DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM? IS SOMETHING BOTHERING YOU? WRITE TO: TELL ME PASTOR, DR AARON DUMAS, PO BOX 188, KING STREET, KINGSTON. TELEPHONE: 929-1667/8. EMAIL: PASTOR@JAMAICASTAR.COM

Dear Pastor,

I was living with a wonderful woman for about 13 years. I wouldn't say things were perfect, but I could live with it. Over the years she always attended church and one evening she came home and said she was going to get baptised. She said the pastor said if I am not ready to marry her, I will have to move out of the room and go to another room. Before the day was over, the pastor came to our house and was saying a lot of things that upset me.

It's not that I don't want to get married, but there are certain things that we have to put together first. We have a child together and I am building a house so that the three of us can live together and leave the one that we are living in for her three older children from a previous relationship. Before we started the house, we decided that we were going to build the house then get married. I don't know what the pastor put in her head for her to change the plan now. I left the house and am living somewhere else.

My problem is I am seeing someone else. When I was with my babymother we went through a lot of things together. At times I wasn't working much and I didn't have much to give. But now I am working well and I think she should be the one getting everything that this new woman is getting because she was there through thick and thin. Although we are not together, when I give her money for our daughter, I give her enough for herself. But deep down I know she deserves more for being with me through the years when I had nothing.

Pastor, I feel guilty and stupid. What should I do?

D.G., Westmoreland

Dear D.G.,

If after living with a woman for 13 years, you couldn't put certain things together and marry this woman, you don't care for her. You are too selfish. You should have married the woman and allow her to serve the Lord.

You were angry because you don't believe the pastor should have spoken to you.

It is not too late to do what is right. Go and tell the woman that you are sorry for what happened and you wish to marry her.

Pastor