WHEN I WAS a little girl, my grandmother used to tell me that if I was honest, decent, hard-working and God-fearing, I would meet a good man, get married, and have a great life.
And I believed her.
I truly believed that given the goodness within me and my great belief in God, whatever I wanted in life within reason and within my knowledge and skills, that I would succeed in getting.
Yet, here I am 39 years on and single. I’ve had three serious relationships, each ending in disappointment.
Though I have lived up to gran’s wishes, each man that has come into my life has used me for his pleasure, then left.
I blame myself for this though. In each case I set my standards and tried to live a godly life, but in the end, I gave in and had sex; and from then the relationship went downhill before ending badly.
I guess I did it out of desperation to keep the men. But the fact is I sinned and lost.
That’s why these days when I look into the mirror and see the lines in my face and the sag in my neck – my indication of ageing – I can’t help but wonder, what if I had lived my life differently?
I keep asking myself this because I was a “good person” yet I am alone with no prospects of ever getting married. At the same time I know women who used to play men off against each other and horn them left, right and centre and they ended up with a husband.
It’s just not fair!
The next thing that has been unfair and wrong has been the deceitful men I have met – every single one of them at church.
At first they seemed all devout and decent, but they turned out to be just like every other charmer or flatterer women meet at fetes, on the bus, in the workplace, and so on.
My experience has shown me that instead of boldly telling you they are only interested in sex, more and more men are cloaking themselves in Christian garb and going into the church to get a ‘good girl’. When they meet her, they hold onto her while weighing their other romantic options on the outside.
If their outside woman is better than their Christian friend, for whatever reason, they dump her and leave the church too.
Because of this, I have come up with six rules that I would encourage all Christian-minded women to adopt in courting men, especially those you meet at church.
I developed these rules based on the failure of my relationships, so they can point the way for you:
1) Try to find out as much as possible about the man in church who chats you up and you are drawn to. Don’t just take his word on what he says about himself;
2) When a man has declared his intentions and you are interested in him, let your pastor know about the relationship.
By doing that he will not be able to flirt with others when you’re not around and get away with it.
Also, because the church, through the pastor, knows that you are a couple, the pressure will be on for him to pop the question for the two of you to get married.
3) Get to know his parent(s), siblings and friends. Where a man comes from may not determine what he turns out to be, but the kind of friends he keeps reflects his true character.
4) If he keeps secrets from you, like hides his cellphone contacts or talks softly to someone on that instrument, beware.
5) Get to find out his position on pornography.
A lot of men like looking at this junk and try to imitate what they see on the screen with you.
If such things are not what you are prepared to do, break off the relationship immediately.
6) Even if you care deeply for this man and don’t want to lose him, do not have sex with him at all. From the time you have intercourse and he realises that he can get his way with you without marriage, he will use you.
Follow these rules and hopefully you will not end up a loser like me.
