Her Actions Are Confusing

By thepost on January 23, 20170 Comments

Dear Agatha,

I’m a dedicated reader of your column. Please, kindly help me out as I tend to fall in love easily.

Unfortunately, this habit of mine has caused me severe emotional problems.

There is this lady I met in my place of work. We started out as friends because of the issues she was having with her education and family. While in her second year at the University, she couldn’t continue with her education due to the divorce of her parents.

I decided to take her to see my Rev. Father when I saw how affected she was by her experience, particularly her failure to complete her education.

The idea was to get the Rev. Father to speak with her parents on how she can complete her education. Unfortunately, the parents were so caught up in their own bitterness that they didn’t even consider her interest. Expectedly, she went further into depression, making it impossible for me to ignore her.

This set the stage for our relationship to develop as we became very close. No day passes by without us either talking on the phone or exchanging visits.

It wasn’t too difficult for her boyfriend to become aware of our fondness for each other. He eventually called me to terminate my association with his girlfriend. Frankly, his warnings didn’t frighten or deter me from pursuing my interest in her. All he succeeded in doing; was to make me bolder to express my feelings for her. After listening to me, she pleaded for time to consider my offer. More than a year now, she hasn’t given me a clear answer, but from her body language and disposition, we could be said to be in a relationship.

Last year, she traveled out of my locality because her boyfriend was really apprehensive over losing her to me. She said she took the decision to leave, because she didn’t want to lose either of us. She went further to say she was already in love with both of us but since none of us appears ready to let go of her, she wants to stay away for the time being.

Although I’m trying to let go of her but I simply can’t. I love her. I tried to know what was so special about the guy, what he has that I don’t have, her answer floored me. According to her, he deflowered her. Please, what do I do, since she is my last hope?

Worried Man.

Dear Worried Man,

What makes her your last hope? You may really love her but she is in an existing relationship with another man! Deep down in your soul, do you think it fair to put all these pressures on her, given the challenges you know she is going through with her parents and education?

What she needs is a friend who will help her manage this difficult time in her life, not one that will further aggravate her stress level.

Besides, she is in a relationship already. Why are you determined to make her end the relationship she has with the other man? In the man’s shoes, would you be happy at what you are trying to do to him? What you are trying to do to him is very wrong. He doesn’t deserve it at all. You came into this girl’s life as a friend and if somewhere along the line you developed feelings for her, you should have behaved like a gentleman by keeping your distance from her to protect her against emotional complications. One of the hallmarks of being an adult is the ability to exercise restraint at all times.

Being in love with her doesn’t give you the right to hurt this other man or destroy their relationship. You may argue that she is still free game considering they aren’t married. But, the truth is, she has a boyfriend and their relationship might graduate into marriage. If you love her, don’t do anything that will make her unhappy or further pressurize her.

As you can deduce from her reactions, she is already under pressure from you and is actually confused right now. Yes, she may have feelings for you; it does happen when a man and woman are in constant company of each other but this feeling may not be enough reasons for her to exit her current relationship.

Allow her the space she is asking for by her decision to relocate to a place she can be alone. She actually needs to clear her head and think of her options. Also, don’t forget the issue of her interrupted education is still unresolved. She may also want to think of how she can re-engineer her dream of completing her education.

If you really love her, respect her decision by offering her your support through prayers. If your relationship is meant to be, God shall make a way for both of you. The truth is, you risk destroying whatever chance you may have with her if you keep pestering her to submit to your love. Soon she may become very irritated by your presence and would make it impossible for you to remain her friend.

I think what you should really concentrate more on now, is to find ways of remaining the good friend she currently needs the most.

Good luck.

He Wants Me To Play The Sex Siren

By thepost on January 13, 20170 Comments

Dear Agatha
I recently read one of your answers to a questions. I really need your help. My relationship is three years old. My boyfriend has been very good to me. He has made a lot of sacrifices for me just as I have also done for him.
I would have classified our relationship as being perfect but for his sexual fantasies. Ever since we started dating, he has been in the habit of gazing at the bodies of sex swingers online. He would stare at them and imagine himself with them. To please him, I have tried on some occasions to play along with him by playing the role of his object of fantasy. Sometimes I succeed in doing a good job but most of the time; I fail to live up to his particular fantasy. There are other times I absolutely refuse to play along with these ladies.
On such occasions, he gets angry and says things like he doing me a favour by not going the whole way with these ladies. That he is asking me to stand in because he doesn’t want to have online sex with the women. He also favours us having an audience when we make love as well as swapping of partners. We always quarrel over this.
He would go ahead to call me boring because I refuse to play his little sex games. Severally I have told him I’m not promiscuous and don’t relish doing the things he wants me to do.
It is one thing to talk about one’s fantasies but another thing to be hooked on it anytime we want to have sex. I don’t like having an audience when intimate with my man or being made love to by another man simply to satisfy my boyfriend’s ecstasy. I also cannot stand watching him make love to another woman. I want to be myself just as I expect him to be himself when we are alone.
Since meeting him, he remains the only man I want in my life. We have been arguing over this habit of his since we started dating. Due to the frequency of our arguments these days, he appears to be avoiding me. We haven’t had sex in the last two months. I’m scared he is having sex with other women.
He keeps accusing me of cheating on him when it is actually the other way round. I love him with my whole being and don’t know where he keeps getting the idea that I’m cheating on him from. He appears incapable of trusting me.
I don’t know what to do anymore. Right now, I’m confused on whether to continue in the relationship or end it as I can never be the kind of woman he wants me to be. Given his current attitude, do you think he is in another relationship?
Worried Lover.

