to do as you please.

A lot of the time, the difference between failure and success lies in our imagination and determination to give life to what we want. All the cravings and lustful fantasies that are driving you to seek the company of another woman, invest them all in your wife.

The truth is that when men complain about the participation of women in the bedroom, it paints a picture of an unsure and unimaginative lover. There is no woman an imaginative lover cannot lure out of her shell. What you should do is to investigate the exotic spots of your woman. Begin from her scalp to her sole. When you touch a very sensitive spot, you would know by her cry of excitement. There is no controlling these things they are natural reactions. All you need is patience to help her know even her body.

Admittedly, not many women have intimate relationships with their bodies. This is mainly due to the fact that our culture wraps sex and all issues that have to do with it in very dark blanket just as any attempt by any young man or woman to peep, to have information, to know why certain things happen to them is met with very strong moral sanctions.

The implication is that many young women especially grown-up with little or no knowledge of how to please a man sexually beyond having sex with him. This has contributed to the collapse of many marriages as men whose sexual organs are placed outside their bodies are ably assisted by their sights and imagination to get quick arousal at very short notices whereas a woman’s arousal is dependent on how much stimulations she gets from her man which in turn makes the difference in her sexual performance.

But, like I earlier pointed out, it takes a patient and understanding man to turn things around for a woman in the bedroom. If you go into whatever relationship you are looking for with the same docile attitude, it is the same frustrating results you would get.

Besides, what is most important to you? A peaceful home or good but illegal sex that will destroy the peace you now have in the house? Sex is important but not the only basis people marry. You can have a woman scores 101 percent in sex but minus zero in all the important features that make a happy home. No marriage is ever complete, but the ability of couples to work on the differences that matters.

There are some men who would give the world to have your kind of wife, one, they have confidence in, who gives them a peaceful environment to grow and realise their potentials as men and heads of home.

And if you don’t want another man to sleep with your wife, don’t do it with another man’s wife. Nemesis is a painful word and experience.

Good luck.

How Do I Remedy My Weak Organ?

Dear Agatha,

I must first commend you on the succour you have been providing to millions of lives through your column, may the Almighty endow you with more grace, wisdom and knowledge.

I am 25 years of age. My problem started about a year ago, when my girlfriend visited me during her holidays and I tried to make love to her but to my greatest surprise and embarrassment, I could not keep my erection sufficiently for us to make love. Despite everything she did to help me, it was an effort in futility. I also noticed that I discharged without having actual intercourse with her. Since then the problem has persisted.

Please what kind of medications should I take to correct this dysfunction or can my problem be attributed to an infection, if yes what test do I undergone to diagnose such and how can it be best treated? Please, I so much need your advice.

Worried Man.

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Dear Worried Man,

Like I keep reminding all readers of this column that I am not a medical doctor hence lack the medical knowledge required to help you solve this problem.

Go immediately to see a medical doctor, not a chemist or any of the many quacks in town. Go to a government hospital where you have qualified and competent doctors who know what they are doing. They are in the best position to tell you what is wrong and recommend the right treatment for you.

A year is a long time to keep such an issue under wrap. Most times a lot of damage is done to our medical situation when we delay to see a doctor or patronise quacks. The wise thing would have been for you to see a doctor the moment you noticed the problem.

Good luck.

Fetish, Lecherous, Yet He Plans War If I Go

Dear Agatha,

Thanks for being there for us. I have been married for 18 years to a man I can best describe as a beast. He uses every opportunity to beat and maltreat me. He deprives me of sex while he is so generous with other women. There is no friend of mine he has not slept with a situation that made me jettisoned all my female friends.

I have also learnt to keep my female relations out of my home after he almost succeeded in forcing my younger sister to bed.

Severally I have tried to leave him but all to no avail. The first time he sent his thugs to drag me home and the last time I tried, he used charm on me.

The charm I later discovered was to ensure that any man who sleeps with me beside him would die. This is not fair considering the fact that he hasn’t been to my bed in the last three years. I refused him any contact with me after he tried to make love with me while charms were tied around his waist. That day he gave me the beating of my life. It was at that point I decided to end the marriage.

The issue is how do I get him to remove the charm from my body since I am ready to leave him for good to settle down with someone else?

Besides being cruel, he is very fetish. He has threatened to eliminate me and to inflict the children with strange illness if I leave him or take them away by force.

Agatha, the issue is that I am fed up. But how do I do it without putting the health of my children at risk?

Bose.

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Dear Bose,

Besides what you have said, what are the other issues involved in your marriage which makes it a dead end for you? What went wrong with the whole process to make it this bitter and unbearable for you?

If you are accusing him of being fetish, is it that you didn’t know from the onset? That you were unaware of his passion for the occult? What have you done as his wife to change him for the best? What efforts have you put in terms of prayer to get him off the habit? While a woman can claim she didn’t know from the beginning that her man is an armed robber, a womaniser, liar or a dupe, she cannot claim ignorance of her man being fetish. Charm is something those involved in it do with impunity. Along the line, you must have found objects, which point to his religious preferences despite what he claims to be to others. A man who would tie charms around his waist certainly didn’t begin it today. From the beginning he would have manifested his passion for charms, which you elected to ignore then. For the purpose of the argument, what words of God did you offer him to show him the right path to? He could really be doing what he is doing out of ignorance.

