Tag Archives: Self Esteem

My dear Jil, let me tell you a story. There was this guy who always seemed to over-reach. He never sought to date according to his station in life, he always reached above his station. He had an unestablished car repair business, was moderately educated, was not blessed with good looks or good anatomy though he imagined otherwise. He didn’t have much money either. He struggled with finance. But he was blind to all these. He somehow felt his calling in life was to date the most beautiful women in his local assembly, and not just beautiful women but rich, beautiful women. As one can imagine, it takes guts to date a rich beautiful woman. You need a sense of self, and also your own money. You hardly get respect living off a woman. If you don’t want to be known as a toy boy to a rich woman, you must have sufficient means relative to the status of the woman. That brings respect.

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My dear Jil, sometimes it’s good to talk to married women so you learn from their experiences. You have to be discerning of course. Be careful what you listen to. You have to exercise judgment about what is good for your ears and what’s not. We can learn from the bitter marriage experiences of others without imbibing a bitter spirit. A forerunner is a walking traffic sign, a harbinger of news about dangers ahead. So it’s good to talk to those who are married so you learn from their experiences. Save a gifted bachelorette, there’s hardly anything a bachelorette can teach you about marriage. She has no practical knowledge. There’s the theory of marriage, there’s the practical of marriage. Experience matters more. Continue reading →

My dear Jil, the problem is you keep dating the wrong guys, it’s not that you have a string of bad luck with guys. You keep dating guys that are neither right for you nor care about you, guys who just want to exploit you. Funny thing is you know from onset these guys aren’t right for you but you plunge on all the same, just because you feel you must have a man.
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Dear Jil, I do understand how you feel. Not being approached by any male can make one feel underappreciated. I think you need to change one or two things. Let’s try that and see the result. You see, I’ve always been intrigued by one particular statement of Solomon: “He that hath friends must show himself friendly.” It’s a very powerful and loaded statement. The depth is not that obvious. The statement posits two things. First, if you want friends you have to have a friendly disposition. That’s attitudinal. Second, if you want to have friends you must be proactive. Friendship is thus conditional.
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Dear Jil, surely you can see these plans are asinine. I mean, how does it make it sense?! You’re dating a guy who lives abroad and hardly comes to town – may be once a year. So you don’t see him much. You face the typical challenge of long distance relationship. However much you do Facetime it’s never like being together. But instead of talking marriage, this man is talking about making you a baby mama. Why would you want to be baby mama instead of wife? And according to him you’ll have to stay here for two years after you’ve had the baby. You can’t travel to stay with him immediately. This allegedly is to ensure you don’t do menial job when you travel to meet him in UK! I’m lost and confused over this logic. So you stay two years apart so you don’t do menial job in the UK. Don’t get it, what’s the link?
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My dear Jil, you’re going into a contractual relationship not a marriage. May God grant you wisdom to know the difference! When a guy insists you get pregnant or he won’t marry you, just know it’s a surrogacy contract. Of course he’s highly presumptuous about the forces of life with such proposition. What if you get pregnant and he marries you but thereafter lose the pregnancy? And what happens to the marriage? And what if you indeed deliver a baby but you lose the baby? What happens to the marriage? And what happens to you if you can’t have another child suppose you lose the one that produced the marriage? These things happen and have happened and will continue to happen. We don’t control life and there are forces beyond us.
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My dear Jil, rape is a very traumatic experience. It is so traumatic it can terrify a marriage years down the line. Women have been known to die from rape. It’s because it’s beyond physical. It’s a violation of the sacred. Rape is so vicious it can shred the fabric of a soul, alter the balance of life energy. It kills something inside. Rape is not just one more incident in society. At the retail level it is the scarring of someone’s life. Our society ought to take rape much more seriously than we do. There’s a cultural shrugging of shoulders about rape. It’s locker room talk in boys’ circle, as if it’s some weekend discussion about Chelsea and Arsenal. Some young men in fact revel in the fact of rape. Which is really sad. Witness how some boys boast about raping a girl. Our tolerance of such banter and disposition is the cultural equivalence of conditioning boys for rape. There are boys boasting about rape in secondary school, boasting they assaulted girls during school socials. And for some boys it’s a sorority ritual. Which makes you begin to ponder the fundamentals of our society. And now we have livestreaming of rape. If only the law allows castration. Then there are those sickos who rape kids – eight-, nine-year olds. Some even babies. Surely such people are deranged. A nine-year old can’t know how to interpret rape. She’ll malfunction.
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My dear Jil, but he’s not a lazy fellow. In fact he’s a very industrious young man. Just got laid off. And that happens. I mean the economy tanked, banks downsized and he got laid off. Could have happened to you. Assuming it did, what would you have expected of him? Start berating you? This is the time to show you love your husband. He’s at his lowest ebb. He just lost his job. You should feel for him. There he was one day everything going right in his life, just got married to the love of his life…then suddenly this. Call it downsizing, rightsizing or whatever sizing is going on…as if it’s some shoe! Fact remains that at the individual level, rightsizing is not shoe fitting. It’s someone’s regular income gone! Continue reading →

My dear Jil, thank you for your last mail. It gave me more insight about your person. I know the scars from the past are still there and the past seems to have left an indelible memory. The scars have made you tentative, afraid, sad at times, unsure. They put a shroud of mourning on the beauty of your spirit. But you have a lovely spirit, such simplicity and grace. But who’d ever have known! You’ve cried so much in the past few days and no one will believe you’re even emotional. Continue reading →

My dear Jil, it’s important you have self-esteem. Without it you’ll auction yourself to the undeserving, or less deserving.  Continue reading →