Before her poor sense of grammar knocks me off…

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

Dear Agatha,
I have been dating since 2009 a National Certificate of Education (NCE) final year student of Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, whom I met near my residence. She is an epitome of feminine charms and values.
My spirit is for her. There is commitment, intimacy and passion in our relationship. We love each other. She is the kind of person I would want as a wife.
However, the only snag is the academic gap between us. I am a Lawyer and a Law Officer in the Ministry of Justice, State Counsel and just obtained my Masters degree in Law (LL.M). She lacks confidence in expressing herself in the English Language.
She isn’t fluent and often makes grammatical errors on the few occasions that she spoke in English. On several occasions while we are alone, I gently and politely attempt to gradually instill confidence in her as well as teach her how to speak English but she always protests and objects owing to assumed embarrassment. I had to stop.
Recently, she told me that a prospective suitor, a Lagos-based medical practitioner, has brought drinks for introduction in accordance with tradition for her hand in marriage. This happened in January.
He intends to pay the bride price this Easter. He calls her but she doesn’t take his calls in my presence. At times, she requests me to take the calls, but I have always declined as I consider it unethical. The fact is, she met this doctor last October. Actually, the man’s mother arranged the meeting. According to my girl, the man didn’t disclose or discuss anything with her and that she didn’t even have any inkling that he was going to bring drinks to ask for her hand in marriage. She was taken unawares and cried on that day.
In order not to embarrass the man and her own family, she consented, but she barely knows this man. She lives and schools in Owerri while the man works in Lagos but they are from the same local government area. I have told her to secure admission into a university in the next academic session for better and quality education. I will engage and marry her next year. She is about 22 years of age and utterly confused and disoriented. It is clear to me that she loves me. We are afraid that we can’t let go of each other. Her trust and loyalty is torn between the doctor and I.
For now, I don’t intend to date the lady I met last January until this lady and I sought out our differences. We cry each time we are together because we are about to lose each other. We live close to each other.
Please, Agatha, what do we do? We urgently need your advice.
Jude. 

Agatha counsels:
Dear Jude,
If your relationship with this lady is facing threat from another man, it is because you failed to appreciate what you have. In addition, you got arrogant by your so-called qualification to have the time to consider the uniqueness of this girl.
What you failed to see in her another woman, who appreciates the qualities of this lady, saw in her and promptly recommended her to her son. While you were busy getting embarrassed by her inability to speak the kind of English you want in your woman, another man agreed to pay her bride price despite this flaw, which you have magnified as a major problem for you.
Deep down, you are not in love with her as you claim to be. If you have been dating her since 2009 and haven’t found any compelling reason to make it official, what makes you think she now has all the qualities you want in a woman? What gives you the impression that you can now cope with her academic limitations when you never seem to? This is more about this lady than you. Doubtless she loves you and from her reactions desire to spend the rest of her life with you. But it is doubtful if you have the same kind of feelings for her. If you won’t dump her when she needs you the most for someone you consider better qualified academically for you.
While the doctor suitor knows that paper qualification isn’t what makes a good wife, you on the other hand must come up with your own definition of what makes a good wife to you. Until you realize what is important in a wife, you will always face this challenge.
You must be able to draw a fine line between what is practicable and what is not. That a woman is a stark illiterate doesn’t make her short on the qualities that make a good wife. 

The qualification a woman needs to execute and discharge her responsibilities as a mother, wife, as well as efficient home keeper, is very different from the one she would need in her place of work. The two are not related at all. If you want to have a happy home, you must learn to make a clear distinction between these two qualifications.


A lot of time, what we think we want may not be what we need to be happy. Only the wise knows that often than not, our needs end up being better than what we think we want.
You must do the reconciliation between what you think you want in this lady or any other lady for that matter and the kind of woman you need in your life to be a very happy and contented man in life.
Sincerely, you have to go to God for help in making you come to this realization. With what you have said so far, you need to do this urgently before another man takes away from you the one woman that may be the one who turns out to matter to you the most in your life. 

Life doesn’t wait for anybody. It simply moves on to other things. Only the fortunate ever get a second chance to be happy and from experience once a man or woman loses that special person, it takes the extraordinary grace of God to get that kind of connection again in life.
Before it is too late, ask yourself this important question: would you ever get in one package the completeness of what you want in life? 
This is why manufacturers of goods are always coming up with new improved packages. As human beings, we are constantly going through metamorphosis through the help and patience of others. Our manual comes with warning about our imperfection. Hers is her inability to speak the kind of English that befits your status as state counsel even if she scores very high in the area of the raw materials you need as a man in a woman you want as your wife.
What she has is not a defect but the limit her brain can take for now. With time, if you really love her, she would improve sufficiently not to get you embarrassed.
Honestly, I would advise the girl to opt for the man whose love for her is unconditional; who is proud of her irrespective of her flaw; who appreciates her uniqueness as a woman and knows her worth as a woman. I would tell her to opt for certainty, which the other man offers her, as opposed to the uncertainty you represent.
Like I said, it is not about her but about what you want. You have it within your powers to stop the other man from getting the heart of the woman you love by doing the right thing. Nobody can help you develop the kind of pride that makes a man turn his back to any flaw in his woman. If you are not proud of whom she is, there is nothing any counsellor or I can do for you.
You must appreciate that the qualification a woman needs to be a wife is the qualification the school of life offers her. No matter how impressive a woman’s formal educational qualification may be, if the school of life scores her a failure on the important things of life, she would never have the intelligence, patience, wisdom, tolerance, respect, humility, fear of God and maturity to run her home successfully. When a woman is humble and patience, she has the best of everything to make her man happy.
These are qualifications a wise man looks out for in a woman he wants to marry which the doctor must have found in this girl to beat you to making formal his interest in her.
Ask for the grace of God to urgently help open your mind to what is important in life, to what you really need and not want.
Good luck.