pc guru: Excuse me ! what insecurities, that's part of being a man, no matter how much broke i am and i hate myself for it, nothing will ever stop me from visiting a dear friend or babe, if its her birthday, someone's presence means a lot, and luckily going from the way i read the op's post, she's a very reasonable person. Some people don't know what they have till its gone. I can't say what you should do or not do, however being a man is part of "confidence" despite being broke. me i go visit my babe house even if I get no gift o. I no send anyone. you should talk to him.

Your post made sense. I strongly believe that if he wanted to come, he would have. In my opinion he just didn't want to come.

Agybabe: The guy may still be a learner.
His excuse is out of place.

A learner? What do you mean by out of place?

haitto99: I think he has low self esteem n insecurity,if I were to be in his shoes I wont come either knowing dat u stay with friends n I dont hv money to get u a decent gift,u know female friends n gifts na,dey wld wanna knw wat ur guy got,to save face he wont come,if it were to be me I wont either,i wld be prepared to even meet u in d moon dan ur house,his only mistake is dat he shld hv explained,i think d guy loves u

I think you are right about him being insecure. That being said, he didn't know that my friends boyfriends give them gifts. I never told him about any of that. But the issue for me is what he said about my birthday not being a valid reason for him to show up .

Hi! I'd like to ask for your advice on an issue.

There was a guy I was dating. We were students at the same time, became friends, became very good friends, and then started dating. We both had money issues, but I always seemed to have a little bit more, so I would lend him some from time to time. Okay, I lent him a lot. But I wanted to so I was okay with it then and I still am. The issue is this;

It was my birthday a few weeks back, and a few days before my birthday I asked him if he would come and hang out with me at home and he said yeah, definitely and that he wouldn't miss it. I was quite happy, but when the day came, he calls me and tells me that he cant make it and when I asked why, he said that it being my birthday wasn't a good enough reason for him to come over, but that if I were to celebrate it by going out or something that THEN it would be a valid reason for him to come over.

This hurt a lot, because firstly I was staying with some friends whose boyfriends buy gifts for them every other day. I know he doesn't have much, so all I cared about at that time was just spending time with him.Secondly, that statement sounds a lot like "Your value to me depends on how much money you spend on me".

And to make matters worse, another friend of mine came over on my birthday, simply because he had promised me he would.

Is my interpretation wrong?



b)I have an additional question, that I'd like to ask. What does it mean when a guy tries to break up with you on the basis that he has a porn addiction? Is he saying he's not interested anymore and using the porn as a cover-up?

tEsLim:

Now lemme tell you one thing I know about some silly men. You probably heard that when you guys where drinking beer! Some bleeping don't do anything with women they only had fantasies of doing it ,  then come to their friends with stories of how they did something they didn't really do. Just to make them think they're good at getting women to lay with them. WHOLE story might be LIES!

I've had similar case back in the days. When this silly immature bragged about how he used to bleep someone I was loving , I later found out it was a lie. Real dudes don't really discuss that. They keep fcking your wife in the backgruond till you discover some ways lol.

Men be careful dude. And you didn't catch her. And you weren't even able to know if you this-virgined her in the first place. So just forget about it. Its LAME!

I dis-virgined several girls and eventually got married to woman I'm sure been fcked inside out for real. Man me GROW up. I'm sure if I divorce tomorrow someone else will see my wife that already got 2 kids for me as BRAND new. LOL =))

GROW UP

Probably the most mature post here.

Has the poster even spoken to his wife?

Sisi_Kill:


Whoa! How on earth can you be happy with yourself? Haven't you heard that divorce is not good for the children. Don't they say it is better to bring children up in a two parent home regardless of the situation?

Now your children will be seen as children from "broken home" and your daughter (if you have one) might have a had time finding a husband because girls from broken homes are not wife material.

My God sir! What have you done??

Are you being sarcastic ?

I really hope you are.

Hi!!!



I went to a friends house for the mid term break and basically we ended up quarrelling over something which was relatively minor, in my opinion. But i'll just explain and let you guys give me your honest opinions.

Anyway, this mid- term break was for a week and a half. And while I was staying with her, I would help her and her family wash the plates, fetch water, and on occasion I would ask her if she needed help in the kitchen. If she said no, then I would ask her younger bother, who is about 18, if he needed any help with his chores around the house. When he said no, then I would go and make the beds. So one day we went for a wedding, and when we came back I wanted to wash all the plates in their sink . I couldn't do that because their sink was quite small and because of that they wash their plates outside where there's a borehole.
So I was going to take the plates outside to wash them but then I noticed that it was raining , so I decided to wait until the rain stopped a bit. Then i went and ate, and after I finished eating I took a bottle of fanta and was sipping on it when my friend came and we had a talk which basically started out as her asking me why I don't wash my plates immediately after I eat. And my reply was that we just don't wash our plates immediately after we eat, but that I was going to wash the plates anyway so there was no need to worry. The next thing she said was that she just thought it was really stupid and immature for you not to wash your plates immediately after eating. And I was extremely offended because there i was waiting for the rain to stop so I could go out and wash the plates, and there she was insulting me.
Anyway I told her she really needed to learn when to shut up, and when it seemed on the verge of degenerating into a quarrel I left the dining room. Her mom heard us quarrelling and she asked me what happened and i told her what her daughter said. I was really irritated , also because her younger brother had eaten before me and dumped his plates in the sink, and she didnt feel the need to call him stupid and immature.

So I just want to know if i am right to be irritated or if i genuinely did something wrong by not going out in the rain to wash the plates in her sink. Thanks.

Yes i know it's shocking that something so minor became an issue. Lol

CY_clone:

Yes, she is pregnant and the other lady is aware of his marital status.
Ha ba! All her friends are aware. My cousin told me and the lady herself confirmed it.
To answer the second part of your post, I'm concerned because I REALLY DO CARE about my friend. She was my chief bride's maid, she's my son's best buddy and she has always been there for me!
It was such a painful discovery last week, and the worst part is that even after my cousin told her friend her guy is my friend's husband, she said she's aware but she's in love and she's sorry if she's hurting her!
Well, I finally told my husband and he advised me to keep mute, but promised to maybe talk to the guy. So, as much as I hate the situation, I have to fold my arms and see what happens.
I'm really glad I didn't overreact earlier and I feel better now. It's just sad because my friend loves this guy so much 

First of all, you don't HAVE to fold your hands. Obviously I cannot stress the importance of telling your friend. I know that in the end you will go and do as you please. But I beg you, please don't say that you don't want to be a bad friend, because you've already put yourself into that category by choosing to fold your hands. When this gets out (and trust me it will), it's going to look like you all sat down and were discussing her misfortune , instead of helping her out when she needed it. But like I said, its your choice.

