Answers To Relationships and Marriage - Vol.2

Can one find love and lasting happiness in an arranged marriage? What if I discover that my partner has a health condition before we get married?

These are just some of the questions we will be answering as we continue with Chapter 2 in the series "Answers to Relationship and Marriage Questions"

This is an extract from a book that I am writing, which answers questions asked to me by real people on different platforms.

Question 9 - My ex cheated. I left. He married her. Does he love her more?

Answer 9 - No he does not love her more. For now he is just infatuated by something new. Men (us that is) are fascinated by anything they do not have like a kid that cries for the toy his brother has but once they have it they discover the excitement is not in the toy but in how the toy is handled.

A men will spend the rest of his life learning the same lesson but never getting learned, that happiness in their relationship depends entirely on him, unless for some reason the woman has decided they are no longer interested. Women are predominantly responsive people whose demeanor is a sum total of how they are treated by their partner.

My significant other often asks why I am being so nice to her. My answer is always the same. I am doing it for selfish reasons, I want to be happy and I have discovered the only way to be happy is by making her happy.

When a man leaves you, it is just a decision they have made which may not have anything to do with you. It is true that there are women who are not responsive to love and attention given by their husbands and no matter what the man does, she will never be satisfied.

When a person decides to leave, the best thing you can do is to let them go and you make the best of what you have and who you are. Soon they may discover that you were the best person they ever had but they simply did not know how to handle you and make the best out of the relationship.

Question 10 - Do arranged marriages work?

Answer 10 - The chances of an arranged marriage working are greater than the chances when two people meet a person online or in person for the first time and decide to start a friendship that leads to marriage. The greater chances arise from the fact that when you are getting to know a person and there is no commitment, it is easy to give up because of very small problems. In the case of an arranged marriage, you are already married and you have an obligation to make it work. You tend to be more tolerant than a person who is not married.

In an arranged marriage, you might initially face challenges accepting the other person especially if they do not meet your specifications of the person you wanted to marry. This can be overcome when you discover other good qualities in them. Maybe you wanted a tall guy but you got a shorter guy but he turns out to be funny, kind and worships the ground on which you walk.

Some arranged marriages however, do not work out for one or a combination of the following reasons:

• One of the parties refuses to come to terms with their new realities and they hold on to the dream of marrying a person of their choice.
• There is a willingness to make the marriage work but there are irreconcilable differences in taste, personality and ambition to name a few.
• One or both parties do not put any effort to make the marriage work because they never had to work to win the other person in the first place. As a result, the marriage becomes more of a business merger with little or no affection.

Question 11 - Is it possible to be happy in a marriage if the person you loved married someone else?

Answer 11 - Loving a person is not enough to give you a happy marriage. Your partner must love you back to the same extent that you love them. The fact that they married another person while you were available is testimony to the fact that they loved the other person more or they were not aware of your feelings.

The best relationship you can ever have is one where you get your first choice and you are also your partner’s first choice. You might be happy to be married to a person while they can’t get over the fact that they lost the person who was their first choice. Their frustration can easily affect the way they treat you, leaving you frustrated as well, because your love is not reciprocated.

If you fail to secure your first choice, you need to re-calibrate and set a new first choice. If two people meet after resetting their choices, they stand a greater chance of making their relationship work.

You need to withdraw your heart from the person you loved and lost before you can give it to someone else.

Question 12 - Is it wrong if I decide not to marry a guy I recently got engaged to after dating for two years? The reason I changed my mind is that, one day when I was visiting him, I came across his medical records that indicate that he has a terminal disease which until now, he has not told me about. Am I wrong to change my mind?

Answer 12 - You are free to change your mind whether or not he has a terminal disease. Until you sign the marriage certificate and the marriage officer declares you man and wife, you can change your mind even while wearing the wedding gown in front of your guests. Others change their minds after the wedding and we call it a divorce. This is the legal dimension. Let us look at other dimensions to the case.

Concealing a terminal disease from the person you are marrying is deception of the highest order. You are depriving them of the fundamental right to choose the life they wish to live. You are looking forward to having a caregiver while they are looking forward to decades of romance, holidays and raising children with you.

