You are knocking 40 and still single.The men didn’t come while you were 25, so you went and did a second degree. You got a better job, moved into a bigger appointment. At 30, with no stable relationship, you picked a second Master’s and moved up your career ladder. The men who would not marry you when you were younger because they hadn’t made it are still refusing to marry you now because you have made too much money. So you settle for one you think is just okay. Of course, you knew he couldn’t take care of you except in bed, you trudge on, after all you earn enough for both of you. And then he dumps you. After two years of leading you on too! What is a girl supposed to do?
Let’s look at it this way. Girl meets guy, finds out she’s got one heavy surname and drives a 2014 Toyota Avensis but she’s 35 and a successful property lawyer, but he’s not put off. They start a relationship. Two, three and even four years on and he is yet to make up his devious mind whether the girl is good enough wife material. Yet he drives her car, accepts gifts from her, sleeps with her and enjoys being associated with a High Chief’s daughter. He flaunts her like a keenly contested and well-deserved trophy.
Are you getting my drift? It’s not that guys run away from rich girls as such. It’s just that the guys, some of then backslide when it comes to making a lifetime commitment to their rich girl friends. I know you guys will remind me that if you marry rich girls I’ll still be the first to call you names. But that’s not so. You know I won’t point an accusing finger where none should be pointed.
Any relationship or marriage that is based on genuine love, trust and care is fine by me. Any poor guy can honourably marry a rich girl if he doesn’t see her as purely a meal ticket. There’s nothing bad in seeing the intelligent, loving, beautiful and hard-working side of a rich girl and going out with her. But it’s sad, quite a sorry state of affairs when only money, money and more money is all a man sees in the woman he wants to marry. Just what she can offer him in cash. That kind of arrangement doesn’t always last. Neither party comes out of it laughing. The truth will eventually come out and the man will be seen for what he is. A fortune hunter.
So why blame the poor guy who refuses to marry a rich-girl? Why call him strange when he refuses to be bought over by the girl’s wealth? Because a poor guy who befriends and has an affair spanning two years with a rich girl only to dump her because he can’t cope with her father’s money is as bad as a fortune-hunting husband. It’s even more horrible where and when the poor rich girl is totally gone on the poor boy and he knows it.
It’s really quite callous to wait two years to tell one’s girl friend that you’ve got nothing going for you two. That the end of the road is doom after two romantic years is not a decision you were not aware of earlier. It’s just that such men are artistic fortune hunters and insensitive. Really, if only they’ll put themselves in the girl’s position and see how it pains to be strung along a relationship, to be told that all’s well when the man has no plans for one.
I mean, it’s crude to use a girl to boost one’s ego. It’s weak when a guy thinks that being seen in the company of girls with fat bank accounts and or big surnames is what it takes to be big. He introduces her to all his friends. Never forgetting her surname if that’s what’s tripping him or where she works or what she does for a living if that’s what gives him the kicks.
“Ol boy, meet my sweetheart, Ronke Millionaire. Or “This is the lady that makes living in Nigeria worth it. She’s a senior manager at Opportune Telecoms”.
He goes on and on praising her, telling anybody within hearing distance how special the girl is to him and how he intends not to let her out of his sight. Unless the girl has a third eye, how is she to know that she is just a rhythm of the moment, a polish for a psychologically incompetent lover’s ego? She’s his morale booster. He spends her money too, uses her connections to get a better job, a few contracts here and there and begins to drop big names on first name level. He drives her car, even takes it to his village and cruises around town with other girls.
Meanwhile he has no intention of marrying the girl who has been supplying him all these good things of life. She is only good as a girl friend, never as a wife. How I detest men who descend this low to accomplish their goals!
A friend recently told me of her experience in the hands of one of such men. She’s still very bitter. According to her, she’d met this young handsome man at one of their AGMs about two years ago. “He had come to help one of his colleagues to pick up the bank’s press release for their newspaper’s financial desk. He is also a journalist. We got talking and in no time at all, we found we had a lot of interests in common. An affair started. I thought my status as Manager in a bank would put him off but when it didn’t, I fell more in love with him. I bought him gifts. He did too but not as often as I did. After about nine months, he became so frequent in my apartment he had had more personal possessions there than in his own flat. I cooked his meals and even packed lunches for him before going to the office. He drove my car to his weekend assignments and everybody knew us together.