Yes you definitely should.

If you truly care about her well being as a friend you should tell her. If not, she will find out that you knew about it and said nothing and from then on, you can kiss your friendship goodbye because she will never trust you again.

But then it also depends on how much you value her as a friend.

The poster above me . . . well , all I can say is that different people have different preferences. If it was me, I would definitely want to know. So u might want to ask your friend if she would like to know about something like that. If she would want to know, then it is your duty as her friend to let her know. If not, then you clearly have no duty to let her find out.

Outstrip:

I agree. Including the comment about brash celebrity behavior. That is just her opinion but the DIL is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Did her fiance not even warn her.

How was she not the sharpest knife in the drawer? Everyone knows that there are times you're trying to make a good impression on people and it turns out badly. For crying out loud you're meeting people who are going to put you under a microscope. And when thats the case wont they over analyze everything you do?  Wouldn't you be nervous? Her fiancée wouldn't have told her anything because he wouldn't want her to be more worked up than she already was.!
Therefore,  he wouldnt have thought of telling the bride ;  "my mother is a perfectionist old hag who will take offence at you not writing a hand written card to say thank you for letting me stay over?! "
Please abeg. You dont know the girl and furthermore you weren't there, so dont jump to conclusions over people you barely know. Everyone knows that meeting the parents is the most difficult part of the whole wedding process. And it is heavily based on background so the DIL might actually have been on her best behaviour but since the MIL is from an upper class snobbish group of people, the DIL was never going to be good enough for her.

I read this on Yahoo news and I have to say that woman was extremely mean.

I mean come on, hand write a card to say thank you? Don't take additional helpings without being invited to? How unreasonable is that? I would send her an email back and that email will teach her that there is no fool like an old fool.
Yes there are sometimes that you get annoyed at other peoples lack of manners but her tone, the words she was using were all directly aimed at insulting the girl and making her feel unworthy of her son. Has everyone forgotten how she said " There are plenty of finishing schools around". Lai lai. That woman is horrible.
Did it ever occur to her that maybe, just maybe, the bride to be was brought up in a different background than the MIL was? But obviously that evil old hag was only trained to see things from her own obtuse, narrow minded point of view.

jennykadry:

Ehen naaa, me I am just leaving a mark incase he comes back after 4 yrs to tell us how his wife controls him or how he is tired of the marriage.

I mean, how can someone A MAN for that matter be in such a useless relationship? if the gurl does not want both families understandable, but she wanting hers and keeping his away from HIS OWN HOME is just way beyond me, and the dude is here telling us ''I don taya for the matter''

I need to know if we have real men left in this world.

If your husband is as good as you say he is, then you probably married the last of them.   Selfish woman. You were not even thinking of the younger generation of girls, were you?  

Personally I don't think i could live with someone like Apache77's girlfriend. I dont like people who exist solely on their friends and family's approval. It's irritating.

Can you people please stop insulting the poster?

She has actually raised a very valid point. A lot of boys insult girls for not going out with them, not sleeping with them, or even worse, try to make a girl have sex with them and then when she refuses go around lying to their friends that she begged the boy for sex.

This isn't something anyone should be insulting another person over. Sometimes I don't know why Nigerians like being unreasonable. Is sitting down to talk about how you would like to squeeze some girls boobs or how many girls you've slept with (true or untrue) not gossiping? Please lets address the question for once instead of trying to turn the issue around on girls. Girls do gossip, but guess what ; THAT ISN'T THE QUESTION. Simple!

Well . . . I'm not married.

But I don't think it's a bad thing to lose a friend. Friends grow apart and honestly you have to learn to be flexible in life. If not, you remain stuck in a rut forever.  What I'm really worried about is her and your husband. If she was truly beating around the bush like you said, then there's something she wants to tell you but maybe your husband has told her not to.

But that's just my opinion anyways.

P.S ; What was the argument about?

monkeyleg:

@IyaBasira,

I think it is unfair to take a stand without hearing the other side of the story, and we may never. Infidelity in marriage is a serious issue, and I dont believe in concealing these things. It has happend and both parties must face up to the consequence. That is the only way in my opinion that the root cause can be known at healing can begin

I dont care about the other side of the story. I'm not going to be perfect and you are not going to be perfect, but we bloody took vows to forsake all others.

As far as i am concerned, there is only one reason why a man should cheat on me. And that reason is if i have cheated on him first.

If I did no such thing, then he has no excuse. At least the poster took her business elsewhere. He slept with a family FRIEND.

The reason why I said he is a jerk is because he probably cannot say that he never slept with anyone while he was single. And yet he has the nerve to throw it in her face that she has slept with other men. Abeeeegi I no like dat kain thing. Nigerian man and their wretched double standards.
If he was a virgin when he met her, then yes I can understand his insecurity. But if not then please he needs to get over himself.

Also, I don't know if you read my post well because I never said she should conceal it. I said I wouldn't bother tying to make that relationship work, and even if I did, I would tell him the truth. That was what i was trying to say.

~Minx~:

@ Iyabasira,

I hear what you are saying about the truth but i don't have any guarantee that he will accept it and forgive me, what if he doesn't? What then?

Yes I was wrong I shouldn't have been involved with the other guy at all but it just happened, I didn't plan for it to happen and I sincerely regret it but I don't think telling him is going to make things any easier.

Thats why I said u and I are different. I prefer to cut my losses and move on. But then I am single and this is obviously a marriage that you are talking about, which makes it a more serious issue. You obviously want to try and make things work and that's fine.  All I am asking is for you to be prepared because he may just find out one of these days. Ermmm,  sorry I need to ask. Have you figured out whose infidelity came first?

~Minx~:

Thanks to you all for your responses. It's really been hard to end things with the other guy but I think that's the first step out of this mess. He cries and sobs and manipulates me and I end up feeling sorry for him and giving in to his sexual advances. it's really a difficult situation and I think only God can help me through this. Those who pray please remember me in your prayers.

