Dear SJ
I messed up big time SJ. I’m a 22-year-old guy in college and last week. I went to a party with my girl and our friends where I got seriously wasted. Later in the night as my crew and I were taking her home, we fought along the way in town. I can’t really remember what happened but she says I was all over her face, raising my voice and kinda’ like screaming to a point where she felt like I wanted to hit her. I’m at a loss as to what to do because she is so mad at me and won’t even talk to me.
– Wasted
Dear ‘Wasted’
To be a member of ‘Generation i’! This young dude sent me a voice note making a grown ass man like me type his question! I think this may be a first for agony columnists to be sent voice note questions. As the ‘Generation i’ say “what a time to be alive!”
Your girlfriend has every right to be mad at you.
You broke Rule #3 of my 4 Unacceptable Things in a Relationship which is Drinking and being disorderly. It could have been in private and in your case, it was in public. Either way, a drunken skunk is a drunken skunk. Clinically, alcohol is a depressant. Alcohol is a depressant people use – as in self-medicate – as an anti-depressant. Alcohol was actually prohibited 100-years ago in the US for an over a decade.
Drinking is not the problem. The problem is the disorder and the belligerence that comes with drunken people particularly men. You are the belligerent here. That is exactly why many women don’t want their men drinking. In your drunken state, you verbally abused your girlfriend to a point where she felt unsafe. Get it? You verbally abused your girlfriend. She felt like you wanted to hit her. That means you were almost physically abusive – as in violent. Unacceptable!
All human beings born with a penis need and have to see a therapist.
I don’t care whether you are black or white, filthy rich or poor, all men need to see a therapist. Human beings born with a penis then go on to abuse alcohol in place of therapy. Something else is going on with you and it shows up when you are drunk. As all cultures know, alcohol is the truth drug. You are probably too young to figure out what is going on with you and even if you were older, you wouldn’t even figure it out on your own without therapy.
Apologise, profusely. Say exactly why you are sorry. Will it happen again? And what had happened anyway when you guys were going home? You didn’t say. Gavin De Becker, author of the brilliant The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence (1997/Dell Publishing) says “women at the core are afraid of being killed by men.” A man doesn’t just wake up and engage in domestic violence. It starts when you guys are dating like that and nobody corrects you, young man. Don’t become a future domestic violence statistic.
Dear SJ
How does one get an ex back that you still love? You see a couple strolling and you think of your relationship. Do these traditional healers who claim to “bring back lost lovers in days” work?
– Baby comes back
Dear ‘Baby comes back’
You have to communicate with your ex and gauge the mood of things. Who was the wrong one leading to the break-up? Did the wrong one learn a lesson? Did the wrong one apologise? Was it you? Did you learn your lesson? If you did, then apologise, profusely. Don’t do what you did again. It’s not that hard.
Remember, love is work. Top relationships expert Iyanla Vanzant says that people don’t like to work. Work!
No, traditional healers who claim to bring back lost lovers in adverts don’t work. That’s just a gimmick and a remnant of “[y]our (dying, ancient and clumsy) culture.” Mind control is a fable. The CIA and the Nazis tried so many psychological mind control experiments in the 20th century and that didn’t work. If you want someone to “love you forever” and by extension your relationship to last, you work for it.
Sonny Jermain is an award-winning public health, maternal, sexual and reproductive health rights facilitator and a traditional psychic. This column appears Thursdays on Enthuse. Send questions to asksj@enthusemag.com or WhatsApp +263 77 274 8454. Follow @SonnyJermain.
