Looking for a good woman

Dear Pastor

I hope you can help me. I am a 41-year-old man, and I was living with a woman who was not truthful with me.

When I met her, she told me she had only one child. After we had been together for six months, I found out that she had another child who was living with his paternal grandmother. I asked her why she had lied to me. She said a woman does not have to tell a man the truth when she first meets him. I asked her how a man could trust her if she lied, but she had no answer.

I found out about the other child in a very embarrassing way. A man took my taxi one day and told me that I should speak to the woman I was living with and tell her to take her child away from his grandparents because they were not treating him well.

I told him he was mistaken, as her child was living with us. He laughed and asked if I really did not know that the woman had another child. I was so embarrassed that I said nothing more.

Later, she asked me if I would allow the child to come and live with us. I told her that I would not punish the child, and if the child was not being treated well, she should go for him.

She brought the child to live with us, and we set up a small shop in front of our house, which she managed. The shop was doing well, but she allowed the children to take items freely. I told her that this behaviour would eventually put us into bankruptcy, but she was not pleased. She also did not like it when I corrected the children if they did anything wrong.

One day I told her that if I could not correct the children without her getting angry, then perhaps we should go our separate ways.

She left and stayed away for more than a week, leaving the children behind. My sister had to step in and take care of them. She did not tell me where she was going, but I suspected she was staying with another man. I could not reach her on her phone. After a week, she returned, took the children, and also took the little money we had saved.

I later found out where she was living, but I refused to go after her. She is both a liar and a thief.

I have learned my lesson. I do not want another woman who already has a child. I am not looking for a virgin, but I am looking for a woman who is truthful and honest.

Can you recommend such a woman to me?

W.

Dear W.,

What you are trying to do is put me under stress. I am not willing to recommend any woman to a man, or vice versa. You are a grown man, and you should know how to determine whether a woman is being truthful.

However, I must confess that many women have fooled men by lying about the number of children they have. I have mentioned this in my column before. It is a downright shame when women do not speak the truth about how many children they have, just as it is wrong when men do not tell women how many children they have fathered.

Perhaps I have shared this before, but I will repeat it. A couple once came to my office to give notice of their intention to marry. When I asked the gentleman how many children he had and he answered, the bride-to-be shouted, "What?" She was shocked, as she did not know he had fathered so many children.

That was the end of the marriage plans. She asked him, "You have so many children--how could you not tell me?" His response was, "You never asked." That sealed it. The woman had travelled from America to Jamaica to marry him, but she was not prepared to marry a man with so many children, so she returned to America.

It is not a curse for a woman to have more than one child, so why the woman you became intimate with did not speak the truth is troubling. I wish you well, my brother. May God help you to find your match.

All the very best.

Pastor