My husband is a very difficult person when it comes to infidelity issues, telling him will break any hope of reconciliation. He still has problems with the fact that I slept with other men before we got married he says when he thinks about it it disturbs him now imagine having to tell him that I slept with someone else now? It would break him. :-\

I have been thinking of taking the issue to my Pastor and tell him everything but I am scared he will force me to confess to my husband,

I'm really in a tight spot and I really appreciate your sincere advice.

Your husband is a jerk I am sorry to say.

If he was that judgemental about infidelity then why did he cheat?

What he's basically trying to say here is that it's because you have had some experience in the bedroom before you got married, that was his incentive to cheat. Which is silly.

You are not like me so you are obviously trying to work things out with him. I wouldn't bother. But if I wanted to work things out with him, then i would tell him the truth and see how he takes it. I know he won't take it well, but if he cheated on me first then he deserves it. Chikena.

I'm not saying you should tell him o!. I just believe that if he has been honest with me I will be honest with him. After all, have you considered the fact that he may hear about it from another source?

Sagamite:

You basically answered your own question. Seems you know the answers since these were clues I would have given you based on the question of the topic.

Now since you are clued up on the foundations that potentially give you a chance of happiness with a man, let me provide you with the next set of clues that will facilitate this.

Here it is, please listen carefully. I want your full concentration.

Are you listening?

Okay!

Hear me:

Stop fcking choosing arseholes. Make good choices in men you go out with or give a chance.

It is most likely your fault you are ending up with men like these since it is the woman that normally complete the signing that starts a relationship as they are the ones being chased.

If you end up with extreme arseholes like you described, it is probably because you chose arseholes or you made good guys like this based on not providing the foundations.

If bad guys turn you on and you go for bad guys stop moaning when they actually are what they are. Bad!

That's not necessarily true. First of all , you can never know who turns out to be an ass hole.  There are guys that no matter how nice you were to them while you were going out, when you've had enough of them and break up they start running around telling tales. I've seen situations where the guy was an ok guy with his first gf, and never cheated on her until the first girl dumped him, and when he gets a second girl he basically starts treating her like shit i.e cheats , tell lies about her and so on. In that situation there is no way the second girl could possibly have known that he was going to do all those things. Because even if she does all the research on his character before she met him, there's no way of predicting what the guy can do in the future.

All I'm saying is that yes, some girls do go for bad boys but at other times the boy may just be a bad guy pretending to be good. And we all know that even if a girl was to go around asking all his friends about his character they would never tell her the truth because after all, boys have each other's backs and wouldn't want to spoil their friend's chances of getting laid.

At best you may need to postpone this wedding. At worst, cancel it completely and remain single for a while so you can figure yourself out.

What your current fiancee lacks is maturity. No one can teach you how to be mature. You need to learn it for yourself.  How old is she? And how old are you?

It's a bit sad that you now extol the virtues of your ex while your present gf is giving you hell. You must have seen some qualities in your present fiancée that made you want to marry her. . . try to remember them (if you can stomach her behaviour, that is).

I don't like jumping to conclusions but yes, what your friend did seems very opportunistic and manipulative. But this is how a lot of Nigerians are.

One more question though. Why did you feel the need to consult all your friends before breaking up with her? I don't get this idea that boys have that their friends must approve of everything they do before doing it. Why not have just ONE good and trustworthy friend you can talk to about personal issues? It never occured to you that guys can be as bitchy as girls are, did it? I'm sorry you had to find out the hard way. Even me too I learned the hard way as well that you don't put your trust in everyone. Not everyone likes you or even cares about you.  

But to be quite frank, you're not supposed to care about your ex any more. Your anger is a bit unreasonable. Are you angry because she's getting some attention, or because it's your friend that she's getting the attention from?

Would you still have broken up with her if your "friend" had disapproved instead of approving of your breakup? To me it looks like you would have. If your friends advice was extremely instrumental in your breakup with her, then you probably have a right to be angry. But you had already made up your mind to break up with her by the time you went to meet your elders (friends) for your village meeting . . . lol.

Anyway there are a lot of questions you need to need to ask yourself here. And you need to make a decision and go about it the right way, because even if you break up with your fiancee now, you can't just jump back into your ex's life and continue as if nothing happened. If she's everything you said she is, then I'm sure she's not stupid. And if thats the case then she's never going to fully trust you again. She may not even agree to get back with you. So I think you need to chill and ask yourself why you're so angry in the first place.

jennykadry:

^^ They are insulting her because she has opened up this particular thread over 15 times on this section. She got good replies the other times and people are tired of her because 

1. She is Not minding her bizness and/or working towards finding herself a man

2. They have given her good replies in the past but she keeps coming back like a young girl with Dementia

3. She  needs to get a life and stop envying other people.

4. She keeps starting up the same thread over and over again.


Lmao @ iyawo siena

Really? I had no idea.

I really don't get why everyone is insulting Mama-G. The topic is quite true. A lot of mothers do this, especially when they have a son. A girl can always be wrong, but mothers always defend their sons to the death. Hence we have a generation of boys who think they are kings. It's quite sad. But yeah, mothers who fail to recognize the faults of their children annoy me.

@ Poster; in your original post, you said maybe your fiancee was too immature to appreciate a good man like you. I hate to burst your bubble, but you are not a good man at all. I wouldn't call anyone who did what you did to your ex gf a good man. Simple.
Like some people here said, Girls do go crazy about their weddings, but I can't believe that one can spend so much money on creams. I also can't believe you didn't know the girl you were marrying. How long have you guys been dating? How do you expect to live the rest of your life with her when you can't even handle her shopaholism now ? Now that we' ve dealt with that issue, you may want to postpone the wedding until the two of you mature a little bit more.

Atreides:

@Iya Basira,this is so weird. . You're saying the EXACT SAME THING a friend of mine said(i.e the IWAB syndrome-she used that EXACT term!).

She's much older(i have friends who are older than i am with 15 years and more),married with kids sef and a friend of the family(which means she's tight with my parents as well),so when i was talking to her about it i had to be hypothetical(although i think she suspects it was me i was talking about).