There are many people, especially women, who would gladly accept a man who is ill if they knew the nature of the illness from the onset. This is one of the cards that one needs to reveal very early on before the other party invests a lot of time and emotion into the relationship.

If at all in doubt, do not go ahead and get married. It is better to suffer financial losses and disappoint friends and family than to enter a marriage nursing seeds of doubt that will lead to even greater losses.

Question 13 - What qualities can make a man fall deeply in love and be committed to a relationship forever?

Answer 13 - I assume you are asking about qualities in a woman that can make a man to fall deeply in love and be committed to a relationship forever. There are two dimensions here, the first is falling in love and the second is being committed to a relationship forever.

There are basic qualities that generally attract men to women which include physical beauty, intelligence, gentleness, sweetness and the list goes on. These are what we may refer to as the cover of the book that deserves it a second look.

Commitment however, has little to do with the woman, assuming she maintains the same qualities that attracted the man. The ability of a man to commit is intrinsic and depends entirely on him. There are men who cannot commit to a relationship for long regardless of the woman they are dating as much as there are also men who will commit and stick it out for as long as possible even with a difficult partner.

Before a man meets a woman, he already has a mindset, tolerance levels and values that determine for how long he can stay in a relationship. While some qualities in a woman trigger certain behaviors, not all men react the same to such triggers. It all boils down to the man’s fixed mental state that predetermines how they react to words and situations.

In short, there are no qualities in a woman that can make him commit forever if he is not predisposed to commit.

Question 14 - What do I do when my ex comes back into my life and I’m in a relationship? I am in a happy relationship and now my ex is claiming he has changed.

Answer 14 - How can you be conflicted if you are in a happy relationship? That conflict is an indication that you are still stuck in the past with your old boyfriend and what you saw as moving on was not really moving on but simply taking the next best option.

Whatever thoughts you entertain will be magnified and they will find relevance. If you have moved on, simply tell him as such and never look back again. Entertaining his stories of having changed will leave you exactly where you were when you first broke up, after you leave the “Happy Relationship” for him then you discover he is still the same old person.

Question 15 - What should I do if my girlfriend's ex-boyfriend is liking all her posts and pictures on social media? They were high school sweethearts and I do not like their friendship.

Answer 15 - What matters is not what the ex-boyfriend does but what your girlfriend does. You cannot control what the ex does unless he infringes on her liberties in which case he can be reported for stalking. If your girlfriend pays no attention to him, then there is nothing for you to worry about.

On the other hand, paying too much attention to your girlfriend’s social media accounts is not healthy for you because her profiles are public and she is likely to draw the attention of other men in the same way she drew your attention. Unless she has a big bold label that says she is taken, many men will try to get her attention, in the same way I am sure many ladies also pay attention to your profile. What keeps a relationship is the trust and commitment you have to each other.

Question 16 - I am in a relationship, but my girlfriend is failing to trust me. What should I do?

Answer 16 - I hear people saying “Trust is earned” but I think in most cases, trust can only be lost. There is no person who starts a new relationship and from the first day they already mistrust their partner. The reason new relationships are always exciting is that they represent a new beginning with a person that is fully committed to you. You start losing points when your true colors emerge. A little lie here, a little deception there and the trust level goes from 100% to breaking point. That is when you start working to earn the trust all over, an endeavor that is almost always futile.

When you find yourself having to earn your partner’s trust, more often than not, you did something to destroy it in the first place.

There are a few cases where a woman may agree to start a relationship while they already do not trust you fully because they know your relationship history. If you are a headliner, they may agree simply because they believe in transformation but they keep their eyes wide open. You need to work extra hard to prove that your past is where you left it.

In other cases, a person was hurt by a partner who initially had all the signs of Mr/ Ms perfect. In that case, they will tread carefully with every new partner. It is not that they do not trust you but they are simply being cautious to protect themselves. Instead of pushing them to trust you, engage them in frequent conversation, being more of a listener in order to find out their areas of insecurity then give assurance not by words but by the way you treat them.

Question 17 - How can I get over my fear that one day my wife will just stop loving me for no reason?

Answer 17 - Your fear is simply a reflection of yourself. If you are confident that the love you have for your wife is steadfast and cannot suddenly end, you should have enough faith in her own love for you.

