Confessions: In love with a man who ghosted his fiancée a month to their wedding

I feel like the worst person in the world. I am in love with a man who was supposed to marry my cousin in December last year. He left her for me and we have actually been living together for the last 10 months. When he cancelled the wedding, he didn’t give her any reasons which make me feel horrible about myself. He now wants to make things official and we will soon be going to my parents’ for their blessing. We have kept this under wraps but we feel it’s time we let our parents know about us. I know this is something my parents wouldn’t support which scares me every moment I imagine facing them about it. What do I do?

{Anita}

Boke says:

Dear Anita,

You are at that point that people who hurt others and take advantage of situation never imagine that will ever come. This guy broke up with your cousin a month to the wedding without an explanation and you were okay with that? Are you that naive?

Why did he have to wait that long and go that far before he could make up his mind about you and your cousin? I could be wrong, but there is a high possibility that the two of you could have started this relationship behind your cousin's back and you enabled this to happen. 

You also must have been so envious of your cousin all this while and have just been waiting for the opportune time to strike. Otherwise people do not do this to family. And girl, you are going to hurt more people than you have envisaged.

Have you stopped to imagine the level of conflict you are bringing to the larger family? Which of your relations will take part in the negotiations? Probably the same people who were in your cousin's.

If my assertion is correct, you setting up yourself for a rough take off. This also highlights a major character flaw for both of you that soon or later will catch up with you in this relationship.

Your real concern is not how to go about the process but how people are going to react when they discover. I wish I could encourage you to go ahead. But if you feel you are strong enough to handle the devastation this is likely to cause then you can go ahead. Ideally, looking at the circumstances, this relationship should not exist in the first place.

[Hilda Boke Mahare has a background in Counselling Psychology and loves to share her knowledge in matters of life and relationships.]

What the readers say:

Anita you ae only infatuated with each other and not in love at all. Also, 10 months is a very short time to even start discussing marriage. Take time and think about this whole thing. He may find another woman and leave you just like he did to your cousin. {Susam Wanja}

Why is he keeping your relationship with him a secret? To avoid many negative and irreversible things you must get out of this relationship now. Why would you take a man who left a woman with no explanations seriously?  This will always work against you. {Milka Orin}

Even if you were to run away, the fact remains you have won over the man from your cousin. You may want to know why he changed his mind when all had been done and set for the wedding. Don't let nobody blame you for falling in love with him. He may have met her before you but you are the one he has chosen. Block all negative people and work on building a lasting relationship. {Tasma Saka}

If the man left her and settled with you, you will need to know two things; one, how your cousin would feel about this and two, why he left her for you. Think about this for a moment, how would you feel if your cousin did this to you? Please talk to your cousin first before going to your parents and get their thoughts and feelings about this otherwise she might show up at your wedding and ruin everything for you. {Onyango Outha}

Simon says:

Anita, the going has so far been smooth only because you have kept everything under the water. The thing about dirty little secrets such as these is that they have peculiar tendencies to emerge prematurely and when (not if, but when) this gets out things will not be as easy as you want to imagine.

You seem to have this belief that that your family will be shocked for a few moments then smoothly get a hold of themselves and follow through to discussing dowry and marriage arrangements for the two of you, right? Wrong! First, this will be an embarrassment for everyone. You will be labelled a backstabber, a cheap (very bad word) and mot female members of your extended family will want nothing to do with you. You see women have an untold phobia about husband/boyfriend snatchers. The married ones with stay away from you lest you steal their husbands but this is just my thinking.

More to this, nobody will even remotely believe that this was all his idea. Society tends to place the blame the blame on the other woman. To them, you are the spin doctor to every detail of this and you snatched an innocent, caring and a loving man. However innocent you are, there are people who might never believe your story but this shouldn't bother you.

In our African set-up, dowry is a very sensitive issue - even more sensitive than a wedding. Essentially, a woman becomes a wife the moment dowry is paid and accepted. This therefore implies that she was and still is his wife. In light of the new circumstances, your uncle (or her father), may opt to return the dowry that was paid and carry out some rituals to end the former union. This is often embarrassing and to a large extent humiliating which will put both of you in murky waters.

I don't mean to spell doom for you but there are no other possible outcomes from this situation. One of the most valuable things we have in life is the goodwill of family members. You can still get another man and start on a clean slate but you will never have a chance to regain the family's goodwill if it is lost. Don't rush into marriage, take your time and let nature take its course.

[Simon Anyona is a relationships counsellor]