The thing is i've never had a problem with peer pressure before(ok i have but it hasn't affected the decisions i make-i'm usually the one influencing others,not the other way round)so i don't see why it should bother me now. Yeah,i want a boyfriend but she told me to ask my 'friend' whether she wanted a boyfriend because she was ready(emotionally & otherwise) for a r/ship or because everyone else was in a r/ship.

As for the G thing i figured if he hadn't changed in the one year i'd dust my feet and forget about the whole thing.

And yeah,i did think it was a bit weird. The fact that my sisters and i are close and everything doesn't mean my life should be a reflection of theirs. How can the first guy i'd be in a serious r/ship with be someone who once liked my sister? What kinda swear is that?
Is it too much for me to want something apart from them?


Your reply is one of the few on this thread that's making me think.

Awww, I'm glad it's making you think dear. I just don't want you making the same mistake a lot of girls make. As regards what you said about moving on if he hasn't stopped the habit in a year, that might not be such a good idea. Why? Because people lie. He may say that he's stopped the yahoo yahoo deal because that's what he wants you to hear, and because he knows thats what you want to hear. So please gnore him, and move on. Make it short and sweet so you don't have to keep thinking about it. Tell him you're not interested, shrug your shoulders and move on.

@ Atreides;

I realize that no matter what everyone here says, you may still end up dating this guy eventually. Hopefully , you will prove me wrong.

From what I have read, it looks like you have IWAB (I Want A Boyfriend) Syndrome . You don't like him but you want to be in a relationship so badly that you are willing to go out with him , not now. but maybe later in the future, a year from not, like you said.

I am going to tell you this now; It is extremely WEIRD for a guy to want to date 2 girls who are of the same blood. Now that may even be excused because he never went out with your sis, and I have heard stories where things like this happen. Just saying.

On the other hand, he is a yahoo boy and that alone should make you scream and run. Such boys are nothing but trouble. I've never dated a yahoo boy but my ex -bf used to hang out with the yahoo boys. So by virtue of association, he became one of them as far as I was concerned. Human beings are creatures of habit. They say they will change but they don't. Seun has once said on this forum that it is near- impossible to change someone who is over 18 years old. By that time, such a person is set in their ways and this is extremely true. Sometimes it takes more will power than we have to change ourselves and get rid of our addictions so the whole thing about him changing . . . we've heard it all before.

In the end it is your life and you can do whatever you want with it but please remember what Maya Angelou once said ; When a person shows you their true colours, believe them the first time. Don't wait for it to get worse. Say no to him and go your separate ways.

It seems like everyone is calling the woman a home wrecker and a witch, all of which are true. I'm actually happy that no one is telling the poster something stupid like "All men cheat so this is not a big deal".

Finally Nairalanders can agree on something, which is that the poster is a retard whose lineage originates from the scum of the earth.

@ Poster ; Omega25Red made a very valid point; leave her already! And I wish you and your new wife all the punishment that God sends to people who break their marital vows.

I don't understand. Why did his friend lie?

Why do men do these things?

What was his motive? What did he have to gain by breaking you guys up?

Did he like you or something?

When people say "faithful" instead of "fateful" day
i.e On that faithful day . . . WRONG!!!!!

On that[b] fateful [/b]day . . . RIGHT!!!

I'm still working on a revenge tactic for my ex.

Any ideas, please let me know. Right now all I have is telling his current gf that he came to me last year saying that they had broken up and he wouldnt mind being friends with benefits. I said no sha.

And I later heard that they never broke up at all.

Blazay:


Very good!


If you wanto marry a husband. . . never you marry a waka about o!
If you marry a waka about o. . . na so so trobu trobu. . .trrrobuuu!

Even when e drunk o. . . kpom-kpom-kpom. . . I-KPA-GHAAAA on ya face o!
Na so-so kpalava. . . kpom-kpom-kpom. . . .IKPAAAAAAA-GHAAAAAAAAAAAA ON YA FACE O!



Eeeeeeeeh? They always come back to eat their vomits of course. 
USERS!
If she like make she go back. . . that na her business. Once I don comot for man house. . . NOTHING go carry my leg go back dia. . . Lai lai!

 

Wetin she wan take another man do?
If she loves herself, she should concentrate on herself and her child and stop attracting bullies to her life while exposing herself to all kinds of diseases out there. If she is looking for someone to give her a "V" job, she should go and buy one of those cross-eyed Chi-wa-was. . . . cut off all it's teeth and take it with her to her bed with her every night for a gooooooooood licking! That is what all these lonely 'oyinbo' women do. . .with their cats and dogs without looking at any man for MANY years. They live longer without diseases and all these emotional turbulences. When one Chiwawa dies of 'jedi-jedi' from too much 'yeast' from her 'sweeeeet yogurt'. . . . . . she goes and purchases another one. No autopsy needed.

Shioooooooooooor!




Mwaaaaaaaaah!


God bless 'Logan' my dog!

Mu he he he he

You are one disgusting person. Ewwwww . . . .

Sijo01:

My step uncle (my dad step younger brother) have been married to his wife for close to twenty years with no issue (child) and they’ve being living happily together. The wife as far as some of us are concern is the bread winner of the family. The both family have advise them to get a divorce and try their luck somewhere else but the couple ignored this. The woman has even lost her friendship with some members of her family, but this never disturbed her as she believed God will answer her prayers one day.

The whole story changed about four years ago when my uncle impregnated another lady outside his matrimonial home, the wife was devastated but she never gave up. The lady gave birth to a baby girl. My step uncle immediate family were not only happy but all the love they have for their son’s wife died immediately forgetting what the woman has done for them all.

After sometime my step uncle impregnated the same lady again and she gave birth to a son. In other for the wife to still be seeing her husband as he now spend most of the time outside his home, the wife rented a bigger apartment and they all moved in (including the lady), she meets about 95% of the family needs.

To cut the whole story short, My step uncle and her so called lady that bore him two kids turn the innocent woman into a daily punching bag. Regardless of this, she was still with them in her house until recently (2weeks ago) she could not bear it any more; she packed her things and went to her father’s house.

Now the issue is that my step uncle wants her back, e bi like say hunger don visit him & he new wife and he is trying to use my dad, mom, & my siblings ‘of cause him no say me nor dey send am’ to achieve this because we were the closest to her.

