Dear Aunty Lisa
I am a lady aged 33 and I have finally found my Mr Right and he is hinting at marriage. The young man is a year younger than me and because I have put up some weight in the past few years and he looks very fit, I am afraid people may notice that I am older than him. I love him so much but I constantly feel bad about being older than him. Please what do you think? – Shelly
Dear Shelly
I am sure you have heard the statement age is nothing but a number so many times. Well it’s time you believed it. There is no rule that says the woman should be so many years younger than her partner. If age was a natural law on love then your hearts would automatically repel.
I don’t want to lie and tell you that everybody will see things the way I do. Our society believes a woman needs to be younger and so they will start scrutinising your relationship the moment you announce it. Any fight you will have with your man will be attributed to your age difference.
Be ready to hear a lot about it and be ready not to care. You need to make your relationship an example of why age is nothing compared to love.
The young girls in your community need to grow up searching for love in their future husbands – not searching for the perfect aged man. Be their inspiration. If you are not comfortable with the way you look, then you need to make a commitment to change it. Make up a training programme and diet to lose weight.
Of course the mere fact that he loves you and is hinting at marriage like you say shows that he does not have a problem with your weight. But you want to change it for yourself.
You need some confidence boost and if being fit is what will assure you that you will both look good as a couple then work on that. But otherwise I do not see any problem with you being in love or even marrying a man younger than you. And a year is nothing anyway! – Aunty Lisa
What a great dad
Dear Aunty Lisa
I am a single father and my daughter is now 14. She recently started menstruating and I was tongue-tied when she came to me asking what to do. We are very close and because her mother lives outside the country I have been a father and mother to her.
I am now worried what next she will be asking me and will I be prepared to give her advice as a father. Won’t it make her feel embarrassed? – JJ
Dear JJ
Congratulations for raising such a daughter who is confident in her father. You need to maintain that and not give her any reason to back off.
There will not be anything wrong with you advising her on any issues of life. You are her father and you are the person who cares most about her and who can give her good advice from the heart. But whenever you feel not in a good position to advise her you can ask your sisters or good female friends to talk to her. Continue being a good father to your daughter. – Aunty Lisa
Am I too rural?
Dear Aunty Lisa
I am a young man aged 16 and we recently had a sex education class at school and there was a group who even came to demonstrate how to use a male and female condom when they presented about safe sex. I do not really know why all this is being shown to us, I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable.
I don’t know if it was only me feeling that way or the rest of the class who were quiet during the presentation. Do I really need to know how to use a condom at my age?
I grew up and attended a rural primary school and got a scholarship and now I am at one of the reputable senior schools in the country.
Does my rural background have a bad effect on how I am seeing this? What do you make of the presentation? – Tawanda
Dear Tawanda
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way you view things. Your rural background may have disadvantaged you in some few ways like lack of access to some technologies, but I promise you it instilled some good moral behaviour in you.
So, I was actually smiling to read your thoughts about sex education. You asked what I think about it, I honestly am sceptical about the whole process – whether it is encouraging abstinence or encouraging young boys and girls to experiment. I
was totally freaking out the first days I heard about it and could not imagine the age at which my daughter or son would be told of what happens behind the scenes in their parents’ bedroom. But the problem young kids of today are facing is that they are being exposed to a lot of things on television and internet.
Kissing is something that is no longer a big deal in the young generation and sex has become a “pre-requisite” of being a teenager. Well, I hate generalising so let me say this is in most cases and not all. What sex education is trying to do is avoid unwanted pregnancy and the spread of HIV, but its weakness is when they tend to assume that all youths are sexually active and teach you how to use a male and female condom.
The next thing in a teenager’s mind is to experiment and now sex is not driven by love but mostly by experiments of what has been internalised from the television and Internet. The bottom line is, sex education is important Tawanda, but it needs to stress the point of abstinence. You will need to know how these condoms work at some point, but it needs to be stressed that you are being taught this just for the future.
Continue the debate with your peers. Your embarrassment and the feeling of being not comfortable during the presentation is the right feeling for this topic and I am hoping your colleagues were feeling the same.
But in case they were not, do not ever feel inferior or embarrassed for who you are. If you have the courage you can even talk to your peers about the power of abstinence. Stay focused and practise sex only after marriage, it will forever make you a cool teenager and later on great gentleman in the eyes of Aunty Lisa and your parents. – Aunty Lisa
Post published in: Lifestyle