At what point in your 18 years of togetherness did the beating start and also the womanising? Did he start out cruel and unmindful of your feelings? When he tried to sleep with your sister, did you tell anyone in the family? I ask these questions because if you kept all these to yourself, it would be difficult for an observer not to blame your desire to end the marriage on your newfound love.

Only a liar would tell you that his or her marriage isn’t without challenges, the difference is the effort and determination people put into making it work in spite of the odds that colour the canvass.

For some of us, the hues are so dark and indefinite that they blind us to the possibilities of an amicable settlement.

Granted the picture you painted evokes sympathy in your favour but look inwards, what did you fail to do, that could have made the differences?

You see it is always all right for us to blame others for a situation we helped to perpetuate. Without mincing words, you are part of the mess your marriage has become because as a woman, you have what it takes to bring your influence to bear on your husband. You don’t have to nag or fight to get your way, a wise woman knows when to use her knees to fight her battle.

That you have found someone to marry you even before leaving his house shows you are as guilty as he is and that in some parts, he has reasons to do what he has done to you. His reactions may come from your disloyalty to him, a possible reason for his ruthlessness to you.

He is only using what he knows and has to protect what is his. Sincerely, nobody can blame this man for wanting to protect what is officially his right. That he is sleeping around doesn’t make it right for you to sleep around with a man.

You have every right to leave him on account of this but to engage in affairs of your own while still in his house packages you as a cheap and morally bankrupt woman, who has little respect for both her husband and the dignity for her body.

Whosoever this other man is, there is no way he would ever give you your full respect, given the fact that he knows about your loose morals as well as your lack of respect for the marriage institution. It would take a miracle for the man to have you for keeps. Besides, any man who dates a married woman is lacking in respect for himself as well as showcases the contempt at which he holds the sacredness of the institution. You can bet it, after a while he would get tired of you and move on to a woman with little responsibility. He doesn’t love you but the lack of responsibility your marital status offers him. Once you vacate the marriage, he would flee because of the responsibility that comes with new status as a free woman.

Like you said, if the marriage has depreciated to an all time low level, the best you can do is to quit. Let him threaten you; give it up instead of having affairs under his roof. This is very provocative and capable of making the sanest man do something violent.

A married woman is supposed to guard jealously her nakedness from another man because her body is the pride of her husband. Allowing another man see her body while still married destroys the self-esteem and pride of her man.

The ideal thing for you to do is to call a meeting of your family as well as his if surely you both cannot leave together again to intimate them of your decision. There is no way he would beat you in front of everybody. Let them know too about the threat on your children as well as the charm he has laced you with.

Once a couple has gotten to that point, when reason takes permanent leave of the marriage, it is best they go their different ways to protect the dignity of the marriage institution.

Telling your parents and his about the charm would force him to remove whatever fetish thing he has laced your body with and remove the frightening threat on his children.

But do take your time before rushing into something new because you may find out after you have left him that you still have feelings for him. Waiting would make you sure of your feelings.

Good luck.

Doubting Her True Love Despite My Craze For Her

Dear Agatha,

I am very grateful for the advice given to many people out there including me.

I am a young man of 28 years old in love with a girl of about 22. I have tried all my best to make her realise how much I love her.

She actually knows how much I love her. Her mother and siblings are aware of how much she means to me and are all looking forward to our getting married.

Though she claims to love me, I still feel she doesn’t love me as a man but only as a friend. She hardly calls me on phone, never sends me text messages or does anything to show she cares. Although I have been exercising patience with her for some time, believing I am exhibiting an essential ingredient of a true love and also believing that one day she will begin to appreciate my kind gestures. But I am beginning to have cold heart towards her, suspecting she might have someone else that she loves more than me. Please advice me on how best to handle this situation.

Ug.

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Dear Ug,

If you suspect she isn’t in love with you, let go. It is best to insure yourself against future pains than give in to sentiments that will in the long run leave you more devastated than you ever imagine.

Love is something you cannot force on anybody. The ideal thing is to confront her with your suspicions and to demand she tells you the truth irrespective of how much the truth would hurt you. Let her understand she isn’t doing you or herself any favour by pretending to feel something which she doesn’t feel, the earlier she tell you the truth, the best for everyone concerned.

One issue that could make her apprehensive about telling you the entire truth is her family’s disposition. She may not want to risk the displeasure of her family, which is why she is still pretending to be interested in you.

You will only get honest answers from her if you make her understand that you are not desperate to keep her against her will. A little assurance from you will get her to tell you everything you need to know including the bit about your suspicions of her having another man in her life.

No matter how much you love this woman, tolerated her excesses, if she isn’t interested in you as the right man for her, your efforts will be futile.

Good luck.

We’re Perfect Pair But My Parents…

Dear Agatha,

I am a regular reader of your column and always impressed by the quality of the advice you give. God will surely reward and give you more wisdom.

