My passion wanes due to her zero-education

Dear Agatha,

Peace of God will be with you and your family always.  You once helped my friend out of a very difficult situation. Thanks and please keep the good job going.  I have a girlfriend that I love so much. She is the mother of my daughter though we are not yet married. She is full of respect for me, so nice and epitomises everything I want in my woman. 

But the challenge I am facing with her has to do with her low level of education. She can’t read and write, not even her name. For fear of not knowing where to start, she doesn’t want to go back to school. My problem is that all my friends are married to well read women. I haven’t told her I will marry her, despite being the mother of my child.  She is however hopeful that I will marry her. I also nurtured the hope. But I keep thinking it may be a problem in time to come, and I don’t want to have children from two women. Please help me.

Worried Kenneth.

Dear Worried Kenneth, 

A woman doesn’t need a university degree to make a good wife or mother. What she needs is the right attitude to make the difference in her home and life.

That your friends are all married to well read women doesn’t mean they would have happier home than you. The golden rule of life, the thing that makes it workable is contentment. There is nothing you can achieve in life without learning to be contented with the choices before you. 

Granted, education is important, especially in today’s high-powered technological world, but it cannot guarantee happiness. 

This comes from the heart, not governed by letters, figures, but from very primeval emotions that defy even the best of scientific experiments. Its chemical composition is unknown which makes it impossible for anybody, but those in it to accurately gauge. 

You slept and had a child with this woman knowing she cannot read and write. Does her lack of education in any way affects the way she responds to you in intimacy or the quality of the child she gave to you? The heart isn’t literate and the language of love has its own patterned writings and images to stimulate it to knowledge.

What you should do is to search through your mind. Does she meet all your requirements in a woman? How much happiness has she been able to give you since meeting her? Has her lack of education affected you in anyway?  When it comes to the issue of marriage, a lot of attention should be given to those aspects that appear very unimportant at the beginning. Look at this lady dispassionately, on a scale of 1-10, how would you score her. Be objective. I am sure she isn’t the first woman you have dated. Like your friends you must have gone out with very educated women for you to have left them for this woman, going as far as having a baby with her shows she has some uncommon features you are yet to appreciate on account of her zero education. 

Look beyond her no-education status to the real substance in her. If what is in the package is valuable, you both can always find a way of getting through the other things as long as you are friends and willing to make it work.  If she is unwilling to go to a formal school, you can get her a private teacher that would come to the house to teach her to read and write. She doesn’t have to go to a formal classroom to get it. Right in the comfort of her home, you can transform her from a stark illiterate to a literate woman. What counts is her ability to communicate in efficient English as well as write it. She can write her General Certificate Examinations from home as well as other correspondence courses. Once there is a will there is always a way. 

Good luck.