I want to stop him from achieving this because i believe he's doing it for his selfish interest. SO PLEASE NAIRALANDERS YOUR VIEW & ADVICE WILL BE APPRECAITED. The woman is happy now and I believe she will get another man that will treat her nicely. 

I seem to be missing something here.

So her husband cheated on her and she continued to fund his misdeeds? Even going to the extent of buying a house for the three of them to live in, and then they were beating her up in HER OWN HOUSE?!

That's not even the best part. The best part is, she decided she had had enough and she LEFT her house for them. If she had that much money why didnt she hire agbero's to shoo them out into the street to teach them a lesson?

Damn! No wonder men treat some women so badly. This lady does not have pride at ALL. I feel sorry for her but you don't leave your own house for an abusive husband and his second wife.

If her eyes have not opened by now, then she will remain blind forever. Sad truth.

BashiruB:

Dear Nairalanders,

Lets me contribute my two cents to this discussion. I hope you guys keep an open mind and respond politely if you wish. The issue of homosexuality is a complex yet it is not supposed to be so complex. Like they say, you cannot understand another man's situation if you have not walked in his shoes. And if you are heterosexual, you can never understand the struggles and experiences of a homosexual person. I just hope that you will try to put yourself in those shoes for a minute while you read this. The most important thing I want you to do is to keep an open mind and not equate homosexuality with just a sexual act. Afterall, when you think of heterosexuality, you dont think of sex. You think feelings, love, the need for human companionship and maybe sex down the line. But sex is not the building block. In the same vein, a 15 year -old boy may discover that he only has same sex feelings but he never actually engages in same sex activity all his life as he enters the priesthood. That doesnt make him any less gay. He was gay at 15 and he will be gay all his life. that he never engages in the a sexual act doesnt change who you are attracted to. Or do you think priests and reverend sisters and 12 year old kids are asexual? Ofcourse not. You may not be engaged in sex, but it doesnt mean you do not have a sexual orientation. Its either gay or straight. So please lets disentangle this discourse from sexual intercourse. Its about who you are drawn to emotionally, physically and spiritually.

First and foremost, I believe the cardinal bone of contention here is that most people find it had to believe that people are born gay. The real question is, Are people born heterosexual? If you believe that you were born heterosexual then do you think it is possible that some people were born gay? I want to assume that if you are straight that there was never a point in your life when you were attracted to both males and females; after which you then decided to choose the opposite sex. Did you ever get to make that conscious choice? I doubt it. Then why do you think that a gay person was given that choice by God? Why would anybody ever choose to be attracted to the same sex when he knows the price that he will pay in society? The risks are numerous- your family will disown you in a heartbeat, all your friends will abandon you and any hope for a real fulfilling future is gone; all because for no reason, you hit puberty and you discover that you are different.

If you are straight, you may not understand this. But I assume that if you are a guy that around the age of 11-12, you started becoming interested in girls. That is normal at puberty. Imagine if at that age you find yourself with no attraction whatsoever to the opposite sex, but only to your own sex. That is the reality of a gay person. You try to fight it. You try to go to all the church deliverances and say all the prayers and promise God everything if only he will just take it away- If only he will just make you normal. Believe me, that is the only prayer of gay people. You try hard to keep the secret and you also are afraid that if anybody finds out the secret, that you may be mobbed in a heartbeat. It is hard enough for a heterosexual teenage boy to stay focused in school and stuff because hormones are raging and you want to chyke guys and all. Imagine how much harder it is for gay people when you know that what you have is what Oscar Wilde called 'the love that dare not speak its name'. You can't tell anyone about it. You just live with your secret into your twenties. Some are bold enough to carry on with secret relationships with their peers just like their heterosexual mates are doing. Others torture themselves everyday because they cannot reconcile what they feel inside with what their religion and society has told them that they should feel. Its no wonder that the rates of teenage depression, suicide and all is so high. In the US, teenage suicide among gay teens is 7 times what it is in heterosexual teens- This means that for every 100 suicides among teenagers, more than 80 of these will be gay teens - usually those struggling to come to terms with their sexuality or experiencing rejection or discrimination from their friends and families. Do you think 14, 15 year old teenagers will want to kill themselves over something they could change? Think again. Do you know the kind of emotional turmoil that a gay person must be in to think that the best solution is to take your life and just escape this earth and its hardship? I'm sure you cant begin to imagine this. But like I said, try and walk in the homosexuals shoes for a minute because unless you can do this you will never understand his life experiences.

But then, you are a human being- with hormones and real feelings. Just like a 15 or 16 year old boy would see a girl in his class and like to 'toast' her, there also gay people who are surrounded by people that they are attracted to- but who they dont want to be attracted to. Its simple biology. Every human being has the capacity to love and be loved. But people do not control the sex they are attracted to. If you are straight and think it is a choice, I bet that If I offer you a billion dollars to turn gay, that you will not be able to. And by turning gay i mean that you will be genuinely attracted emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and then physically to someone of your same sex. Believe me, you cannot do it. Why? Because you were not born that way. It is the same way for people who are gay. They have tried and tried and begged God and done everything but it doesnt go away. Most importantly, most gay people do not have the natural attraction to the opposite sex - so what should they do? They just cannot connect emotionally, spiritually and physically to the opposite sex as they can to their own sex. Its plain and simple. It would be easier for some if they had a natural capacity to like both sexes- truly Bisexual people have that capacity and so they can swing both ways naturally. But for most gay people, they are forced by societal and religious pressure to go into heterosexual relationships that they are not naturaly equipped to go into.

In Nigeria, we dont even acknowledge the existence of homosexuality and so I'm sure that we may have no statistics on the magnitude of this issue. If we are to go by what the researchers say, 2-5 % of every population is gay. Every population means every population and not just Western population like we want to believe. In other accounts, this proportion is closer to 10%. This will mean that close to 15 million Nigerian are most likely gay. Gay people seem to be non-existent because in truth, heterosexuals are about 80-90% of people and they will always be the majority. Its just the way nature works. As the most populous black nation on earth, it also means that we have the highest concentration of black gay people on this earth. I am not saying this to alarm you, but it is just a reality of life and nature that will shock you probably because you may think that you dont know too many gay people personally. But then, who in his right sense will tell another person in Nigeria that he is gay. People just carry on with their secret affairs and pretend that everything is ok. We are a nation that is notorious for hidding things under the basket.

