A Letter To My Future Wife: Why guys dump girls!

My Sweetheart,

Thank you very much for accepting my plea to tone down on your make-up. I’m particularly happy you have removed all your artificial nails, eye lashes and have retained the natural beauty God gave you. I’m extremely happy you wrote to apologise for the harm you might have caused me. Let me say I’m too glad to forgive you and hope you’ll not hesitate to draw my attention anytime I go wrong. I don’t know how some friends of yours got the letter and had my mail box inundated with a countless number of messages. Some were congratulatory, others derogatory. Remember to sign out properly after reading this one. I want everything to be between you and me.

I’m writing this time to advise you on the concerns you raised over your younger sister’s relationship. Did you say she wants to give in to her so-called lover’s demand for sex in order to keep the relationship? That’s quite interesting and at the same time annoying or rather pitiable. I’m happy she confides in you everything about her, and in order to keep that trust, I have decided to talk to her through you. She may feel betrayed if she gets to know that a third party privy to all her secrets confided in you.

Long before I met you (or rather we met), a lady once told me an ordeal she had gone through in trying to get a “promised” lover as she put it. We had just finished lectures and I was revising my notes when she came. Jane is her name. She was a beautiful young lady, I must admit. Her cheerful look was uncharacteristically absent and my curiosity forced her to tell me her story.

“I’m not sick,” she said when I enquired why she was looked so gloomy. “A guy nearly killed me. I thought he was my final destination until I met someone else in his room last night. Why are you guys so wicked?” she asked. She was not expecting any answer from me in particular, but I offered to answer. She was becoming emotional. “How are we guys?” I asked, with a mischievous smile. She told me how boy after boy (or rather man after man) had dumped her “after getting what they wanted. The greatest shock of my life is this very last one. Could you imagine it took two and a half years for me to accept his proposal?” she asked me. “Wh-a-a-t?” I gaped. “Then he must have been a genuine lover!” I added. “That’s what every naïve girl like me would be made to believe, but Frank is the devil’s grandson,” she interposed. We had a very lengthy chat and I must confess her openness gave me a great insight into the mistake young girls seeking genuine lovers make. I can confidently say that she felt somehow relieved after our discussion, trust my counseling prowess. Attraction between the opposite sexes at a certain stage in life is natural and inevitable. I remember I admired one girl called Agbebli Esther even in Class One. I Mean Primary One (P1) when I could still not clean my anus properly! I never proposed to her (neither did I intend to) but I felt I loved her. It was a great pleasure to share a desk with her. She left when we got to primary 2 and I’ve since not heard about her, but my childhood infatuation with her has permanently left her name in my mind, at least for as long as I live. I know I’m being silly, but don’t worry. You now occupy every available space in my heart and mind, and there is no place for Esther even if she is still alive.

All that I’m trying to emphasise is that the temptation to be in a relationship among youngsters is very high and your sister’s case isn’t exceptional. If I were God, I would put that feeling in a man or woman only when they are ready to marry. That’s, however not the case, and so teenagers are usually caught in a web of confusion as to what to do. The dreaded part of it is the pre-marital SEX. Even though fornication is considered a “legal sin” in society today, the bible warns that it is one of the deadliest sins. I’m not going to preach because your sister doesn’t fail church service and she has heard this number without times. I just want to talk about the social consequences of it, minus teenage pregnancy and STDs like almighty HIV/AIDS. What then am I going to talk about, if you may ask? I want to talk about the dignity of your sister. She is as intelligent and beautiful as you, and her virginity is her dignity, and not any academic laurels. This is debatable; you may think, but let me prove my point. Boys and men in general are cheats. I’m aware some of you ladies are, but ours is notoriously peerless. I’m guy, but for the sake of sincerity I won’t defend my gender. Jane told me that the young man who traumatized her happened to be her ninth boyfriend (or man friend). I mean nine (9). At the tertiary level, I know some girls have far exceeded this number and still counting, and without the faintest idea about who will marry them and when. And the greatest revelation she gave me was the fact that all of them started “misbehaving” after she started having an affair with them.

Remnants of the SHS Economics in my poor skull remind me that the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility can be applicable to relationships as well. The law states something like “as more and more units of a commodity is consumed, marginal utility (satisfaction) increases, attains equilibrium (maximum) and afterwards decreases. My Economics tutor (“Chaser,” we called him though he wasn’t that type) usually used water as a common example. “If you are very thirsty and you are given three cups of water,” he would say, “the satisfaction you derive from the first cup will certainly be greater than the preceding cups and a time will come when a drop of that same water cannot be forced down your throat.”

That is how pre-marital sexual relationship is. Just tell her that and she will understand it.

I attended a boarding school and I’m still in a hostel here. I can say if girls would ever have the chance to hear what guys say about ladies, they would be wiser. Listen to this conversation between three of my mates here, when we sat on campus one afternoon. The conversation started when a beautiful lady was passing by.

“Charlie, this shoddy dey bii oo!” Bingi started. “I no see um for this university before.” “Ah! You no sabi um? She dey tear Business Admi for Business School,” Jadu cut in. “Even I chop um before,” he added, with a sense of pride lightening all over his face. “Even if you make wild, you too fit chop um some. She dey bii kwa, her conning no hard.” This bloke of a university student did not end there. He went ahead to give full details of how it all went. My Sweetheart, imagine how your image would be if you were this beautiful Business Administration undergraduate. Trust me this is what goes on even when some respectable men meet. The discussion doesn’t usually end there. The next time that lady is seen even without her “ex-lover”, someone else would remark, “She dey bii, but she be yawa girl. Bingi sef chop um before.”

So where lies your dignity, beautiful girl? Staying chaste does not only protect you from STDs and traumatic heart breaks but it is also a way preserving your dignity. So my heart aches to hear your sister is ready to give in. Sex is not and can never be the only way to prove that you love someone. It is the beginning of mistrust in a relationship because we guys have a saying: “If she falls for you easily, so shall she fall for someone else easily.” A truly genuine lover who wants to marry a lady will stay happily in a platonic relationship. Take it or leave it!

Just tell her to concentrate on her studies because the very relationship she intends to save will automatically break if she gives in. Being in a relationship at her age is itself not good. Since she trusts you so much that she tells you everything, talk her to resist or quit and wait until she is mature enough to distinguish between love and lust. Don’t forget to tell her that you and I are in a platonic relationship until that day when we shall look at each other in the face and answer, “Yes, I do!” What a great day that day will be!

Thanks for being there for me!

By Manasseh Azure Awuni [azureachebe2@yahoo.com]

The writer is a Level 300 student of the Ghana Institute of Journalism.