The first question he asked was, “Have you guys done it before?” The answer came to my head immediately, “Of course, we’ve done it. We’ve done it several times. What else would we be doing all these five years that we’ve been dating?” When my wife-to-be looked at me for an answer, “I felt we should lie about it but before I could say, “No we’ve never done it before,” my-wife-to-be answered, “Yes we’ve done it before but that was a long time ago. We stopped when we realized it didn’t please God.”

He asked again, “So how many times did you do it before you finally realized that?” I took the answer from Abena’s mouth; “We did it just once and later decided to keep it until we marry.”

It was our first day at counseling and we never thought such questions would be asked. He caught us unaware so we had to lie our way through just to get the things done and go our way. Five years of dating brought us before Abena’s pastor. We were ready to say “I do” to each other after being through everything life would throw away.

We got pregnant in the first year of our relationship. It took us by surprise. I asked, “Are you safe?” She murmured the answer. I asked again, this time looking for a clearer answer, “Are you sure you are safe?” She forced the answer out; “Yes I am.” I let everything go freely knowing we were safe only to be told a month later that, “It looks like I wasn’t. I  tested. I’m pregnant.”

We were young and didn’t have anything that belong to us. I was living with my parents. She was living with her parents too. I had a job but my salary could only change the light bulb. She wasn’t working so there was no way we could have it. We decided to let go. It was painful to us but the future of the child was very much important to us.

After that episode, we stayed off shuperu for close to a year. She didn’t let me and I understood her but love would make you change your mind on certain things so along the way, we came back to doing it again, but with care and safety so we don’t get pregnant again.

Along the line, she told me, “We need to stop doing that until we marry. Our new pastor has started praying for people in a relationship waiting to marry. I’ve submitted to it and we’ve been asked to stay off shuperu until marriage.”

We stayed off but that only lasted for a while before we got back to our old ways of doing things. We said it but didn’t put any measures to help us not do it so once we found ourselves alone, we found ourselves digging up the passion to be naughty. We can’t blame ourselves. We loved each other that much and that much pushed us into doing things we promised not to do again.

Years later, we are in a very good place to make the relationship official. We set our wedding date and started counselling just as the church requires only to be asked these questions. We lied because we needed to. We knew we’d made mistakes and we were not proud of those mistakes, hence the lies.

The pastor went quiet for a while and asked again, “Are you sure you’ve done it only once? And you’re sure you didn’t come with any pregnancy as we sit here?” We chorused our answer, “No we are not pregnant.”

The rest of the questions followed. We were truthful in our answers going forward. He was building a foundation for the counseling and we got it. Later we got up and prayed.

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After the prayer, he told us, “If you’ve set your date you need to change it. You’ve gone against God’s rules concerning dating and marriage and you’ll need to pacify him before he will show his face in your marriage. You’ll go through thirty days of dry fasting before the counselling can begin. Fifteen days 6am to 6 pm and fifteen days 6am to 12 pm. We are meeting here every Friday and Saturday night to pray until the fasting is over.”

That’s the part I don’t understand. Everyone gets married and I don’t think it’s only saints who get married. We are sinners, we know and we confessed it. Isn’t that enough? I was ready to protest but my wife pulled my hands and asked me to stop.

When we left, I told her I wasn’t going to do any fasting and prayer. I pray every day and God listens. Apart from that, the thirty-day thing will change everything about our wedding. We have planned every detail of it and procured services and all that. We knew we had only a month before our wedding but the way this pastor is handling the whole thing, I can see problems.

He would call randomly and ask me, “How’s the fasting going?” He would call me early at dawn to ask, “Where’s your wife?” Knowing very well we don’t live together. He would then preach for fifteen minutes on the phone and pray for another fifteen minutes and give me a prayer topic for the day.

The whole thing is stressful. Just once and we are being stressed like this? What if we told him the whole truth?

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The way things are going, I know one day he would get to know that I’ve not been fasting and tell us to restart. I can’t fast, especially not for that long. So currently, I’m hanging in there and pretending I’m doing it. If he gets to know and decides anything drastic, we’ll go to court for our wedding and go on with our lives. God himself would understand.

—Manu

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