He Doesn’t Care About Me

By thepost on December 6, 20160 Comments

Dear Agatha,

I’m a 300 level law student while my boyfriend is a final year medical student. We have been dating for a year now. I met him through a cousin who is his best friend and classmate.

From the inception of our relationship, he told me he may not always have time for me because of his studies. I didn’t mind, because he is the kind of person I want to spend the rest of my life with.

As a result of my resolve to ensure success of the relationship, I took it upon myself to always visit him at weekends and to call him everyday. He tries to call from time to time, but I do most of the calling. I really didn’t mind, not even when my friends started making fun of me as well as insinuating that I wanted the relationship more than him.

Unlike my friends whose boyfriends were always available for social outings, mine was always too busy to even visit me. I complained to my cousin who pleaded with me to be tolerant and not mind my friends.

However something happened about three weeks ago. I took ill and couldn’t call or visit him. I had thought he would immediately contact me when I didn’t call or visit him that weekend. It took him two days to call me to find why he hadn’t heard from me. It took him another day for him to come and visit me in the hostel. By the time he showed up with the drugs I needed, my friends were so angry with him that they told him to go back with the drugs. He apologized but I was still very hurt and angry with him.

My cousin again intervened on his behalf and berated me for allowing my friends get involved in my affairs. He explained that they had some important tests to write.

We managed to make up, but I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing staying in this relationship. I look like a fool calling him everyday. He should be the one running after me not the other way round. Although he now calls me frequently to ask after my health and well-being, but like my roommates asked, for how long? Even when I have tests or exams to write, I still find time for him, why can’t he do same for me? I don’t know what to do anymore.

Lilly.

Dear Lilly,

Being in final year in medical school requires utmost concentration to sail through the final hurdle. He needs every support from those close to him, especially his girlfriend so that the years he spent so far won’t go to waste. He cannot afford to fail at this critical stage. No matter what he has done, this is the stage for you to be very supportive of him.

The fact that you are the one who appears to be driving the relationship now doesn’t mean it will remain like that or that he doesn’t care. Give him the benefit of doubt at least until after he writes his final examinations.

Your cousin won’t be seeking your understanding if he isn’t sure about his feelings for you. Being his friend, his assessment of him cannot be wrong.

Furthermore don’t forget that he told you at the onset of your relationship that he may not always be available. If you didn’t think it was a problem then, why are you now having second thoughts? It isn’t right to change the rules in the middle of a game at all. It would have been a different matter entirely if he didn’t explain his predicament to you from the beginning. Your anger and hurt would have been understandable.

This is why you must learn to keep your friends out of this relationship for now. In their anger, they could unwittingly destroy your relationship even before it begins to take root. Don’t forget they don’t know anything about him or your feelings for him for that matter.

Besides, having being with him for a year, you should be able to say one or two things about his person and character. Relationship building isn’t just about intimacy but total observations of the nature and principle of the other person. Begin to observe those little things you think don’t matter but which, in fact, you need to learn about his person. These are the things that will help you to be happy, whatever your decisions are, today.

The timing of this relationship may not be right but if you are willing to make the sacrifices now, you may come to enjoy him later. The fact that he came as fast as he could, and even brought drugs for you, underlines his concern and care for you. Don’t neglect that fact.

I appreciate the hunger for his company but you cannot for now eat and still have your cake. Give him the freedom and presence of mind to study for his final examinations.

It is only after this that you can correctly determine whether he likes you or not. If he continues to be cold towards you after he has finished with his examinations, then you can go ahead with your decision to end it. But for now, continue to offer him the basic support he needs to scale through this period of his life.

Finally, telling him about your current disposition towards the relationship will also help both of you clear the fog of doubt beclouding your mind.

In life, whatever will be will be. The worst case is that both of you go your separate ways.

At least, that will help you stay focused on your studies too.

Is it right to demand for sex?

With Auntie Agatha

gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626

Dear Agatha,

I got married in October last year to a man whose view of sex is completely different from what I was taught by my mother.

Also this may sound strange in our modern world, but my mother told me it isn’t right for a woman to demand for sex at all.

Although I didn’t marry as a virgin but the man I was to marry and who deflowered me never made a big deal of being the one always asking me for sex. We didn’t marry because his mother said I was too prudish for his kind of person; that my outlook would make her son marry another woman. To prevent this from happening; she told him to get a woman who could equal him in everything so he won’t have an excuse like his father did for marrying another woman.

She was kind enough to explain to me and beg for my forgiveness arguing that her intentions were premised on my own happiness. I didn’t know how to fight that hence we went our different ways.

Fortunately, I met my husband about three months after that incident. Five months after, we got married.

Since then, I always waited for him to make the first move. If he doesn’t, I would never ask even when I desired it.

For about eight weeks now, he hasn’t come near me. I know he loves sex, the reason I got worried enough to ask his best friend who is also close to me if his friend was having an affair.

It was through him I got to know that my husband’s grouse with me was; he said he would never ask me to have sex with him because of my attitude to it. According to this friend, my husband complained to him that even when I’m in the mood, I always wait for him to make the first move, an attitude he is getting tired of. He said staying off me was to force me to demand for his presence. The truth is, I don’t know how to because my mother told me that only morally bankrupt women demand for sex from their husbands.

