I have tried my best to understand the situation and remain faithful to her, but it's overwhelming.
Dear Bukky,
I and my girlfriend have been dating for a while now, we love each other so much with lots of promises for the future. We are so used to being around each other until a particular period when I had to leave her in Delta to work in Lagos.
We stayed apart for five months, although with lots of communication. We were happy but missed each other so much that we couldn't bear the distance anymore, so we scheduled a visit.
She came to Lagos and spent a month and two weeks with me. When it was time for her to go back to Delta, I urged her to stay with her Aunt in Lagos while we try to get a job for her so that we will be closer to each other. She was excited about it. She moved to her Aunt's at Gbagada and I stay at Egbeda. It's been almost two months since she left and she has visited me just once on a Saturday and left the next day, and she is not even working yet.
It was clear from the beginning when she said that "I won't be able to visit her but she will be visiting often". This is really affecting me. It is absurd to know that my girlfriend is in Lagos but I can't see her as often as I want to, although she claimed to miss me even more and she pleads for me to bear with her.
I have tried my best to understand the situation and remain faithful to her, but I feel she is been used as a Domestic Engineer ('you know what I mean by that') because her Aunt and her husband are very wealthy and busy people with little children.
Lately, she unnecessarily gets angry with me over little things I say or do, in which I will apologize and everything will be fine again. But our misunderstanding happens too often this days to the extent that she removed our picture from her Facebook profile. She picked a quarrel with me two days ago over something I did not do, she stopped talking to me, so I decided to [not] feed her ego by ignoring her too.
No calls, text or social media chat even if we are both online, hoping she will come to her senses, but nothing yet and I know for sure that she cannot cheat on me because of her religious inclinations.
Please what should I do next. Thanks in anticipation for your reply.
ALSO READ: What to do when your partner does not make enough time for you
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Dear reader,
While I understand your position and the frustration you may be going through on this matter, I think you may need to reassess your position on the matter.
I do not understand what you mean by domestic engineer, but I’ll take a wild guess and say it has something to do with helping her sister’s family with the children and other things when the parents are not around.
If that is the case, then you may need to be a little less assertive of your ‘right’ than you are now. I understand it that it does not make so much sense to be in the same city with your woman and not see her as much as you thought you would, but being considerate is what you need now. If you have been demanding from a place of entitlement and it has thus far not yielded the results you want, it may be time to switch things up and try to a little more understanding.
You said it yourself that she was still loving up on you greatly even though she was not coming to see you as much as you want. That signifies that her hands are tied, and instead of piling pressure on her, plotting how she can be free of the demands keeping her away from you is what you should be thinking.
Stay supportive and even proactive in her search for a job. If she gets one, that may be the key to leaving the house more frequently and creating some extra time in between to come over to yours… and even go on dates.
I think your way of relating with this situation requires you to soften up a lot more. I am not saying you are wrong, I am just providing an alternative to what is clearly not working. If you want this relationship to get back to the happiness it once had, stop being so demanding and instead focus on more support, more concession and compromise.
This thing you mentioned about not feeding her ego… it’s not too good, my man. That’s your woman there, if you don’t feed her ego, who should?! But that’s not even beside the point here. Being the first person to send a message when you are both online… that is not in any way wrong.
In fact, choosing to not do so is what’s not OK. Do better, man. Change the whole of your approach. Be more caring, more considerate of her position. Do this with your words and let it reflect in your actions, too. And I do not mean do it for few days and stop. Let it be a sustained system of relating with her. Switch up your game and let your girl know how glad you are to have her and how supportive you are of her present situation.
I am pretty sure that with this change in attitude, things will change in your relationship, too.
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