Dear Worried Lover,
What is your definition of being good to you? What about respect for your person and sensitivity to your emotional needs? Why would a man who claims to love his woman subject her to the emotional trauma of seeing him in another woman’s company, or agree to have another man mount her in the name of satisfying his sexual fantasies? What manner of logic or attitude is that? How come he makes you appear incapable of pleasing him?
What manner of imagination would make a man turn his woman into a sex toy or strip her of that essential ingredient- respect? Do you think if he has any respect for you, he would insist you emulate all those detailed sex scenes every time he wants to make love to you?
A good relationship is an embodiment of every aspect of human emotions. Sacrifice is when one person lives in the body of the other person. It isn’t only about money but also avoiding those things that will cause the other person to feel less of him or herself. Making you do things you don’t feel comfortable with, is wrong and demeaning to your self-esteem as a woman.
You may love him dearly, but does he love you for who you are or for the sexual experiments he is forcing on you? When a man loves a woman he protects her from every appearance of things that would devalue her in the eyes of people. Insisting you witness his sexual escapades is degrading to your person.
The fact that you resent everything that has to do with his sexuality means you are not compatible in that department, which happens to be one of the major areas of a successful relationship as well as marriage. If he thinks you boring because you refuse to play his sex games, what chance do you think your relationship has against this background?
Deep down, is this the kind of love life you want or better still, the kind of life you plan for yourself? Do you enjoy being with him? Is his kind of behaviour alright with you? Are you proud of the feelings he generates inside of you after you two have made love? Do you see yourself enduring that feeling for a long time to come? Do you think you are and will always be sufficient to please him? These are questions you should answer truthfully to get a clear picture of what you really want from life.
Unless you are pretending not to like what he does to you, the time is now for you to really scale this relationship. Your ultimate happiness should be your bench mark. Sex is a very private thing between human adults. Only animals lack inhibitions about the place they mate. Even commercial sex workers, who make their living from sex, shroud it in secrecy.
When a seemingly responsible man exposes his woman to such show of shame simply to satisfy his fantasies, then something isn’t right about him.
Except you are happy with the situation between the two of you, the time to properly appraise exactly how you feel about this man is now. To allow it linger is to shortchange yourself of the opportunity to allow someone who actually appreciates your kind of person, into your life.
On the issue of whether he is seeing someone else, I wouldn’t know. However, I think you should first learn to love yourself more because without this, you will never be able to determine your self-worth or know the kind of man who will make you happy. It isn’t every man that comes your way who has that special ability to make you happy.
You are in this situation because you have failed to properly appraise yourself. When a woman is confident of herself, there are things she will not allow in her life. A man has to first love a woman for whom she is, before anything else. For this relationship to be meaningful to you, this man has to learn how to love you for yourself and not because you are a willing sex toy in his hands.
This is what should concern you more than the issue of whether he is having affairs with other women.
Good luck.

MARRIAGE CLINIC: My wife is exchanging sex videos with another man

By thepost on January 7, 20170 Comments

Dear Agatha,

May the Good Lord continue to enrich your wealth of wisdom and knowledge.

My marriage of about seven years is at the brink of break-up. I recently discovered my wife could be having an affair with a friend of hers who stays in Kano while his family is in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.

I actually made the discovery when I needed to urgently check something in my email box. Since I didn’t have a subscription, I decided to use her phone. After I finished with my mail, I decided to check her WhatsApp chats and that is where I got this shocker of my life. From the chats she and this friend of hers have exchanged, I discovered they use endearments like ‘my love’ and ‘dear’. Some of their chats were not only romantic; they also exchange porn movies. Most painful is the knowledge she chats with this man till midnight but hardly chats with me up to 10p.m.

In fairness to my wife, she has been a very virtuous and supportive woman right from our courtship days. We courted for five years before we got married.