There is this problem I have for which I need your advice.

I entered into a relationship in 2004. We love each other and he is also nice. I am NCE holder and met him in my final year at the college. He came for his NYSC scheme in my school, along the line we became friends and the rest is now history.

After his service year he went back to Enugu, and the distance between us didn’t affect the relationship at all. My parents were not aware then because of their disposition towards me having a boyfriend.

In 2006 he got a good job with the Enugu State government. Despite this, his feelings for me never changed as his friends and family members always gave us their support.

The job didn’t change his feelings for me. I can attest to the fact that I am the only woman in his life.

During Easter in 2008, he came to my house to ask for my hand in marriage but my parents rejected him on account of him being from Imo State, while I am from Anambra. They don’t like the village he comes from. According to them people from his area are very wicked hence they won’t allow me marrying any man from there.

My five years with him have exposed me to his nature and character. I know for certain, he doesn’t have the traits my parents are afraid of. On the contrary he is very loving, caring, supportive as well as encouraging. Like everyone else he has his weaknesses, which I have come to accept and tolerate.

Since 2008, he has been waiting and pleading with my parents to give him an opportunity to study and know his character before passing their judgement but they have refused. There is nothing we haven’t done for them to give us a chance but they remain resolute.

This Easter, we took the painful decision to quit the relationship since we can’t marry without their consent but we are daily challenged with the problem of staying away from each other. He is of the opinion that he can never live with another woman except me and like him I am also experiencing the same thing. I can’t find in another man the same qualities in him. His support is so unconditional to the extent that he is instrumental to my being a graduate of Mathematics today.

Some people advised he should get me pregnant, but he said that it would only complicate the matter as my people have already made their stance known on the matter. That if he had done that before his coming to them, they would have had no choice but to bless the marriage. Doing that now, he thinks, would amount to disobedience, in the opinion of my parents. He wants their blessings to be unconditional.

Although we have gone our different ways, we are still praying for my parents to call us back.

Agatha, I am seriously confused and the pains are increasing instead of abating. We have invested so much into this relationship. His friends, cousins and parents, especially his mother are worried about us. They think we were made for each other.

Worried Fiancée.

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Dear Worried Fiancée,

If you and your partner don’t stand up for the love you share, nobody would. Giving up on yourselves and love is a very cowardly thing to do in the face of your parents’ objection.

True love is detribalised and cuts across religious or general categorisation of a people. What your parents accuse his people of isn’t limited to where he comes from. Bad people are everywhere. The world has only two types of people, the good and the bad.

Being more experienced in matters of relationship, they ought to know that the important thing is what a couple has in its favour, which is friendship.

That you have courted successfully for five years despite the problems of distance shows a good measure of compatibility, faithfulness, understanding and trust. These are very much in supply. Relationships are crumbling like packs of cards these days because the couples involved don’t know what to look out for and what to invest their time on.

For the simple reason that you have accepted each other’s shortcomings and willing to live with them shows a high sense of understanding and thoughtfulness you have both invested in this relationship.

To give up all these on account of what your parents feel isn’t right. Does it mean you two would give up easily on a future situation you find yourselves in simply because the opposition appears insurmountable? Would you and your man give up on your marriage if the unforeseen situation of not having a child comes up?

This is the time to begin the process of fighting for what you both want and belief in. Unless you are both of the view that five years together is of no worth, then give up on your love but if you think these are important years to you and the foundation of your happiness in future, look for more effective ways of getting your parents to accept this union. You being at the centre of it all has the greater role to play because you know things he doesn’t know about your parents. Use you knowledge of your parents to get them to listen to you on this matter.

Our roles as parents are to provide support and give hope, not to jettison the hopes of our children on account of unsubstantiated facts. It is unfair to deny two persons who have found true love the chance to be happy together on account of what his people are.

The right thing would have been to give him a chance to prove to them whether he is bad or good, given you a chance to say what you know of him.

There is nothing in life that is well defined but love conquers all and makes perfect those things, which are not.

Rather than pine away, take your destiny in your hands because no one will. It is your life and happiness that is at stake, so you must find a way of making your mother especially listen to you.

Get her on her own to plead with her. This is a woman to woman thing, a time to drag her back into her past, and to remind her of her own days when she and your father decided to get married. To enquire how she would have felt if anyone had tried to stop her spending her life with the one man she knew was made for her.

Make her understand, the risk you are willing to take for true love and how you would remain an old maid in her house if she refuses to let you be. No mother wants her daughter to remain with her for long. Let her see your pains as well as determination as a woman. Let her think you would get pregnant for this man if she refuses you to follow your destiny.

Then go to your father, can you remember the tricks you used as an innocent and helpless child to bail yourself out of his bad book? This is the best time to drag that out and use your charm to get him to support you. Every father has a secret soft spot for his daughter. It is an inexplicable reason. Fathers always give in to their daughters even when their mouths are saying no. His heart is what you need to appeal to, the heart of love and protection as the head of the home. His desire is for you to be happy and well protected in your husband’s house. Women are the ones that are always looking for sentimental things to hold on to, men look for substance. Allow you father see the good side of him through your tears. Show your father the evidence of your love for him and his for you. Weep like you did when you were a child but this time let it be tears of pains of a woman who is in love and asking her father to protect her against the pains of losing the only man she truly loves.