“He acted like a gentleman around the house and never seemed to pout like some men when I phoned his office that I had to work late or something. I heard, I must confess honestly, that he gallivants with girls in my car. I boldly confronted him but he denied the story and gave me his assurances. I refused to be discouraged. Until I confronted him with a rumor I’d heard about a pregnant lady living in his apartment, and he didn’t deny it. He bluntly told me his parents wouldn’t hear of him marrying a woman who lives in a duplex and drives a jeep (actually, it is a Toyota Venza) who earns more than he does; and that the other girl was brought from home by his mother.
When I asked why he didn’t tell me all along, he said he didn’t want to hurt me by leaving. I almost died. To have been taken for such a ride with my two eyes wide open? The bastard could have told me all this while but because of his free meal and transport…?
Can you blame the poor girl for feeling like that? You’d feel used too if you’d been so shabbily treated. Why won’t men do something nice and uncomplicated for once?
What exactly is a ripe successful but single girl supposed to do? If you resolve to remain single and have a child by whoever you choose, you are called loose. If you refuse to marry anyone who earns less than you, you are pompous. If you jazz one up, you are fetish. When you settle for the poor one hoping for a better future and then he dumps you, what then?
Long courtship is bad business
I don’t know how it works for men but long courtship is bad business for a woman, a right thinking woman. And this is not about lack of patience on a girl’s part. It’s simply and totally about common sense. Letting a man dangle you on his key strings is dumb and dangerous and a bloody waste of time, and time is what a woman doesn’t have and that goes beyond biological clock.
Sure a short courtship has its own draw-backs , it is the real reason why long courtship is bad. Before you come up with the aged argument of how a woman needs to study a man, show me a wife who can swear that she absolutely knew her man before she said ‘ I do’. Men are closed books and you can’t judge them by their macho covers. It takes time to know a man. Okay, and a woman too. So? Short courtship is not good for anybody. Neither is long courtship. The sane thing is to stay in the middle of the long and the short courtship.
Find a middle road. It’s either a relationship is serious or it is not. You are either heading for the altar or the rocks. If you are dating a man and in all of the 52 weeks that make a year, you don’t smell seriousness, you’ve been had. Cut your losses and take a walk. The earlier the better. Hanging on to nothing is foolhardy and you know what is most saddening; most women in relationships that are going nowhere are actually aware of the fact. They are just too afraid to cut loose; you know all that nonsense about ‘where do I start from’ bla bla bla. If you don’t end a bad affair while time is still on your side, you are liable to end up a lonely touchy old maid.
A long courtship going nowhere strips a woman of her dignity and self-esteem. Because she is hoping that tomorrow will persuade him to make an honest woman of her, she shoos off other eligible males. Because she thinks he’d propose at the next valentine dinner, she discourages the real Mr Right. She reads silly meanings into everything he says or does even when the bloke means nothing. For instance, she mistakes his presence at her mother’s 60th birthday for commitment of an acting son-in-law. Nonsense, it’s just another party for him.
So what if he attended with his friends? Did he not attend parties the previous weekend? What are you doing in a three-year relationship that is about eateries, Chinese restaurants and you acting like a wife every weekend? You do his laundry, warm his bed and cook his meals every week, yet he won’t buy a ring. Naah, you are either a fool or a sucker for pain. He makes love to you without protection but starts fretting if you are three days late. You have overheard him tell his friends that he’s not in a hurry to settle down. What else do you need to convince you that marriage is not on the cards? Now, his bad manners shouldn’t make you lose faith in yourself.
That he won’t propose does not mean you are not a wife material. He’s just not the groom meant for you. You can’t remain his plaything forever while he enjoys the best of both worlds – you play wifey at weekends, he plays the field all week. What insult! Chalk his attitude up as a vote of no-confidence in his upbringing. A man who leads a young woman on, knowing he would not marry her was badly brought up by his mother and his father taught him nothing. Above all, he’s sowing evil seeds for his daughters to reap later. Leave him to his reprobate heart and move on.
Credits: Funke Egbemode, The Sun