Too little, too late?
Dear Counsellor,
I need your advice concerning my relationship with a man who is 17 years my senior. We have been together for 13 years and we have a 12 year old together. He asked me to move in with him several times, but I kept putting it off. Now he is frustrated and says he is going to do a business marriage because he can’t wait any longer. He has been overseas for two weeks now and has not called. I know I have done a lot of things to make him angry but I have never cheated. I was in denial about my love for him but now I realise that I do love him. What would you suggest I do?
It would appear that you had doubts as to whether or not to move in with the gentleman after being together for 13 years. Is it that he was proposing marriage or was it a live-in arrangement with no marriage in sight? Some women would rather live alone than live with a man in a common-law set-up. Was this the case with you?
There are so many questions that would need to be answered to understand clearly what is going on, such as why would your partner want to initiate an arranged marriage? Was that a plan he had in mind all this time? What benefit is he hoping to derive from the business marriage? What does this say about his integrity? It is difficult to see how your indecision could cause him to want to take such drastic action.
So he has left and has made no contact with you for two weeks. Is it that he has also left the relationship? Surely he would not be walking away from a 13-year relationship without a good reason. He probably wants to have you sweat a little but may contact you soon. Maybe he just wants you to know how hurt he was when you rejected his offer.
Sometimes people in relationships take each other for granted but will get a wake-up call when one threatens to walk away. As you have reported, now that he is overseas, you are realising how much you do care about him. Assuming that he was not serious about the business marriage, now is the time to express to him how much you love him.
You still need to clarify what moving in with him would signify. If he is entertaining the subject of marriage, albeit in an arranged fashion, you can follow up on that line of discussion, unless there are reasons known to you why you would not want to walk down the aisle with him.
So if and when he contacts you and he did not follow through on his threat, get the discussion going and determine what your next move will be.
Wayne Powell is a relationship counsellor. Write to crisscounselloronline@gmail. com; check out his work overseas on www.seekingshalom.org, e-mail powellw@ seekingshalom.org.