It is difficult for me to change but I also don’t want to lose my home. What do I do as I would feel cheap asking my husband to have sex with me?

Confused Wife.

Dear Confused Wife,

It is your right to demand for sex from your husband any time you are in the mood for it.

There is nothing cheap about a wife demanding her rights from her husband. If you don’t ask it of him, who will you go and demand it from; another woman’s husband? You are only short charging yourself because customs and religion expect you to remain faithful to your husband through thick and thin.

While your husband can go outside his marriage to release tension, you cannot because of the moral repercussion that follows a woman who engages in the act of immorality.

If your mother’s advice worked for her, don’t expect it to work for you because your father and your husband are two different individuals. There is no way your husband can ever accept the conditions under which your mother fared with your father.

Besides, you also have your life to live. It is unfair for your mother to think that you would escape with what she got away with in her marriage.

In addition, times are changing. While men of your mother’s era regarded women who demanded for sex from their husbands as being morally improper, today’s men have come to realize that a woman feels the same things they feel and that today’s women are not so frightened as women of yester years were, in expressing their desires.

So you see you and your mother are living in very different worlds. To expect your husband to act as if he is the only one always on heat isn’t doing your marriage any justice. He may not be complaining, but your attitude robs him of the pleasure of having his wife also crave for him.

Just like a woman desires her husband to show her love and attention; the average man also desires the attention of his woman too. He wants her to make him feel wanted, special and loved too. Though men don’t express what they want like women do, it doesn’t mean they are not desirous of every attention their wives can shower on them.

By refusing to make your demands of his attention, you are unwittingly telling him that you can live without him and that his attention on you isn’t something you like.

Although this isn’t your intention at least going by what you wrote but there is no way he would know how you feel if you continue to pretend that you don’t care if he sleeps with you or not.

One of the reasons a man and woman get married is to have sex as often as desired. It is God’s way of sanitizing the society of moral issues that come with having indiscriminate sex. Unlike what your mother thinks, sex isn’t just a tool for procreation purpose alone; it is also meant to create relaxation and a special bond between couples.

It is a natural stress reliever which helps to induce quality sleep after a hard day’s job. There is no limiting the value of sex in a marriage. It can be used by either party as a tool of apology, healing and mending broken hems in a marriage. It is also a good tool of communication that enables the couple tell each other certain things words cannot describe.

So in denying your husband the knowledge of knowing how you feel, you create not just doubts in his mind but leave him very confused about your interest in him as well as his ability to stimulate the right response from you.

You are lucky he isn’t in an affair; only giving you the chance to clear the confusion he has in his heart about your love and need of him.

You are also fortunate he told his friend who in turn has given you what can best be described as an ‘expo’ on what to do to bring your husband back into your bed.

Honestly, this isn’t time for you to debate or struggle with yourself on whether your mother is right or wrong about what she told you.

If she didn’t want a man sleeping with you, she shouldn’t have agreed to you getting married.

Sex is one of the pillars that hold a marriage together; a vital one at that.

If you are shy to say it directly to your husband; go the way of most women by acting it. There are several ways a woman can communicate her need for sex to her man without saying it. This is the secret strength of women. When a woman wants a man, there are several postures she can adopt to make her message clear.

One way is to dress it. Go for a nightgown cut to seduce even the most principled man. Besides, your man doesn’t need to be convinced; all he wants is for you to give the sign and he is by your side.

Go for mood music to relax him and make him all anxious to complete whatever you have started. Finally go for a perfume that would stimulate his mind to full action; the kind that would enhance your natural body scent. Finally sit carelessly in front of him and pretend your mind is too engaged in whatever task you are doing to make you remember to sit appropriately. If other women outside use this to entice married men into their web; there is nothing stopping married women from using it to get their men to notice them. This isn’t just any man; he is your husband, one that has been given full authority by the law to view your most essentials. By giving him a full view of his most precious asset, there would be nothing preventing him from taking it.

Sex and desires require a lot imagination to make them come alive.

Any woman or man who sits on the fence and expects to get the best out of it is only deceiving self. You cannot pretend not to mind when deep inside you want all the things that make you complete as a woman.

It is also important you explain your actions to your husband after you have captured him back into your arms. Let him know why you have been acting that way. It will help clear whatever doubts or worry your actions have generated in his mind.

Just as it takes two to fall in love; it takes two to make every aspect of marriage work. Your marriage is what you make of it especially as a woman.

Good luck.

How can I keep my home?

With Auntie Agatha

gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com Tel: 08054500626

Dear Agatha,

I’m 42 and very lucky to have gotten a man who married me last year. His first wife died about three years ago in an accident. He is 55 and has two children who are undergraduates.

I have lived a very careless life but meeting him changed so many things about my attitude to life.

Although I still have some of my old friends but I’m careful since I got married of what I discuss with so many of them who ironically are married.

This is because most of my friends treat their husbands in ways I don’t like. Apart from cheating on their husbands to earn promotion or as prove of their financial autonomy, many of them also use charms to turn their husbands’ attention away from their atrocities.

