Dear Pastor,

I hope you can help me. I am a 30-year-old mother of a wonderful three-year-old daughter. My problem is that I am still in love with her father. We broke up when I was four months pregnant, after being in a relationship for almost five years. I am now living in the Cayman Islands with my boyfriend of two years who is very nice to me. He is everything I want in a man and we will be getting married next year. I am a nurse and I am working very good money. My boyfriend doesn't have any kids and I am hoping to give him one in the next two years. I just wish my daughter's father wouldn't hate me so much and would talk to me.

Family court

I had to take him to Family Court for him to take care of his daughter. He doesn't visit or call her. I wish he would be a father to her. He has no other children. At times, I wonder what I see in him that makes me still love him. He is four years my junior. If my boyfriend should know that I am still in love with my daughter's father, he would never forgive me. My daughter's father put me through hell with other women before and after l got pregnant.

Please advise me, pastor.

S.S., Cayman Islands

Dear S.S.,

Keep the love that you have for your child's father in your heart, if you must. If it never gets to your head, you won't end up in a psychiatric ward. Who can truly understand love? Here is a man who did not treat you well.

You claim that he put you through hell and you had to take him to the Family Court for child support. Yet, you still love him. He does not spend any time with his child, yet you still love him. You have a wonderful man who is planning to marry you, yet you still love your child's father.

Some may say that something is wrong with you. I say that love is a mysterious emotion and it is not easily understood.

Make sure you don't do anything stupid in life. Hang on to the man who has proposed to you. He is, by far, a better man than your daughter's father.

Pastor