Most gay people go ahead and get married. For most of them, they may like and even learn to LOVE their spouses, but they will never be IN LOVE with their spouses because they can never connect on that level with them. And I believe that every one deserves to be with someone that is truly IN LOVE with them and not someone that is using them as a cover for the busy-body Nigerian society that will begin to wonder why this middle-aged Nigerian man is not married. If you are woman, you want a man that loves you completely and you will be utterly heartbroken to find out that your husband is gay and is having affairs with men outside. Yes, with men. A married gay man will not have affairs with women, it is with men- because it is men that he is truly attracted to and their is nothing that his 'poor' wife can do to change his biology or to give him emotional and yes- sexual, satisfaction. And believe me sexual satisfaction is a big part of every relationship- gay or straight. Most importantly, his poor wife will not be genuinely loved and may not have a fulfilling sex life because the man is not genuinely attracted to her.  So we have an innocent woman who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a man who may contract an STD anytime if he is not careful. This is what they call the 'Down low syndrome' among African American communities- gay men who are forced to live straight live and have wives and girlfriends. Believe me, this scenario I just recounted is living and thriving in our own Naija as it is in all parts of the world. In more open cities like Lagos, there is a thriving gay prostitution scene where 'respectable' men go to satisfy  their passions. Some men, enter into long term relationships with their 'buddies' while still keeping their wives. Secrets, Secrets and Lies everywhere.  I'll use the handedness analogy for this issue because it is very appropriate. [b]About 10% of people are born left-handed while 90% are born right-handed. Its an in-born thing which in times past was seen as an abomination. There were times when left-handed people were persecuted and killed (you can do your research on this). In Nigeria now, left-handed kids still have it tough. Most parents try to change their kids and  most parent succeed in making them learn to use their right hands. Still, those kids never truly lose the function of their left hands. They just learn to become ambidextrous and they learn to write and eat and take stuff from their elders with their right hands. But after all said and done, they are all still most comfortable with the left and always resort to it when no one is looking or when they are all grown up. For a small percentage, they will never learn to use their right hands and they are the ones whom their parents will always flog. Still, they never are able to learn it. Its just their nature. It is that way with gay people. You may force yourself out of societal pressure to be with the opposite sex but you never truly loose your attraction for your own sex.  Most times, this leads to cheating in marriages. For the small percentage of gay men and women who cannot even fake an attaction to the opposite sex, there are like the perpetual left-handers-  unable to conform to society's expectation, not out of their own stubbornness but because of how God created them[/b]
Who do we blame for this kind of double life? It is easy to blame the gay man or woman, but then we should ask ourselves- what role do we play in cultivating this kind of double life? Isnt society to blame for being so hostile to the idea of homosexuality that people are forced to live in the closet and deny an essential part of themselves? I'll tell you this, if you know anybody that is openly gay in Nigeria and has chosen not to marry but to be honest with themselves, you should go up to them and give them a handshake. Because they have defied all the pressure from religion and society to do the honorable thing and live life with dignity instead of deceiving an innocent person into marriage. They are the ones that have chosen to obey their consciences and be honest.  Most importantly, for that gay married person, can you imagine how unhappy his life is. Knowing that you have to lie everyday and that you cannot truly be yourself or be with someone you may truly love because of society. Its a hopeless situation and thing can only begin to get better when people realise that the gay person cannot change to a heterosexual anymore than the heterosexual can turn gay. People are just made that way by God for his own reasons and it does not go away anymore than a heterosexual person suddenly stops being heterosexual. Once we learn this truth, we can begin to accept people for what they are and then they may feel comfortable living honest lives. But we cannot expect people to acknowledge their homosexuality when we as a society will want to treat them as second class citizens.

As a gay Christians will tell you, they have made peace with themselves and they know that God loves them the way they are.  They do not consider a same-sex loving couple in a monogamous relationship to be a sin and I dont either. By this relationship, I mean 2 people of the same sex who are comlpletely devoted to each other and have chosen to build a life together. In some countries in the West and even in South Africa, they are legally married and some of them have biological or adopted kids and are as normal as every family. The only difference is that both partners are of the same sex. And please get your head out of the gutter and dont think about what they do in bed or how they do it in bed because it is not anybody's business what happens in the confines on one's bed chambers. This may seem silly to some of you but I ask you to read on. First and foremost, I want you to use you brain because God gave it to to you for a reason - to think independently and make up your mind on issues. Ignore whatever you have been told that the Bible said and look for God's answers on your own. Now, there is a school of thought that says that Biblical interpretation should be taken literally- that is, just exactly the way it is written in the Bible, while there is a second school of thought that says that you should look at everything said in the Bible in the context of the times in which it was written. i belong to the second school of thought.

Let me begin by saying that we all know that people say that the Bible is the 'word' of God. I agree that the Bible was inspired by God; but it was not written by God. It was written by inspired men who wrote in their own 'words' and not God's exact 'words'. This men wrote within their own socio-cultural context and this is abundant when we consider the things in the bible that we ignore today because it doesnt make sense in our time. The literalist will always throw the passages in Leviticus that say that a man must not lie with another man because it is an abomination. However, the literalist also tries to forget verses in that same Leviticus that say that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night, that she should be taken back to her father's house and stoned to death; and that a disobedient child should also be stoned to death. This same Leviticus said that it was an abomination to mix two types of fabrics together. It also calls it an abomination to eat shellfish. And the list goes on and on,  It called all these things an abomination. Yet today, we all eat shellfish,  we all wear ankara and brocade in the same cloth and we all eat shellfish. Most girls are not virgins when they get married and their husbands do not return then to their fathers and stone them to death. Why then do we persist in  
hurling these passages at gay people. These portions of the bible make it clear that the people that wrote it did so in line with their own cultural practices thousands of years ago. In this age and time, some of those passage will be seen as sexist and child abuse.

