Dear Pastor,

I am 19 years old and in love with a 27-year-old man. We have been living together for a year and a half. I am having a problem with him because he asked me one night if I had any secrets, and he promised that he would not hold anything against me if I told him my secrets. I told him that he should go first and tell me his secrets. He said that when he first met me he didn’t love me. He loved my sister but he did not like the false hair my sister likes to wear and when he saw me I had natural hair. And the first time he met my sister she asked him to give her money to do her hair and he gave her $3,000, but she wanted 5,000.

I am a natural girl. I felt good when he told me that he loves me. We laughed about it but then he asked me to tell him my secret and pastor, I don’t know what got in me. I told him that I still love my ex-boyfriend and I had lied to him one Saturday when I told him I was going to class. It was my exboyfriend I was going to see because he called me and told me he got his partner draw, and he wanted to give me a part of it.

We were hugging when we were talking and confessing to each other, then he let me go and told me that he thought he could trust me but he would never trust me again. And if I went to see my ex-boyfriend I probably had sex with him. From that day until now, the love that we had for each other is not as strong as before. He said his father always say to him that women are not to be trusted, so now he understands what his father meant. How could I get my boyfriend to believe that I was telling him the truth and I did not have sex with my ex-boyfriend?

E.T.

Dear E.T.,

You are not going to be able to convince this man, so stop trying. You may even have to tell him that you made a mistake by agreeing to tell him your secret. If the truth is to be told, there are many people who are still in love with their ex-boyfriends and girlfriends and ex-wives and ex-husbands. And if these persons still communicate, when things are not going well in their present relationships, the persons they call are their former lovers. They do so for advice and even for comforting words.

You made a mistake by telling him that you went to see the guy for partner money. You know that both of you didn’t have sexual intercourse, but your boyfriend sees that as being disrespectful to him. Hang on in there with him and hope that he will learn to trust you. And always remember that there are certain things that you are not to say about your ex-boyfriend to your present boyfriend.

Pastor