You will neither win this battle by being stubborn nor would you win it by being passive. This is a battle of wisdom combined with the craftiness of a woman. This is an attribute women bring from heaven, which no marriage course teaches.

A woman has to be a diplomat to win her battles.

It is in your interest you develop the skill before going into marriage because marriage itself requires diplomacy to sustain. You must master the act of accommodating all interests and neutralising opposition without being obvious or confrontational.

It pays at all times to know the weakness of your opponent and use them to your advantage without them realising it.

After talking to your mother, get your boyfriend’s mother too to do a woman-to-woman talk with your mother. Once you are able to get one of your parents on your side, it would be easier to push your agenda and interest.

In addition to these, pray. There is nothing God cannot do. No matter how difficult your parents may appear to be, they are subject to the will of God. Go on your knees plead for His help in this matter.

One thing though, if after praying alone and together, the situation remains and doing everything humanly possible including soliciting the assistance of older family members as well as the church to intervene on your behalf, it means God didn’t make both of you an item, so let go. It does happen that sometimes what we think we want desperately isn’t the same thing God wants for us.

Good luck.

Hard To Vouch For Her Love Any Longer

Dear Agatha,

First of all, I just want to personally thank you for the wonderful service unto humanity and to God Almighty. You are a saint from God who is here to correct, direct, and guide people. May God bless you?

I am in a relationship with the woman who happens to be my first love. We are both 26 years of age. We actually started dating in 2007.

Things were good between us until she got admission into the polytechnic when people started whispering into my ears of her activities.

Though to an extent I can vouch for her, knowing that she prefers male company to female company. I am, however, getting confused by all the tales I am hearing since I am interested in marrying her as soon as she finishes her Ordinary National Diploma (OND).

This is because each time I call her line, I never get through and when I ask why it has become difficult to get through to her, she says no electricity to charge the battery of her phone.

But I got really worried when she lied about the source of the credit she used in calling me. In response to my query she told me her friend transferred credit to her but when I called the number it was a male voice.

In her explanation she told me her friend used the man’s phone to transfer the credit since she couldn’t make it through her own phone.

What should I do about this lie? I am so confused.

Michael.

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Dear Michael,

Make out time to go to her school unannounced to find out things yourself. Already, the stories getting to you are beginning to affect your emotions and reasoning. To avoid condemning her for something she isn’t guilty of, go and verify the situation. It would help a great deal if you spend a weekend there.

You may find out that you are simply being paranoid about a situation that only exists in the minds of the people telling you the tales.

A lot of time when people carry tales, they are out for mischief. It could be that some of these men or women telling you stories about your woman have a personal agenda, which can only be executed if you both break up.

This is why you should be extra cautious and apply wisdom in the matter. A lot of couples who failed to apply wisdom in similar situation found out to their dismay after the harm had been done that they were played for fools by persons they thought were protecting their interests.

Besides, you know certain things about her, which these people telling tales about her don’t know. Some of those expressing concern and apprehension over her morals may be genuine but could be misreading the situation and viewing things from a completely different perspective. For instance, you have always known the side of her that favours male company to female, hence understands the nature of her friendship with these men whereas an outsider is bound to read a different meaning to her association with these men.

Your presence in the school would not only help douse this impression of her but also assist your friends in the school understand her better.

In addition, it would facilitate a better understanding and trust of the woman you hope to marry.

However, it is important you don’t give her or any of these friends the impression that you are affected by all the stories you are being fed with. She in particular must never know you are beginning to doubt her especially as there are no strong evidences to support your position.

All you have is just the feeling that she is cheating on you, nothing concrete. Even if she is, you need clear evidence of her act to confront and take a final decision. Issues like this require wisdom to resolve.

When you get there, give the impression the essence of your visit is to see her because you miss her so much. Don’t ever give her the slightest hint that your visit is pegged on suspicions. You may not be able to manage the consequences of being wrong. Not only would you have destroyed the trust of your two years together but put a huge question mark on your desire to spend your lives together.

Again you have to be careful if her attitude is not being influenced by the activities of your friends. She may have become disillusioned by all the negative reports your friends are giving you and have decided to end it to have some peace in her life.

Not everybody can handle the pressure of constantly be subjected to suspicions or have every action given a meaning different from what it actually is.

This is why you must also question the motive of your friends. Relationship is about two people not several persons. Once too many people are allowed free access into a relationship, given audience and considerations, problem of management is created.

Your friends as well as hers must give you both the chance to make your mistakes as normal couples do everyday.

On the issue of the credit, keep an open mind until you see her. Although it appears suspicious but give her the benefit of doubt until you are proven wrong.

Above all, have an open mind about issues. Dig into what you know of her to give you a clear perspective of how to go because if you depend on the circumstances of all that is happening now, you may not take the right decision.