Now, we know that the Bible was not written in English. Infact the Bible as we know it was not compiled in its original language until hundreds of years after the death of Christ when the Church decided to put together a Holy Book based on religious writings. Of course by then there were so any writings. These writing were mostly stories handed down by word of mouth and passages by the early Christians to successive generations. By around 400 years after the death of Christ when the Vulgate bible was compiled, there were a lot of books written and it was up to a select committee of men to choose and decide which books will make it into what we now know as the Bible. Out of thousands of books, they choose the 66 books that we now know as the Bible. Or do you think that it was only Matthew, Mark, luke and John that told stories about Jesus and had it written into books? There were many other Gospels. There is the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Barnabas,Gospel of Truth, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Mary and the list goes on. Why werent these ones selected? The point I am trying to make is that the assembling of the Bible as we know it was done by human beings like you and me with their own guiding philosophies and interests and so it makes no sense when someone assumes a literalist stance and says that the Bible provides the answer to everything that is God's will.

Now we know that the bible is full of passages that make it clear that the place of a woman in society is akin to that of a man's property. She is to be seen and not to be heard. A man could marry plenty wives in the Bible and nothing was wrong with that- Moses was married to Sarah and still sired a child through her maid, Solomon had hundreds of wives. This was normal in their time, but in this age and time, we do not subscribe to those beliefs because we whether we like it or not, we agree that the bible is context specific and that those things that were acceptable in that culture do not apply now. Just look at the high rate of divorces everywhere and you will agree that we are not following the bible to the letter. Now it stands to reason that if women were invited to the table when the final 66 books of the Bible were being out together, that there will have been some protest against some books that expressly permit discrimination against women. For example, we have a place in the new testament that says that women should not speak in a place of worship and should instead sit and listen. Up till date, some churches still use that to ban the adoption of women into the clergy. But tell me, do you think that a woman who is spirit-filled is any less an instrument of God than a man? There are numerous instance where the Bible has been used to denigrate a particular group- whether women, slaves or homosexuals. But i bet that if people fro any of these groups were present during the final compilation of the Bible, that the parts of the Bible that harm them will not have made it into the final draft. My point- the Bible is a book inspired by God but written by man and put together by man to reflect his peculiar leaning. My point- Learn to look at things for yourself and question a bit- Because as someone said, it is only by questioning your faith that you van find a deeper faith.


We know from the translation of the Bible over two thousand years that it has been through many languages. The original languages in which it was first transcribed are mostly non-existent now. And we also know that the 'homosexuality' did not appear in the English bible until about 1949. Before then, most translations referred to some of the verses as male prostitution and co.  It is no surprise that homosexuality as we know it today- a loving relationship between people of the same sex, was not written of in the bible because the Biblical writers did not have any concept of sexuality or same-gender loving relationships like we have today. How can the bible then condemn homosexuality when the word didnt make it way in there until about 2,000 years later. it is in the same way that we dont expect the Bible to give us answers to issues like Nuclear energy or assisted reproduction techniques or Information technology because in the biblical times, they had no concept of this.

To be sure, the bible condemned male prostitution- just as it did for female prostitution. And it is this word that many biblical scholars feel have been mutated over time to no become homosexuality in the bible. But then, how does male prostitution equate with a present-day same gender-loving relationship like we know it to be today where you have partners that are committed to themselves physically and emotionally just as heterosexuals are?

And to be sue too, Paul condemns people who have given up their 'natural' desires to pursue the same sex. The only thing is that for the homosexual, what is 'natural' is attraction to the same sex. Being with an opposite sex partner to the gay person is as unnatural as forcing a heterosexual to sleep with someone of the same sex. The level of revulsion is the same. The only difference is that society forces the homosexual to effectively 'violation' himself/herself, go against his nature and do it. It is not a surprise that Paul felt that people were giving up their natural desires. Afterall, the concept of sexuality as we know it today was not their in his time. And so I'm sure that he assumed that it was only the kind of desires he had that were the 'natural' ones. In that way, he is no different than you the reader or most heterosexuals who always wonder what the f*** is wrong with gay people? Why would they give up what you have and that which you assume is natural to most people- heterosexuality, to pursue homosexuality? The answer boils down to what I have said earlier- if you have not lived in a gay person's body and gone through what he has gone through- the hormones, the exclusive same-sex feelings, the utter absence of opposite-sex attraction throughout life, then who are you to tell him that his feelings are not 'natural'? It is just like telling a left-handed child that his 'bad' habit is not natural and that he should stop it. This a very telling analogy because almost all gay people who speak truthfully say that they have always known that they were different. Some know as early as 7-8 years in life. They might not have the word for it at that age and they certainly are not engaging in any sexual activity at that age, but they do know that the way they feel about people of their own sex is not quite 'normal'. So to base the condemnation of homosexuality on what St. Paul has said would be not to use our God-given intelligence to think for ourselves. if God created some people homosexual, then how can we say that their desires are unnatural?

Some people try to say that homosexuality is mostly environmental and that people who may have been abused sexually or had absent parental figures are the ones at risk. This is utter garbage. Did you become heterosexual because you were abused by an opposite sex uncle or aunt? Did the environment really have anything to do with your sexuality or did you just hit puberty and found it there? Afterall, almost every homosexual was raised in an home by a mother and a father and if environmental influences are the strongest, then the child should have learnt from his parent's example and also become heterosexual. Infact, I dont believe there is any gay family in Nigeria, why then do we still have homosexuals in our society? This brings me to the issue of the arguement against gay parenting. People say that if homosexuality and hay marriage and parenting becomes allowed, that children will be turned gay in those families. How so? Parents have no influence on the sexual orientation of their children and gay parents are not any more likely to raise gay kids than straight parents. Afterall, most of the gay parents were raised by straight parents and they still turned out gay! Go figure!

