We started our premarital counselling not too long ago, but I’ve decided not to go again. My wife is worried that without the counselling, her church wouldn’t agree to officiate the wedding, but that’s the least of my problems. If she agreed with me, we would just have had a court wedding and gone home as husband and wife, but she wants to wear a white gown and say “I do” in front of friends and family. That is why her pastor is making my life uncomfortable, all in the name of counselling.

The first day at counselling, the pastor looked at me and asked if I smoked. I shook my head. He said, “Can’t you talk? Why are you using your head?” He spoke as if he were my father shouting orders at me. I said I didn’t smoke. He asked again, “You’ve never ever smoked before?” I said no.

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“Then why are your lips this black? It’s like you’ve been doing it for a very long time.”

I didn’t talk. He turned to my fiancée and asked if she knew me very well and if she was sure I didn’t smoke. Because she said she knew me very well, he started asking about our history. How long we’d dated, how long it took us to do the knocking, and if we’d already had sex. I didn’t talk. Alice said we hadn’t been intimate.

He turned to me and asked, “Is it true that for the three years you’ve been dating, you haven’t been intimate?” At this point, I was getting angry, but I calmed myself. I shook my head to tell him we hadn’t been intimate. He spoke at the top of his voice, “When I’m talking to you, use your mouth. Why are you using your head to talk to me?”

I told him we hadn’t been intimate. “Are you sure? You’re in front of God, and you want to lie?” My girlfriend started talking about how we resolved not to do it until marriage and how I’d been supportive of her decision. Even at a point when she got weak, I stood strong so we wouldn’t do it.

He said, “Eiii, you? Or you’re impotent?” He turned to Alice and asked, “Have you checked if indeed he’s capable of doing it? Don’t marry anything and later come and tell me you’re facing challenges in your marriage ooo.”

Alice laughed. I frowned. I felt he was disrespecting me, or maybe he was disappointed Alice didn’t marry from the church, and his next question proved just that. He asked what church we would be attending, and Alice said, “We had agreed to attend his church because we don’t have a branch of this church where we would be living.”

He used over five minutes to talk about how disappointed he was in Alice for saying that and the fact that Alice had missed an opportunity to start a branch where we would be going and spread the growth of the church. I had already decided that would be my last time in front of that pastor, so I kept quiet throughout the session with an indifferent face.

When we were done and he was praying, he made sure every word he said to God was against me. Like, “God, I know what we said here today didn’t please someone’s heart, judging from his face, but you know his heart. If his intentions are pure, bless their union, blah blah…”

When we stepped out, I breathed loudly. I told Alice, “I’m not doing this again. What kind of disrespect is that? No, I’m not coming again.”

She sought to calm me down. She called it one of the hurdles we needed to cross to be able to get to our destination, so I shouldn’t give up. “It’s only twice a week for the next two months. We can do it, dear.”

On the second day, he asked me, “Have you ever asked any of your girlfriends to abort before?” I was stunned. Even Alice opened her eyes wide and then winked at me not to be angry. “No,” I said.

“Are you sure? You mean all the women you’ve dated, none of them got pregnant for you?”

“No.”

Alice tried to clarify something, and he shut her down. “I’m not talking to you, so why are you trying to interfere? This is what you do, and you carry anything home as partners. You’re blinded by love. It’s my duty to open your eyes, so keep quiet.”

The only reason I stayed to be disrespected this way was because I love my Alice so much and respected the kind of human she was. Leaving would have given the wrong impression, so I stayed as this pastor said everything just to get me off.

When we stepped out, Alice tried to theorise what was going on. “I know him very well. He’s not like that. Maybe he’s trying to see if you are quick-tempered. Don’t let him get you.”

The next day, he asked, “Have you ever hit any of the women you dated? Maybe you got drunk and it happened, and when it happened, what did you do afterwards?”

All my life, I’ve dated three women. Alice is the third. The first one, I was very young and didn’t understand the ways of love. We grew apart as the days went by. The second one, we dated for six years because we were in school. She met a white man on a trip one day and fell in love. She didn’t tell me until I found out. So we broke up. I met Alice a few months later, and we took it from there.

Me hit a woman? Get drunk and hit a woman? I don’t know what he didn’t believe about me or what he saw in me. Everything he said about me was in relation to one form of drug abuse or the other. Meanwhile, I’ve never tasted alcohol all my life or even come close to any substance.

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That session was very turgid, and everyone around could feel it. He closed the session early, maybe because of the nature of the tension building in the room. When I stepped out, I told Alice, “If you force me to be here again, whatever happens will be your fault. I love you, but I don’t love what’s happening in there. We didn’t come all this way to be tested by this fool. I’ve said it. He’s a fool.”

I haven’t gone to another session since that day. I’ve missed three sessions in total. I’ve made my position clear to Alice that I won’t sit one more minute before that pastor. She keeps telling the pastor I have travelled and we will continue when I return. I told her, “Tell him the truth. I’m not doing it again.”

She’s been pleading with me. She wants to get it done with so we can marry the way she wants. When push comes to shove, I will do a court wedding. I know she doesn’t like that, but that man who calls himself a pastor but lacks emotional intelligence can’t be the one to counsel me. Everything shows he needs counselling himself.

Or I’m the one not being reasonable here?

—Aaron

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