God will help both of you make the right decision.

Good luck.

Lonely Heart

I am 23 years of age, a student, Christian and over five inches tall. I am searching for a man who is between the ages of 29 and 35 years of age who must be literate, Christian and employed for a serious relationship.

An interested man should please call me on this number, 08028855620.

Susan.

No Message Six Years After He Jetted Abroad…

Dear Agatha,

I thank God that we have somebody like you in the country, who daily invests time on finding solutions to people's problems. One more time, big thanks for that.

I have a guy I dated for two years before he travelled abroad we love each other. We were engaged before he travelled. But my problem now is that since he left six years ago he hasn't bothered to call or send me e-mail but he calls his siblings and sends them money. I got this information from his younger brother.

When I asked his brother why his elder brother doesn't call me he keeps giving me excuses.

Please I need your advice.

Oge.

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Dear Oge,

You don't need me or anyone to tell you what is very obvious to you, this boy isn't interested in you. Why would a man who claims to love you not get in touch with you for six years? Six years is a long time to hope that he would ever call you or send for you. For all you know, he may be married with children of his own. If this man never had any feelings for you, those feelings died on the day he bade you farewell.

Move on with your life. He has forgotten everything about you and through his actions given you the freedom to do likewise.

Sincerely, it is rather shocking that you are hoping for some sort of miracles from someone who hasn't called or bothered about you for as long as six years. He would be surprised too that you are still hanging on to a promise he as forgotten everything about.

Asking his brother about him after all these years portrays you as being desperate.

Give yourself some self-respect and stop acting as if this man is the only man on earth. Any man who can ignore you for the number of years that he has done isn't worthy of you. It also shows that your two years together meant nothing to him beyond the pleasure of the intimacy you shared together.

I appreciate you could still be suffering from the pains of his seeming betrayal but given the situation, there is nothing you can do to make him come back to you. If he has the time to call him family and send them money, he simply doesn't care about you.

It would therefore be foolhardy for you to wait for a man who has since consigned memories of you to history. You also have to realise that six years out of a woman's life is more like a lifetime. Unless you are not telling the truth, you too would have realised long ago of the futility of waiting.

Engagement isn't the same thing like marriage. There isn't anything legal between you two beyond your desires at that time to be together. It was only an expression of a desire to be together nothing more, nothing less. Your reason for waiting would have been understood if both of you were married but this is incomprehensible. No matter how deep your love for him is there is no sense in this waiting, which has no end in sight or an anchor for it to berth.

This wait has assumed a morbid mien and unless you enjoy torturing yourself forget everything about this man and give yourself the chance to be happy again. If the task of letting go is difficult, turn to God. You won't be betraying him if this is what you are worried about because he betrayed you first. It takes two to tangle. You cannot executive a relationship on your own, you need a man to and this man from all indices has found someone else to tangle with. There is one man out there waiting to fall in love with you if only you allow him get close to you.

Even though you didn't tell me your age, six years out of a woman's life is a lot of time, a whole lifetime to waste trying to hold on to the wind.

Once you made up your mind to let go, you would be surprised at the beauty of the outside world you have shut out for six years.

If the task of letting go is difficult, turn to God for help. His help would make it easy for you to forget.

Good luck

Does True Love Really Exist?

Dear Agatha,

The prayers of your readers would always make you excel in your undertakings.

In what ways can love be defined in respect to relationship between man and woman? How does one detect true love? Does true love really exist?

Worried Man.

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Dear Worried Man,

Love is the special feelings a man or woman feel for a member of the opposite sex. The potency of the feeling is such it cannot be controlled. It is also unique because in its true and raw form transcends creed, colour, tribe, age, social and educational status. True love selects a partner for the person and not the person selecting whom he or she would fall in love with.

It is a beautiful mix of friendship, respect, tolerance, endurance and selflessness. It transcends human understanding and often time blind to the reason of others. It is accepting something you or others don't see but feel deep inside where nobody can see it.

True love doesn't question, rationalise or scrutinise the reason for its being, instead it simply accepts what it cannot change.

When a man or woman finds true love, he or she taps into God's secret key to happiness and peace since it doesn't take stock of any wrong.

However before one can give and recognise love, the person has to know what love is else may not be able to give or accept it without doubts.

So love begins from self-love because what you don't have, you can't give. Love flows from within to the outside. When love begins from the outside to the inside, it isn't real and doesn't survive difficult times because the foundation is premised on wrong values and reasons; unlike the one that places all its emphasis on what the person has inside. This is why relationships are falling like packs of card and true love does exist but has been given different interpretations by those who prize it in terms of how much it can command in terms of materialism and money.

True love comes with patience, understanding and unconditional trust in a seemingly impossible situations.

Good luck.

I Fear Men, Yet My Appetite For Sex Is Strong

Dear Agatha,

I can no-longer control my sexual urge since I lost out in a relationship about two years ago. Since then I have been unable to give myself to any man not because I do not need a man in my life, but out of fear of having a man in my life.

