Dear Fuston,
I have been a regular reader of your column in Nigeria Newspoint and in sincerity it is always a delight. I have formed the habit of buying a copy of your newspaper every Friday. Thank you for bridging the gap in many relationships.
For over two years now, I have been in an affair with this pretty 23-year-old Madonna University undergraduate. I love her so dearly but there is something about her that is thorn in my flesh.
I cannot exactly say if she loves me. There are indications that she does. But her character to me each time she gets angry with me tends to suggest that she does not love me.
She is haughty and can be highly temperamental. She hardly regrets her action no matter how terrible, her anger could lead her into killing another person and yet she feels satisfied doing it without remorse.
I met her first in a church gathering where she worked as an usher. I also know that she is very close to General Overseer’s family, but I am not convinced that the word of God she hears in the church has in any way impacted positively on her tempers.
She is tall and dark while I am a little short and fair in complexion. My friends have encouraged me to marry her because in their judgment she complements me. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have taken a thought to decide in favour of this advice, but when I remember the way and manner she erupts when angry, and the harm and damages she easily causes in this circumstance I fret over what will become of our marriage if eventually I settle for her.
Apart from her being temperamental, there are other excellent behaviours she has that stood her out of the other girls I have come across. I am only at crossroads because she is a marriage material but each time she is angered you will easily forget her good traits.
She has once slapped a middle-aged woman hawking banana, and threw the woman’s wares into the gutters over a minor scuffle.
I was told that she once poured sand into her mother’s pot of soup because the woman made her angry.
This last one that kept me wondering, was that she virtually destroyed every electronic gadget in my sitting-room simply because she came and met another lady in my flat. She even smashed a transistor radio on the girl’s head when they were exchanging words. There was a day she poured a cup of tea on me because I made her angry. Despite being haughty and hot tempered I still love her.
I am 34 years old and I have a good business that could conveniently take care of a family.
I know she will accept my marriage proposals if I extend it to her, but my worry is, could she change from this nasty and irritating behaviour of quick temperedness?
Collins Iro lives in Owerri.
Dear Collins,
My thinking is that you are only bemoaning without doing something to stop the one you love from this terrible attitude.
Well, I must thank you for appreciating our effort in this column and praise you for the courage to write in. No one enjoys a relationship that habours a negative bias against a partner, and so I am not unmindful of how you feel about your relationship.
Self-control is an attribute of a mature person, lack of it portrays an adult as a child and there is no way marriage between one adult and a child can function as an exemplary union.
The truth about what I am saying is that your girl friend because of her failure to control her anger, worst still her not showing remorse after angrily wreaking havoc portrays her as a child.
Wise and foolish people are usually known by their reactions to provocation. Wise people are always in control of their temperaments, but stupid people flare up and inflict pain and sorrows on others out of a little provocation.
You painted a picture of a 23-year-old lady that has an unteachable spirit and a man of 34 years that can’t rebuke and take charge of a tensed situation.
If you actually want to marry this girl you love, devise a means of calming her down when she is angry. Learn to talk to her constantly about the dangers of being hot-tempered. Politely drum it into her ears that she would have been facing murder charge if the lady she hit the transistor radio on her head had dropped dead.
You should not be the one to cause her to be angry. But who was the lady she met in your apartment? Did you explain the mission of the lady to her?
Your girl can change to a temperate person if you could do the right things. Change in the positive direction is usually inevitable if the right method of correction is followed.
I am of the view that you try to speak to her about controlling herself when others make her angry and also stop your own attitude that pisses her off.
If you cannot commit yourself to patiently achieving this, then there is no need going ahead to marry her.
On her own she needs prayers to overcome her haughty and quick temper. So pray and also encourage her to pray in this regard.
Happy weekend.
