By Benjamin Zulu – Counseling Psychologist, Conference Speaker and Life Coach.
‘Hi, Benjamin, what does it mean when your boyfriend always asks you “nani alikununulia hii” (who bought you this?) every time he sees you with a new cloth, shoes or bag and he has never bought you anything?’
Stop letting subliminal disrespect slide unaddressed. He’s implying that you cannot buy anything for yourself and that you’re getting those things from other men. That’s the kind of man who will never be comfortable with you earning your own money and he will accuse you so much that you stop buying yourself things ‘just to keep the peace.’
If you were not in the so-called boyfriend-girlfriend relationship you wouldn’t need to ask this question. You’d have felt offended at the comments immediately. But now you’re in an emotional entanglement with him and that’s why you can’t read his behavior accurately. Emotions are foggy and they cloud reasoning.
Hear me, women, you DON’T need boyfriends. If your aim is to get married, the best approach is to learn about men on a friendship basis. That way you can see who he is without any confusion. This allows you to pick, examine and drop men at a rapid pace until you meet the one who fits your criteria. At that point, you just get engaged and get married. Avoid this confusing stage of boyfriend-girlfriend. It serves no purpose except getting you emotionally attached and obscuring your judgment.
Also, because of the passage of time, you’ll often end up stuck with that boyfriend and you end up marrying them when there are real issues between you.
When you’re merely looking for a boyfriend you don’t take the matter as seriously as when you’re looking for a husband. You’re in a rather casual frame of mind. You think it’s an experimental relationship, when in fact your feelings don’t know experiment versus seriousness. They’ll get attached to that man completely.
You didn’t think long-term and you most likely overlooked some things. As a result, you cheat yourself into a bad decision because of engaging in an exclusive relationship when you totally didn’t need it. Again, when the purpose is not clear damage is inevitable.
Most boyfriends will require as their right. But what does sex do to you? Compromise your principles, open you to a myriad of evils like unwanted pregnancy and pregnancy scare, pressure to abort, on and on. Remember when it comes to sex men can simply eat, rub their mouths, and walk away. But a woman can’t. Why? The ‘deposit’ is made into her.
And anything that’s to germinate from it will happen inside of her. It doesn’t mean always going scot-free, but from a practical standpoint, the woman bears the brunt of the consequences of premarital sex. Ask yourself why when a boy and a girl have sex for the first time the girl bleeds and the man doesn’t. You lose a seal as a woman. Don’t let this culture fool you. You have a specialness as a woman which you ought to proudly protect.
In sum, make yourself a rare thing by refusing to be laid just anyhow. This way the man who wins you will feel the urgency to marry you so that he can appropriate your specialness, as opposed to keeping you around as a girlfriend and losing respect for you along the way.