As a result of that experience, I have become scared of giving my body, soul and spirit to any man even though I constantly hope the right man would come some day.

However, with every passing day, my hope of getting that kind of man dims as the ones who seem interested in me are the unserious ones who are only interested in getting in between the sheets with me.

Honestly, I don't want to give any man the room to hurt me again. It has not been easy staying without sex for this long, yet I don't want to have sex with a man I do not have deep feelings for and who may not be ready for a real relationship.

How then do I get the right man? I do not have friends to share my thoughts with, I really love to have some, but it has not been easy finding a good friend who shares my values and understands what true friendship is all about.

I really don't know what to do to get the right people around me. I know I have good manners, decent, clean and intelligent and respectful.

Really, I think I have the qualities every good woman has, but I just don't know why I am not getting the right people. Am already in my 30s.

In the mean time, what do you think I should do concerning this unquenchable urge for sex?

Worried lady.

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Dear Worried Lady,

Unless you want to end up as a mere statistic in the record book of one of these unserious men flocking around you and consequently get yourself hurt all over again, learn to control your desires.

Considering you have been sexually active before, your urges are very natural but left unmanaged can lead to more bitterness in your life and social status. Though they can be unbearable when they come, you must learn to exercise yourself control and divert your thoughts to something else. If you remember the pains your last relationship caused you, quenching those desires would be easier for you.

Pains or memories of it don't go with desires. They are two opposing poles that keep pulling each other apart.

Your experience in the hand of your ex is to help you properly place your priority in life. To give in to meaningless sex is to further expand your scope of pains as well as deepen your sense of betrayal.

Is that what you want? To be subjected to constant pains and betrayals by men? Whatever happened between you and your ex can only be a stepping stone to greater heights if you exercise some patience and endurance.

Staying off sex won't kill you rather it would only add value to your person.

As for being 30 and unmarried, life is an open school. Our dates of entry and graduation from one level to the other aren't the same. Like structured school, the fact that you both gained admission on the same day doesn't mean you will graduate on the same day. Some of us are fast learners while some of us need extra time to be ready for the challenges of the next level. Unless, one's time comes, it is useless trying to fast forward it. Those who have tried to play God in their own destinies have had their fingers burnt badly and sometimes to ashes.

By learning to trust God and giving Him the right of way in your life, it makes the challenges of life more manageable and easier to accomplish. This is because what we count as problems or finished marks in our mortal forms are minors in His diction. Time is nothing in His hands because He has the powers to go to and fro as He pleases. If your time is not now, do whatever you want with these men, you will never achieve that happiness you quest for unlike when it is His will for you.

Working on His time eliminates struggles and worries. Things happen of their own accord and without stress. You are having all these problems in your choices because you are working and walking on your own.

Give up your struggles to Him because He sees the heart of everybody. Both male and female relationships will be easier for you if you do this.

It will also help you focus on your own faults and shortcomings. That you are having problems in your love life as well as with your choice of female friends point to fundamental flaws in your character, can you identify what the issues are?

Are you too critical, the opinionated type that leaves little or not room for others to have a say in anything? The tiresome kind of person everyone is trying to avoid?

You will get a fair idea into your person by asking those around you what they think of your person. You may have everything a man wants in a woman but if your temperament or attitude is wrong, nobody will stay around you for long to appreciate the treasure, which you are.

To help you get over this issue, learn to listen more, speak less as well as become observant of issues you never regarded as important before.

Listening more gives you the opportunity to observe without the other person knowing those things they are not saying. When a person talks too much, he or she gives an astute mind an open opportunity to see through whatever sheet of film that covers the person's mind.

When you talk less, you build yourself up to become a confidant, a support base, develop your inner strength and subsequently a good friend. This way you attract the right kind of persons to yourself, people who believe and trust you, who would also offer their support to you during your time of crisis.

You have to learn to be a good friend to others since you cannot give or recognise what you don't have.

This also begins from you learning to appreciate who you are. For you to recognise friendship, you must first learn to be your own friend without that you cannot become one yourself.

As for the right man, he would come only at the right time provided you trust God and His ways.

Good luck.

Hidden Past Endangers My Marriage

Dear Agatha,

I have this secret I have been keeping from my husband of seven years.

I never intended to keep it away from him but did for fear of losing him.

When we met seven years ago, I was almost giving up on ever getting a man of my own. All the other relationships ended abruptly the moment I tell them about my children.

I had one at the age of 16, and another, when I was 19.

The fact that I had them for different men made a lot of these men skeptical about marrying me, a situation that got me increasingly desperate.

I was 33 when I met my husband and had to trap him into marrying me by getting pregnant the second month after our meeting.

I knew from our discussions that he would never agree to an abortion, so, when I told him about my condition, he had no option but to marry me.

Almost immediately, I insisted that my mother should take my children to their fathers, so my husband wouldn't find out about them.

I equally warned them never to get in touch with my family or me again.

My mother didn't approve of my decision but since they were my children, there was little or nothing she could do.

This decision was easy for me, because my husband was transferred two weeks to our wedding, about our fourth month together.

But, now, having been married for seven years and losing two children, I want my other children back.

