Dear Agatha
I just have to compliment you for what you are doing.
There is this man who has expressed a desire to marry me but I don’t like him because he is much older than me. He is 35 while I am just 21. He has a Ph.D and is a lecturer.
He appears caring and a good man but I don’t want him despite the position of my friends that I give him a chance because of his attitude towards me. I honestly have never taken him or the idea of spending the rest of my life with him seriously.
However, my spiritual adviser’s statement that this man is my God-given husband is making me have second thoughts about him, even though it doesn’t alter the way I feel about him.
I’m honestly very upset with my spiritual guardian for this message because this man isn’t the type of man I want as a husband. He does everything I ask of him but I think he is doing it because he needs a young lady to marry.
I need a man I will love, cherish and be proud to introduce to people as my husband, not a man I will marry because I think I don’t have a choice. As it is, I don’t think I will be faithful to him, should I eventually marry him, because I don’t love him.
In addition, looking at him I don’t think he can give me the kind of satisfaction I want in bed, because am convinced his manhood would be small. Even though we have not had sex together, I loathe men who are small sized.
Are you too of the view that he is my husband?
Please help me, because I know marrying him would be the worst mistake of my life. I don’t want to marry the wrong man.
Confused young lady.
Dear confused young lady
From your email, you are not looking for an honest opinion but one that will fall in with the plans you have for yourself.
Nevertheless, I would be failing in my God-given assignment if I don’t try to tailor some of the jaundiced thoughts you hold about marriage generally and your situation in particular.
From experience, there is no substitute for truth. Your age is one of the challenges you are currently having. This is because at this age, your outlook in life is still cocooned in illusion which, in the real world, has no place at all.
Having gone through your doubts at your age and experienced the gripping influence of some of the romance books we read, I can guess correctly the mental image you have of your ideal man.
Painfully, those images are, most times, laced with poisoned arrows that end up destroying us at the end of the day.
It is alright to want a tall handsome, young man who has what it takes to make our skin glow with passion and our friends feel a twinge of envy when they see us together.
But do you have what it takes to cope with such a man? Do you have what it takes to endure his kind of faults and pains?
This is the reason so many marriages involving our youths are collapsing like packs of cards. It is mostly due to the lack of good foundation to premise the marriage.
Honestly, the things you said about qualities necessary for you to remain faithful to him are very right, even if they are unfortunately flawed in the sense that you are not also looking at other important factors that make a marriage work.
You are also not looking beyond the present into that pregnant future when good looks no longer matter but the quality of care and attention that a man is able to give a woman and vice versa.
Furthermore, what is all this internal agony you are putting yourself through if this man hasn’t touched something fundamental in your inner person? Why are you finding it difficult to turn him down for good?
After all, it isn’t as if your parents betrothed you to him or that you are under some kind of obligation to anybody to consider his proposal whatsoever.
Ordinarily, the business of dating starts with a man expressing a likeness for a woman who has the responsibility of either accepting or turning it down.
If he is that loathsome to you, why are not you walking away and forgetting everything about him? Why are you even chewing on his proposal at all if your stance and attitude towards him are anything to go by?
This is what you should ponder on.
Why are you even considering him? The fact that you are unable to let go of his proposal or person should tell you that deep down, you have something going for him but you haven’t been able to decipher precisely why he has become something of a permanent figure in your thoughts and life.
On the surface, you don’t want him but deep in your sub-consciousness there is something appealing about him, which is the reason you want my help and are confused.
No woman gets perplexed by the offer of a man she has nothing going for.
That you are shows there is something about him that you cannot ignore; something your inner person has discovered but which you haven’t, because you aren’t being honest to yourself. You can only discover this if you allow the Spirit of God direct you properly.
Not every marriage will be between a handsome man and beautiful woman. The story of the Beauty and the Beast will always come to play in the lives of so many people who are really honest with themselves to look past the superficial.
At 21, you are still too young to know the real qualities that make a marriage work.
Sex is very important but it is an overplayed factor. If it were not, two people who enjoy undiluted sexual pleasures would not tell their friends that “beyond the good sex, we don’t have anything in common.”
No man and woman live their marriage inside the bedroom alone. There is a whole life outside the bedroom and they all must add up to help keep the sex part stay relevant.
No matter how great the physical side of a relationship is, if the man isn’t caring, sensitive, responsible and attentive to his wife, or the woman respectful, appreciative and supportive of her husband, there will be no marriage at the end of the day.
Age and the other things that happen in our lives as we grow older each day on earth make it foolish for the success of any union to be built around the great sex theory alone.
Even as young couples, there are days your mind want it but your body is too weak to do it.
To guess the size of his male anatomy just by looking at him shows how far you have gone.
With your kind of experience, do you think a young man your age would have the calmness of mind to trust you or your presence of mind to want to make a wife out of you?
Even some experienced women lack this knowledge to be so precise in their assessment of a male anatomy by merely looking at the man.
What this shows is that if you don’t meet the right kind of man who has the maturity to appreciate your kind of person, you may end up the punching bag of an over jealous male who doesn’t know how to curb what he might see as your excesses.
Again the essence of having spiritual guardian is to help in the job of intercessions. If you don’t trust the message of this person occupying this position in your life, then something is wrong somewhere.
Look at your heart and life for the truth, because as it is, you are in the best position to make the decision of what you want to do with your life.
Since you are collecting things from him, the best you can do for yourself is to learn to be objective in assessing him.
To continue to keep him for material gains while you treat him like an ancient piece of trash will one day boomerang as he too would soon get tired of your attitude and move on to a woman who appreciates his kind of person.
Don’t wait until then before taking an X-ray of what you really want and not what you think you want.
Good luck.