Because I also did in the past, using such charms to arrest the attention of the men I dated; lure them away from their homes at ungodly hours of the night, get them to spend stupendously on me, I know what so many women out there are doing to men.

I did a rethink when these charms could not make any of them men marry me. The more I tried, the more disappointed I got which eventually made me to confess my sins and change my ways.

It was at that point, I met my husband who is such a wonderful and understanding man.

But, something happened about three weeks ago that is making me apprehensive. To be truthful, I have never lived with any woman who has been supportive of her husband. My mother walked out on my father because he didn’t have the kind of money she wanted to live large. None of my aunties is a first wife. They have multiple husbands.

The kinds of friends I have are also not the kind whose lives I want to emulate any longer.

Although, my husband has severally complained about my attitude to cooking and house keeping, what he said last week really got me worried. He said apart from sex, there was nothing to make him aware he has a woman in the house; that his food is still being cooked by the house-help and the house is still being taken care of by the paid help.

I didn’t realize that his underwears were all dirty. The house help went to see her ailing mother and had to stay an extra week because she couldn’t leave her mother in the condition she met her.

Usually she scouts for his dirty clothes and wash them. Since I had never done such; I didn’t realize he had exhausted all his underwears until that day. I felt bad when he asked of what use a woman is to a man who doesn’t know how to care for her husband.

If I hadn’t made her cook stew and soups for a month before she left, he would also have known I can’t cook.

Agatha, please help me. I really want to be a good woman and wife to him. I just don’t know where to begin or how to go about it especially as I have a career to manage. I don’t have the time to work and still care for the home.

Also, how do I get pregnant before it is too late? In truth he is not complaining but, I don’t want him to, before I get pregnant.

Please help me because I have come to love him very much. If I confide in my mother or friends, I know what they would tell me to do and I sincerely don’t want to even consider their option of using charm to turn blind eyes to my weakness. I want to change also for me.

Tolani

Dear Tolani,

There is no greater teacher like experience. Having lived on the two sides of life, you should by now know which side benefits you the most.

Also, at your age, you should have since realized that nothing in life can be achieved without one form of sacrifice. Your former life required you to part with money to charm men to do your bidding; it was a kind of sacrifice you willing made to keep you happy in that world.

Having made up your mind to change your ways positively, you also have to keep making so many kinds of sacrifices to keep you happy in your new life.

One of such sacrifice is making a choice of what makes you happy the most; your home or career? The life of a woman is in being able to balance all the roles she is expected to play in the life. Apart from being a career woman, you now have a home and husband to care for. At 42, you are in a position to know what works for you the most.

To grow a home isn’t a day’s job; it requires a lot of patience, willingness to adapt, honesty and a combination of prayers and the right attitude to make the home work smoothly.

No matter how busy a woman gets outside her home; her presence must be felt in the house when she is either at home or out by those who live with her. If after a year, the only thing that makes your husband know he has a woman in his house, is the regular sex; then he might as well pay a woman to supply him with that.

Sincerely, the house help has no business cooking his meals or washing his underwears. That is strictly within your jurisdiction. Don’t forget that the house-help has always performed these duties for him. If he were satisfied with that, do you think he would have had a need for you in his life?

The truth is, even if you don’t do it as good as the house-help the fact that you are even trying would give him confidence and peace in his decision to have you in his life. What this man is demanding from you is to try to justify his need of you in his life. Your presence is not just to keep his bed warm; it is also to make him relax and enjoy the comfort only a wife gives to a man.

If he is still eating the food of his house-help a year after he married you; then he really doesn’t have any use of you in his life. Whether you realize it or not; he knows you are not the one cooking his meals because he is accustomed to the taste of his house-help’s cooking. He is getting impatience because you are not even making any attempt to please him as a husband.

Another mistake you are making which unfortunately you don’t realize and which may become your undoing isn’t the fact that you don’t have a child for him but, your inability to water down the memory of his late wife from his sub-consciousness. He married you to give himself a reason to live; to enjoy matrimony and to forget the pains he feels anything he remembers her.

This is the void he has brought you to fill in his life. That you haven’t given him any reason to be happy as a man would make him go back to a time another woman looked after him, cooked his meals, took interest in his personal needs and hygiene.

If you don’t buckle up; you would soon give him all the reasons to be constantly comparing you with his late wife; when that happens, you can bet he would end the marriage as soon as he finds another woman who knows how to be a wife.

Once the house-help comes back, ask her to teach you how to cook. If that would be difficult for you to do; pay someone to come to your house to teach you.

It is better you are mocked now by one person than have the whole world laugh at your inability to sustain your marriage.

Unlike cooking, you don’t need anybody to teach you how to wash clothes. Thank goodness washing machines are not the luxury they were decades ago. Invest in buying one to enable you wash his clothes on demand. It would go a long way in making him happy.

No matter how busy a woman gets; once she makes up her mind on something, there is no stopping her. You can still create time for your home out of your busy schedule if you want to. It is a matter of you knowing what you want the most in life.

Good luck.