Dear Agatha,
I am 18 years old. A friend of mine gave my phone number to a 20-year-old guy. The guy lives in Onitsha. We talk daily on the phone. I have fallen in love with him. He tells me everything that he does on a daily basis including the bit about sleeping with other women. Whenever he does that, he calls me to apologise to me. What I am afraid of is whether he loves me as much as I do.
Recently, he gave me his sister’s number. He wants me to call the sister so she and I could be friends. He says he is very much in love with me and would never take me to bed. Please I am confused. Help me out.
Confused Teenager.
Dear Confused Teenager,
This isn’t the kind of problem that should be agitating your mind now. Rather, you should be more particular about passing your examinations and earning a good place in the society later in life.
A man who sleeps with other women and comes back to tell you in the first place isn’t the kind of man you should invest too much emotions on. If he cares for you, he should be able to exercise self-control. It is a sign that if you two are able to hold up for a long time and eventually end up as an item; he would never be faithful to you. That he tells you what he gets to do behind your back isn’t an excuse for what he is doing to your emotions.
Besides this is the obvious thing, what manner of love do you feel for someone you haven’t met or do not know anything about? You could feel a certain attachment to him on account of your daily communication with him. This could have created fondness for his voice and not necessarily for his person. It takes much more for love to grow. True love is a feeling that must go through all the processes of refinement for it to be resilient. He doesn’t know you neither do you know him beyond the images you have of each other through telephone conversations. So what are both of you falling in love with? You are both in love with the idea of being in love rather than with love itself.
And for love to be firmly established, there must be preponderance of friendship in the relationship. These are things that don’t happen through the telephone. You must see beyond someone’s physical appearance or doctored conversation to appreciate whom a person really is. As it is, can you tell if this man has the kind of temperament you want in a man, has the same kind of values, cultural outlooks as well as attitude towards life as you?
What kind of hygiene does he have as a person? What is he engaged in? Who are his friends and what values do they project? These are things you don’t get to know through telephone conversation. For all you know he may be into social vices you don’t want to be associated with. There are so many things involved with falling in love than you can imagine. At 20, he too doesn’t have the depth of knowledge to be in love the way it should be. Love to you both is the adrenaline you feel in your vein, which in most cases is sexual.
For now, don’t build your hope on anything serious between the two of you. Slow down, get to meet and know the character of the person you have been talking to daily. Be careful you don’t fall victim of his antics because a young man of his age who has no scruples sleeping with different women has certainly develop the trick of sweet, talking a woman into his bed.
When you two eventually meet in person, ensure whatever you both have to say to each other is done in an open place. Don’t for whatever reason be alone with him in an enclosed place. A man can take a woman who isn’t smart and careful to bed without her knowing how it all happened. So be very careful where you go with him.
Take each day of the friendship at a time. Don’t rush or give too much meaning into what you think you feel. Only time can tell what precisely you feel for him and he for you.
Good luck.