In the criminal world, the bosses that become very ruthless with thieving juniors are the same that used to steal from their own bosses so they know all the tricks used by subordinates. Their strict rules are not because they are straightforward themselves but they see their younger selves in their workers.

The same applies in love. If one party is not faithful, they are the ones that are always checking their spouse’s phone to see if they are not cheating.

The best solution for you is to simply love her unconditionally, without leaving any room for doubt, suspicion or fear of the unknown. The expectation theory in simple terms says that if you suspect something, you will start acting as if it were true then your new attitude starts to affect the other party and they also start acting in a way that is in sympathy with your new attitude. You start looking at their new attitude and think you were correct in your suspicion but in fact, you are the one who caused them to act that way in the first place because of your insecurity.

Very few things happen in your marriage that you did not first write a script for in your head. By the time you start fighting with your wife, that fight was already over in your mind in the afternoon at work when you were busy day-plotting in your head, "I will ask her about this, if she says that, then I will say this and do that". You may also have a fixed mental state with decisions already made, if she ever comes late, this is what I will do, and so forth. By the time she eventually comes late, you simply open the file labeled Late Coming in your brain and you execute whatever you decided a long ago without even bothering to hear her side of the story.

You can also write a script for a perfect relationship, where you decide to be the one that always diffuses situations. You can decide to be the last player on the field in the love game instead of being the one that always gives up first.

In short, your own actions and attitude towards your wife will go a long way in keeping her in the game. If she eventually opts out, you will know it had nothing to do with you because you gave her your best.

Question 18 - My girlfriend wants to study for a master’s degree in a foreign country, knowing that I’m not okay with a long distance relationship. Should I talk to her now or after she is accepted to study there?

Answer 18 - As she is only your girlfriend and not your wife, a decision to better her education is personal to her and she sees that it secures a better future for her and whoever she will eventually marry. Some people have made sacrifices in the name of preserving a relationship only to discover that the person they cancelled their study plans for is the one that walks away from the relationship.

The fact that you do not see value in a foreign education shows that the two of you differ on a very fundamental issue. Instead of trying to stop her, show her if there is a better alternative locally. In most cases that I have come across, people are excited when their partner gets an opportunity to study abroad unless they chose a country of no repute and with no opportunities.

The fact that she knows you are not okay with a long distance relationship and she stills wants to go ahead must tell you her prevailing mindset. Instead of seeing a problem, try to see opportunities. You might even be motivated to seek study opportunities for yourself.

Question 19 - My girlfriend got pregnant and she said I was responsible. Three months after childbirth, we ran a DNA test and the result was negative. What can I do to get all the money I spent from the 1st week of pregnancy till the 3rd months after childbirth?

Answer 19 - You could sue for your money but it wont give you any peace or satisfaction because it does not erase the betrayal you feel.

Once you start down the path of demanding from women what you spend on them, you develop a side to your personality that is cynical and will one day drive away the person that truly loves you. If you spend money because you love the person at the time, write it off to the experience account if something goes wrong in the future.

In this case, you can find peace by considering the fact that you spent the money on the innocent baby and not the deceitful mother.

If on the other hand you are the revenge, punishment and restitution type of guy, I am sure you can get a lawyer that will extract every cent from the lady but I doubt you will have any satisfaction afterwards because what hurts you now is not the money but the betrayal.

Question 20 - My fiance is worried about my ex-boyfriend, who stays in other city, coming to stay for two nights for my son's graduation. I have never given him a reason to doubt me before.

Answer 20 - You never gave him a reason not to trust you before, but now, you have just given him a major reason that he will be referring to in future, even when it is not called for.

The reason a person is called an ex is because they are in your past. If you have a child with them, he must have visitation with the child outside your home. The fact that you let him stay overnight means you are still on good terms. How good? your partner must figure that out for himself as he cracks his head trying to imagine what you and your ex were doing overnight.

Your ex-boyfriend must hire a hotel room and invite your son to stay overnight with him if they wish to spend time together.

By inviting your ex to stay overnight, you are also not helping your son because he will find it difficult to accept your new partner. What he sees in the visit is renewed hope for a reconciliation between his parents.