The most common Biblical portion used against homosexuality is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The popular assumption is that the city was destroyed solely because of homosexuality. This cannot be further away from the truth. God saw the iniquities of Sodom-  their greed, lust, wickedness and all. Sodom was a very rich city but they had given themselves unto wickedness. Because of their wealth and wickedness, there were notoriously territorial and did not let people into their city lest they try to tap into the source of their wealth. God saw all this and wanted to destroy them but he instead decided to send his angels to see for themselves. Keep in mind that ab initio, God wanted to destroy them- which was why he told Abraham later in the Bible that if he had seen even just ten righteous men in all the city of Sodom, that he would have spared the city.  Back to the story. So the angels were welcomed to Lots house but as soon as the men of the city heard that they had visitors in the city, they demanded that they be brought out to them. It was there in-hospitality and wickedness that made them demand that the angels be brought out to them so that they could 'know' them. This means to forcibly violation them. S we have a mob of maybe hundreds of men who men who want to gang violation three angels. Why? It wasn't because of homosexuality as we know it today - a loving relationship between two men.  It was because of their inhospitality and their greed -to protect their city's wealth, that they would not let strangers into their city. It was because of this that they wanted to humiliate the strangers by forcibly gang despoiling them- to teach them a lesson so that they dare not come back. Afterall, what is more humiliating than gang-despoiling a man. It was sure to serve as a deterrent to future visitors who may want to come there for their wealth.  Lot pleaded with them and even offered up his own daughters but they refused. They wanted the men(angels) in Lot's house. Now tell me, do you think that the gang of men were so sex-crazed that they just all wanted to 'make love' to these three men out of all the men and women in that city at the same time? Definitely not. They wanted to violation them. That was their sin. That was the sin of Sodom in that instance- violation, Humiliation, Inhospitality. Added to this, is their wickedness and other sins that made God send down his angels to come and survey things for themselves first hand. These were all the sins of Sodom and that is why the city was destroyed. Not because of Homosexuality. or do you think that if instead of the gang of men requesting for the male angels, but requesting for females instead that the city would be spared? No. The city would still have been destroyed even if it was women that wanted to violation. So please, lets open our minds to the real truth why Sodom was destroyed and not equate it with homosexuality- which is simply two people who are attracted to each other, fall in love and just want happily ever after like every heterosexual wants.

I know that some of you have looked at the story of Sodom in this way before because you haven't taken the time to do your own studies and research. Or because you have always been told by your pastor and everyone around you that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed for homosexuality. Well think again! People have always distorted their interpretation of the bible for their own selfish means. Afterall, the bible was used over the years to subjugate women and treat them like second class citizens. And yes they are biblical passages that support this treatment, but does that make it right? Is a woman any less than a man because of an accident of birth? And to believe that up till the 1920's that women did not have the right to vote in the US or in many other countries and couldn't own property. Even in Nigeria today, women cannot own property in some places if their husbands die. And believe me, the bible was used over the years to support this kind of treatment. It is no different for homosexuals. The Bible has been used by people to condemn them- people who dont understand their unique struggles. the Bible has always been used to condemn the minority and the weaker groups.

It was this same Bible that was used to justify slavery by the White man over more than 200 years. And yes there are passages which clearly support slavery. This continued until the 1960's in the US when the Black man got the right to vote. This continued until the 1990's in South Africa when Apartheid was abolished. The bible was used to support the inferiority of the Black race and that was why this all happened. The bible was also used to prevent Interracial marriages between blacks and whites in the US up till the 1970s because an inferior and a superior race are not supposed to mix. Dear Nairalander, so much iniquity has been committed against minority and oppressed groups in the name of the bible, yet today, we ignore those parts of the bible because event though they might applied in the old times, they dont apply in our time.

It is amazing how our Lord Jesus never said a word regarding homosexuality. All he preached all his life was love. Love your God and Love your neighbour. No condemnation. No judgements. Just do the right thing and be true to your conscience. And believe me, there is nothing more damning to the conscience of a homosexual as faking love and attraction to the opposite sex so that he can get married and escape societies expectations and all. It is damning to his soul because deep down, he knows that he is not only sinning against his conscience and God, he is also sinning against the innocent partner that has been brought into the marriage or relationship. The homosexual harbours his secret and it slowly eats him up. The quality of his relationship with his spouse can never be perfect because there is a secret there- the foundation of the relationship is built on lies. This makes it easier to tell more lies and keep more secrets in the marriage. In truth, closeted gay people (like most Nigerians) have not true friends. They are there own best friends and the keeper of the secrets. Afterall, how can you say you have a friend when you are not even able to talk with that friend about your true crush? Or share details about your true feelings? Friendships are formed by sharing and the closeted homosexual has learnt through life to shut himself off and just keep his struggles buried deep. The closet is a place of great sorrow- for the person . It is also a terrible thing because of the collateral damage that follows it.

My write-up has become too lengthy and if you are still reading up to this point, then you must be a strong 'pesin'. All I hope I have accomplished is to make you see things from a different lens - the lens of a christian who is questioning and seeking a deeper faith on this issue; the lens of a concerned person who may not be homosexual but can for a second put himself in those shoes. There will always be those 10% of people in every society that are gay -  this has been so since the creation of man and it will continue to be so. The same way that there is homosexuality in a certain percentage of animals too. It is as natural as heterosexuality. Its just part of God's variety- the same way left-handed people are. The question is what do as a society do with and for them? Do we acknowledge them and make it easier for them to lead honest and productive lives or are we going to discriminate and make them go further in the closet and deny their true selves?   - That is the question.

Thank you for reading and I hope you take out time to think things through for yourself and discover your own truth. Why? Because you dont know who amongst you is gay- It may be your closest brother; it may be that your female friend that is always kind to you; it may be your Father who even cheated on your mother once early in the marriage before you were born; it may be that 40-something year old handsome lawyer that you always see drive past in his Jeep and you wonder why he is still single; it may be your husband who is usually sexually and emotionally aloof and likes to spend time with his best buddy instead. Most importantly - it could be your child. He may still be be a baby now but he already has a sexuality and in 10 to 15 years, he will become aware of it. It could be anybody- 'e no dey show for face'. Gay people come in all shapes and sizes, fro the the most macho to the effeminate; from the most educated and responsible to the lowlife - there are no stereotypes. So please drop all your misconceptions and think of these people as human beings- deserving of your Christian love, understanding and acceptance; just the way they are.

Ajigglin is right. This is probably too advanced for most people on NL to comprehend. It's not like people can't understand it, they just don't want to. I'm not gay, but I can completely identify with what the above writer said concerning left-handedness , so i guess I understand what he's saying better. My mother told me that when my dad discovered that I was left handed, he tried all methods available to make me use my right hand. Beating, shouting, etc.  I guess I'm just one of the extremely stubborn ones, cos eventually he gave up and I still have no idea how to use my right hand. I use my left in all things. I'm still not sure about whether people can be born gay though. I think this is going to be one of life's eternal mysteries but I don't see any reason to ostracize anyone, or lynch them just because they are gay.