I heard from my mother that my first daughter got married two years ago and has a set of twins.

The people I went to consult after the deaths of my children all blamed me for their deaths.

According to these churches and spiritualists, my other children are unhappy with my attitude towards them.

They all told me that the fate of other children I might have for my new husband would be the same with the dead ones, until I bring the ones I sent away close to me.

I am pregnant again and doctors have warned me not to attempt another pregnancy after this. They said my womb is weak.

It would have been a different thing, if I had told my husband about these other children from the beginning, but how do I tell him after seven years of marriage that I have grown up children and that I am even a grandmother?

How do I placate my children, especially my first daughter whose wedding I didn't attend?

I don't know what to do anymore.

My husband is 43, and from what I know of him, lacks the temperament or maturity to sympathise with my dilemma.

Worse still, I am aware he is involved with another woman.

Won't this revelation send me out of his life completely? I am scared.

Debisi.

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Dear Debisi,

Whatever challenge you are going through in your marriage was self-inflicted. Why did you have to keep something as important as earlier children a secret from your husband? The excuse about men leaving you the moment they found out about these children could not justify your silence all these years. When were you planning to tell him? Were you ever going to tell him if your children by him hadn't died, and you are required to open up to save the life of your unborn child?

Were you ever going to acknowledge those children again as yours?

At this stage, it is too late for lies and fears. You have reached that state in your life where only the truth is acceptable.

This is because, no matter how much you wished things were different, they will never change from being what they are now.

So brace up to face your past once and for all.

We all come with some form of skeletons from the past.

There is every possibility that your husband too has one or two things he doesn't want to remember from his past.

In all honesty, you weren't fair to this man. You didn't give him the chance to react before assuming he would throw you out of his life like all the others.

The fact that he accepted the ownership of a pregnancy barely two months after you met and agreed to marry you in less than four months of your meeting, shows a man with some level of decency and sense of responsibility.

Since you knew he would never allow you abort the child you were carrying for him, you should have capitalised on that fact at the time, to come out clean.

Doubtless, he would have felt like every other person, including you in his shoes, would have felt at the knowledge of the existence of these children. Nevertheless, he would have had the opportunity of choice.

If he leaves you now, nobody would blame him, because your marriage to him was premised from the very beginning on falsehood and scheming.

For him, the major issue may not be the existence of the children, but the fact that you didn't trust him enough to confide your past in him, and your refusal to give him the chance to state his mind in a matter that concerns him too.

You may argue that the children are your personal business, but your marriage to him makes them his business also.

Now, not only do you risk losing your husband, but the respect and love of your children. Had you handled it differently, he probably might have gladly adopted the children and you; with you having the last laugh over all the bitterness and disappointments of your past.

Unwittingly, you have given this man a reason to question your credibility as a woman and mother.

No explanation you give now would ever be enough to erase whatever impression this situation will create in him. Sincerely, it would take the grace of God to change his new opinion of you.

Whereas, in the beginning, he could have sympathised with the circumstance leading you to have those children when you did and for different men too; it would certainly not be so easy to convince him now. You have simply boxed yourself into a very tight corner.

It would not be easy for him to trust a woman who can hide such important information from her husband for such a long time.

In his shoes, what would you make of a man who conceals for that length of time the existence of a child?

Whatever may be the consequences, tell him. It is never too late. The worst that can happen is for him to tell you to leave his house, but you would at least be free to re-establish relationship with your older children, as well as the grace of safely having that baby inside you.

Telling him would free you of the judgment of God, who, in the first place, has a reason for bringing those children you abandoned for marriage your way.

Whatever situation a woman finds herself in, she must never turn her back on her child.

You really have to beg God and your husband for mercy and forgiveness.

The law of marriage is premised on honesty, integrity and trust; none of which you have. Earn yourself some level of integrity by owning up to your mistakes and facing its consequences.

If you put God first, no matter your husband's depth of pains, God will give him the grace to forgive. All you have to do is to be really sorry and mean it.

Good luck

I'm In Love With My Driver

Dear Agatha,

I don't know whom else to confide in but increasingly I have to deal with an uncomfortable situation. I am desperately in love with my driver.

My husband is 35 years older than I am and has lost some of vibrancy in bed. I was 35 years of age when I met and married him last year. His first wife died about two years ago and he was very lonely. I, on the other hand, was desperate to marry and since no young man wanted me enough to ask for my hand in marriage, I gladly gave in to his proposal against the advice of my mother who felt he was too old for me especially as I was four years older than his last child. His first son and daughter have grown up children and aren't too happy at their father's decision to marry someone they consider too young for him.

The main attraction for me was the comfort he offered me. Immediately I agreed to marry him, he gave me the gift of a jeep for a present and employed a driver for me.

From the very moment I saw the driver, I went weak in my knees. For me it has been six months of hell, as my husband seems to be daily depreciating in bed. It takes extra skill and effort to get him going. I haven't enjoyed sex with him since marrying him.