Back then things were very rough for me but she didn’t mind and gave me all the support I needed to succeed. She is not only beautiful but has the kind of heart that cares, which makes her the favorite wife in my family.

She and our two children live in Lagos while I work outside the State. I however make it a point of duty to visit them every two to three weeks.

It hurts because I have come to trust her so much. Not even on occasions when my colleagues do a generalisation about women being untrustworthy, have I ever doubted her.

What surprises me the most is that I deflowered her and she is very conservative. I also introduced her to her trendy fashion sense. I can’t imagine her addressing any other man by the endearments I read in her phone.

Since meeting her, I have not dated another woman despite pressures from women I come across in my line of duty as a medical doctor. I also haven’t kept this fact from her.

But with what I saw in her phone, I not only intend to have an affair but to end the marriage and care for only my children.

I’m confused and really don’t know what to do which is why I am appealing to you to help me, given your wealth of experience. Deep down, I still love her very much but cannot help myself after the chats I saw. I can’t think straight and my colleagues are beginning to suspect something is wrong between my wife and I.

I don’t want to tell them anything as I don’t want to discredit my wife in anyway before my friends. Please help me.

Felix.

Dear Felix,

It is obvious, despite everything you think your wife has done; you still love her sufficiently as to shield her from the negative opinions of your friends.

This is a positive sign that you are very much willing to engage in discussion on the matter. As a matter of fact, it is wrong despite all the evidences you think you have to assume her guilty of having an extra marital affair with this friend of hers without first confronting her with the facts you have.

Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be. Yes, the chat you read is condemnable and damning, but given what you know about your wife, do you think it is enough evidence she is cheating on you?

And why didn’t you call her attention to the chat when you first discovered it? Don’t you think she deserves her day in court even if you think the chat is a conclusive evidence of her infidelity to you? Isn’t this the rationale behind giving even confirmed criminals the opportunity of defending themselves in courts of law?

It is only fair you give your wife the chance to either deny or defend herself against your proof by bringing the issue to her knowledge. It is wrong for you to come to a conclusion without informing her of what you read on her phone. You wouldn’t be fair to her and the children if you refuse to bring the issue to her knowledge. If you must end the marriage, at least give her the reason for your decision. This way you would not look like a fool when you find out the truth behind that exchange between the two of them.

Have you considered that they may just be fooling around as friends without anything to the chat? Do you think if she had anything to hide, she would surrender her phone to you when she knows it contains evidences of her infidelity to you and her marriage? Do you presuppose she would intentionally put her marriage to you in danger by allowing you access to issues that would endanger the union?

Depending on how close they are as friends, inappropriate as the conversation between the two of them maybe, that chat you saw might be very harmless. But you won’t know until you confront her head-on. You need to exercise caution because this issue, if not carefully handled by you could destroy a happy marriage.

In giving her the chance, it is also advisable you have an open mind to enable you come to a clearer picture of what the situation really is. In other words, give her the benefit of the doubt. If the man is in Kano and she is in Lagos, how easy do you think it would be for them to meet and have an affair in spite of what you have read from their chat thread?

In making your decisions, how possible is it for her to leave two young kids behind to be with a man who doesn’t reside in the same town with her?

In addition, If you say she is a woman of virtue, what do you think could have been responsible for her sudden change in behavior? Could it be there is something lacking in your marriage? Why aren’t you two staying together? Why is she in Lagos and you in your current State of assignment? Don’t you think this arrangement is doing more harm than good to your union?

The existence of such a chat is evidence that there is a salient issue with your marriage which you must tackle before anything else. Loneliness is a trap that ensnares and eventually destroys a marriage, no matter how solid the foundation of that marriage is.

There are moments in a woman’s life when she cannot help herself, when she wants the full compliments of her man. It takes the extra grace of God for her not to be tempted by another man who makes an appearance or calls her at her most vulnerable time. If your marriage is just seven years old, she is still too young to manage on her own emotionally. The first seven years are the most challenging of any marriage. No matter how many years you spent having a courtship, the make or mar period of a marriage is the first seven years.

Perhaps this is a clarion call for you to consider having your family with you at your station. If you are around her, she won’t have the time or boldness to share such images and chats with another man. The man too, won’t have such effrontery to engage another man’s wife till late in the night. They are both free to trade chats because you have unwittingly left your farm fallow most of the time.

Your solution should not be to start an affair but to relocate your family to where you are as soon as possible. Distance is like a cancer that eats away the essential parts of a marriage. Once she is close to you, you would have succeeded in solving all extraneous issues. Your staying apart as a couple is brewing trouble in your marriage.

Take it from me, the major issue in your marriage isn’t that of her suspected infidelity, but that of you two staying apart. Once that is resolved, you will discover that you are both happier and much more in love.

Good luck