I received the darkest and most troubling message over the course of the night.

A man who suspects his girlfriend of cheating on him wrote to me detailing how he planned to ruin her life and then kill her.

He didn’t ask for counsel or prayer

It was not a hoax or prank message

He included her full name, address, and screenshots of WhatsApp messages and text exchanges between his girlfriend and the person he suspects her of cheating on him with, and also two videos of his personal investigations into the cheating saga.

He said his girlfriend is a nurse and that he was responsible for her training for the past nine years. He said the person she is cheating on him with is a doctor with whom his girlfriend had been planning to relocate out of America to Canada.

He said a lot, and I am convinced he is hurt beyond what one could simply ignore or tell him to get over it.

Dealing with the intense pain of betrayal, especially by a lover or a spouse, is not a walk in the park. Our pain threshold differs, and what one could walk away from might kill another with heartache.

Pain is also very personal. The more we feel we have been made a fool of and our vulnerability taken advantage of, the more intense the pain will be.

Imagine the young man saying that his girlfriend told him several times to drive her to an address where she was supposed to be doing home caregiving for an elderly woman.

He would drive her there and sit in the car for three to four hours until she was done, and then drive her back home because the place is located in a very remote area of the city.

He later found out that she goes there to sleep with one of her lovers, whom she connected with on OnlyFans (she never told him she had an account or did anything like that), and in the chat he read, she referred to him as “My Uber Man”

He said it was the most humiliating experience for him.

Pain does funny things to our reasoning. It blurs the lines of reality and tunnels our vision in one direction, at the exclusion of all our options.

It makes us feel that unless we get even or “revenge”, we cannot have closure.

This is a lie.

There is no man or woman in this world who love cannot make a fool of.

It is the prerogative of love to turn good friends to sworn enemies, the strong to a weakling, the rich to a bumbling fool, and the powerful into a blabber.

Was it not love that made Paris steal Helen away from Troy, leading to a colossal war? Was it not love that turned Solomon into a child in the hand of Makeda, the Queen of Ethiopia

Love is both a pain and a joy in all its expressions. A child you are taking delight in as he or she takes his or her first steps is the same child you are very much afraid might get hurt in the process of walking.

We learn to take what comes to us in the name of love with gratitude.

The lady cheating on this man would have her own story to tell.

She might not know any better, or she might have been hurt by someone else and unable to deal with the hurt the right way, or she might have decided to hurt another person in return.

Unless one talks to her, one cannot really tell what she was struggling with and why she has made the choices that put a target on her back

I spoke with the man extensively until he calmed down

I reached out to his girlfriend, and we talked for some time

She agreed to refund him the full cost of her tuition and the credit card debt he dug himself into, while doing everything to care for her

She said he was never her type, she told him so right from the beginning, but he was like a lost puppy who thought it had found its owner

He stayed with her, and when he offered to sponsor her to the USA so that she could study nursing and make money, she took the offer

She said he had proposed to her several times, but she turned him down because deep down she knew she could never marry him

She admitted that while she was with him, she was at the same time effectively searching for someone worthy of her love, someone she would love enough to settle down with

She said that after she found the person, she tried to leave the relationship, but her boyfriend started blackmailing her with threats that he would kill her and kill himself

She said he was too obsessed with her, and his love for her was almost cultic and fetishistic. She said she had always felt like he was mentally unstable and dealing with some deep trauma, with the way he craved affection, attention, and placed himself in places where it was obvious that he was not wanted

She said she would be happy to repay him, provided he would leave her alone and never contact her again.

I was happy the issue was resolved.

Officially, the two of them are no longer together.

He said he would have preferred to have her than anything in this world.

I told him it is not a good thing for any man or woman to desire or love someone who does not love him or her back

Unrequited love burns like fire and can only be cured by true love.

PS: Learn to love yourself enough not to allow your feelings for another person to dehumanize you

If the love is burning with a passion that crosses the line of measure into obsession, it is unhealthy for you

There is no sense in loving someone until you lose your senses

If truth be told, the person you love that desperately will not love you back, because who wants to love a senseless person

Everything must be done in moderation, most especially love

-GSW-