I want the driver though my investigations show he is married. I probably would regret my decision to come to you for counsel, but for now help me. I want him in every way a woman wants a man. I am becoming very desperate and may do something very silly with him.

Desperate Woman.

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Dear Desperate Woman,

This man is married and you are married meaning you both belong to other persons. You made your choice to marry the man you are currently married to. Nobody made the decision for you. You knew what you were getting into when you decided to marry a man twice your age. So, why are you now trying to hurt innocent persons by your lust? You have made your choice so the decent thing to do is to stand by your marital vows and if this is impossible for you to do, disengage from it to enable this man have peace in his old age.

If the consequences of your dangerous lust were only yours to carry, it wouldn't have mattered much but everybody close to you and involved in this matter would also share in the aftermath.

For instance, your husband would suffer the most. At 70, have you considered the health implications of your actions on him? Do you think his health is strong enough to withstand the shock of finding out the woman he married is sleeping with the man he pays to drive her around? Do you know the embarrassment it would cause him? The pains and memories he has since buried following the death of his wife all coming back in torrent to hunt him and remind him of what he lost in his first wife?

Have you stopped to put the interest of the man who risked his harmony, friendship with his children and the trust of the family of his late wife to bring you into his life? The man who took you off the streets when no single man wanted to have you for a wife?

If for nothing else, can't you think of the honour, care and comfort he has brought to your life? Where were your sexual lusts when you were searching for a single young man to marry you? Why didn't any of the single men you gave your body to and who gave you sexual bliss interested in marrying you?

Didn't you notice his vibrancy in bed was lost before saying yes to him and his money?

Your attraction to him was because of his money and he hasn't disappointed you from the gifts he has been showering on you right from the moment you agreed to marry him. So, learn to live with your side of the bargain else you risk losing everything, your self-worth and dignity as a woman.

Age robs us of our physical strength and vibrancy but not the love our hearts carry. This man thought he saw something good in you to have invited you to partake in his life when he should be resting. You aren't the only woman he has seen since he lost his wife but asked you to marry him on the strength of what he has convinced himself is different in you. Unfortunately, it seems those who warned him against you are right. If this man means anything to you, don't give in to this temptation, which may send this man to his early grave if he finds out.

If you love this man, there are various ways, including the use of sex enhancing drugs such as viagra to help him enjoy his old age. You can manage his stamina if you are willing and ready. A lot of foreplay and gentle talks can help improve on his performance. He may not have the strength of a young lover but he has the experience to make a whole lot of difference if you are willing to help him and the patience to manage it all. As a good wife you should give him the opportunity of learning new tricks from you, the advantage of your youth.

When a man or woman gets old, he or she looks for support and cooperation from the youth.

Among other things, he married you for companionship, support, to drive away loneliness and for friendship.

Don't destroy this man on account of your lust. You are now all that he has and if you cannot give him your full support then it is best you quit instead of destroying what is left of his life.

Have you also given a thought of what would happen to that man and his family if you seduce him? How would you feel if despite your reservation for your husband, you find out he has someone else in his life? Or he stops caring for you on account of another woman who finds his money an attraction?

How would you feel if another woman waits in the wing to take away the definition of happiness you have with him?

Do you think it is fair on this man's wife? His children? Was it a crime for him to have come to work for you and your family? What happens if he refuses you? Have you thought of the possibility of him doing that on account of his religion or sense of responsibility to his family? Has it occurred to you that he could actually turn you down? If that happens, what would you do?

What if he turns out to use it to blackmail you? Or infects you with a disease money cannot cure? What if you get pregnant in the process? Whose child would the baby be? Would your conscience allow you bring up that child easily knowing it could belong to your lover?

To help you resolve your inner conflict ask yourself what you really want in life? Remember, you married this man because of money and he hasn't failed you. It was a choice you readily made so what has changed? Is sex more important than your responsibilities to your home and husband?

Don't you think you are only being selfish, the same reasons you married this man you have suddenly realised is too old for you in the bedroom?

In the first instance, what are your responsibilities to your husband? Have you in your selfish mind ever given a thought to the effects of your decisions on people around you? Is your lust for this man more important than your responsibilities to your home and husband?

Please allow your driver go since you cannot resist him before the damage is done. If you don't do it for your sake, do it for the sake of your man and the family of the man whose home you are trying to destroy. Since you have allowed your feelings get into the way of rational thinking, keeping him in your employ is only asking for trouble and needless complications in your life.

I am sure if you invest the time you currently dispense lusting after him to thinking of pleasurable ways of making your marriage work as well as improve on your sex life with your husband, it would be more honourable for you especially as his children and family members are expecting you to actually ditch him for a younger man after you must have milked him dry of his money.

The feelings are getting unbearable for you because you see him everyday. Give yourself a break by spending more time with your man. It is the least you can do for this man and yourself.

Marriage is sacred and precious. You don't have the right to break this man's fragile heart because what you are planning definitely will.

Marriage is for better for worse. Sacrifices are part of matrimony once the choice has been made. You weren't forced into it, you made your choice out of desperation and greed. This same desperation can make your marriage work if only you give it the attention your man deserves.

Good luck.