“Sometimes it is as if we are going forward and things will be alright and then others I just want to throw in the towel and let us go our separate ways. But then I think that I really don’t want to go and start another relationship and so I want to stay and try a little more.”
As she spoke there was resignation in her voice; she knows what needs to be done but she wants to hang on some more. This sister has been trying for months to end a relationship with someone who is a few years younger than her. From the little she has told me, he has been using age as an issue and he has been manipulating her.
“I know what you are going to say,” she said, even before I uttered a word during our most recent conversation. “That I should walk away and maybe you are right but I don’t know man, it is hard. It is just that I don’t want to have to move from man to man.”
I explained to her that it is not about ‘moving from man to man’ but rather it was for her own emotional well-being as there is no good in being with someone who does not truly care for you.
“But I don’t know if that is true because sometimes he can be so good to me. I know that I am a beautiful woman and a lot of my friends will tell me that I could do better than him. But for me I just want someone who is quiet and wants to build life. Sometimes I believe that is what he wants to do but then at other times it is like I don’t know,” she said.
“At first when we start going around he would say age is just a number and then now he would say things like his friends tell him that I too old for him and how I too experienced for him and all that. So it is like a rollercoaster,” she said almost close to tears.
“I did some things in the past, yes, and if I could go back I wouldn’t do them again but I am not ashamed of myself. And sometimes it is as if he wants me to be ashamed of me. I change and I trying to live a good decent life and I want to just settle down and that is what I thought he want to do.”
Apart from the age, this sister has a child and this also poses a problem in the relationship. I raised this with her and asked if they have truly discussed him being a father to her son.
“That is another issue and it does really bring problem. I mean he find me with me son and I does make it clear that anybody who love me have to love my son too and at first it was as if he really cared. But now he wants to see me alone most of the time; he does not want to go with me and my son and for me that is a big issue.
‘My son father don’t really play a part in his life so I don’t really have no issue and I does work hard to support my child, I don’t ask him for anything and to be honest he don’t really give me anything. At first he use to talk about us getting married and so on. I meet his family and so on but now man I don’t know,” she told me.
I told the sister that marriage was not the answer because even if he did marry her and did not truly accept her son or still seemed hung up on the age difference, the marriage would only exacerbate those festering issues.
But for this sister, having a husband and settling down seems to be foremost on her mind.
“I know what you are saying but you know I think he can change. He is still with me after two years and I believe things can work out. I ask him for us to, you know, like go to some counselling but he don’t want to. He would say things like counsellors can’t tell him anything he don’t already know.
“The other day we had a quarrel and I ask him if he had a problem with me being a mother and he said sometimes his friends would tell him about it. He would also say his family would ask him if he really want to marry someone who has a child already and that how he have to think about all that.
“But you know I tell he if he really loves me we can work it out and that is me he have to live with not his friends or family…,” she trailed off and tears came to her eyes.
‘The thing is, I know it was going to be a challenge from the start. You know, with the age and me having a child and so. But how he talk at the start, he is matured and everything, and I say this thing could work. But like people keep telling he things and sometimes I want know if this man ashamed of me because I have a child. That is how I does feel at times,” she continued.
Then she made a statement that really made me feel sorry for her, because I know it can’t be right.
“You know though, if he marry to me then I would be he wife and he would not be ashamed of me anymore. He would treat me different,” she said.
I knew that was furthest from the truth and I told her so. I told her there are many wives whose husbands act as if they are ashamed of them and the idea they had prior to marriage that their many problems would have disappeared when a ring was on their finger was just a fallacy because the problems remained and more have been added.
“I want to walk away,” she said after a long pause. “But like, I don’t know how. I really don’t want to go and start another relationship. It’s like I fed up. It is not that I had a whole set of men or so but I just want to settle down and build life with somebody. That is my dream, you know, to have a family,” she continued.
“But like I can’t live with the sometimes we good and then next time things gone sour and at times for no reason at all. Sometimes is like this man does pick a story and then he would stop talk to me for weeks and so and I does really don’t know what to do, like if he in a relationship or not. And then he would come back and say sorry and talk about how he want build life with me and then it is back to square one.”
I told the sister that maybe she needs a break from the relationship. Maybe she needs to just focus on herself and her son for a while and maybe the right person would come along instead of her trying to make her current boyfriend the right person.
I don’t know if she will listen and I can only wish her the best if not for her most definitely her son who is the innocent party in the midst and would suffer the most should she marry a man who does not really accept him. I told her how I felt and said I would always be there, even if it is just to listen. At the end she has to make the decision.
