Hi Achokis. When I was 20 years, I dated and was planning to get married to my first love. But two weeks to our wedding, we disagreed and cancelled the wedding.
I was left with a nine-month-old son and an expensive wedding gown. Nine years later, I met a man who said he was a pastor. He told me God told him I was his wife. Due to the fear of God, I accepted though, I never loved him.
I became pregnant for him before our wedding and when I told him I was pregnant, he told me to abort. I chose to move in with him due to hardship. Fifteen years later, we have four children, but I have gone through hell living with him.
We recently separated, but he keeps pursuing me, yet he still doesn’t want to wed me and hasn’t even paid dowry for me. I’m confused and don’t know whether to go back to him or not. Please advise!
-Tabitha
Hi Tabitha. Thank you for reaching out. We can only imagine what you are going through. Whilst marriage is primarily meant for companionship, people get married for different reasons — to get children, for financial support, for status so that people can see that they are also married.
At 20, when entering your first marriage, you were probably young and naive. As for the second marriage, it may have been due to something else.
Sometimes people get into a rebound, where an individual who just recently ended a romantic relationship gets involved with someone else despite not being emotionally healed from the breakup. This can take years.
The wounds of the other relationship still linger and cause pain and they think that getting into another relationship will bring healing to their pain or revengefully hurt the previous lover. Your husband’s character from the time you met is also questionable.
Why did you succumb to him? Could it be that the emotional baggage from your first love made you vulnerable to him? You mentioned that you didn’t love your second man when you decided to move in with him.
No one should ever force you to do something that you are not comfortable with and you feel is wrong. For now, the issue shouldn’t even be whether he should wed you or pay dowry. You shouldn’t even consider going back to him unless certain issues are addressed.
First, focus on yourself. You have been through so much and have suffered abandonment, serious rejection, and hurt. You need to seek counselling to help you deal with you. What is it that you are looking for? No relationship can fill those holes in our lives.
We need to be made whole before we can even seek to be in relationship with others. You need to find yourself. Your self-esteem and self-image have obviously been destroyed by what you’ve gone through. That needs to be fixed before you can even think of fixing your marriage.
When you are fixed, you will be in a good position to make the right decisions going forward.
The writers are marriage and relationship coaches [email protected]
