Dear Aunt,

I am a teenage girl. My problem is that I was with a guy in school for a year, but then his family moved abroad. Before going, we made a promise to give a long-distance relationship a try. It’s been two months and it’s not going well at all because I just miss him so much. The only way we talk is through internet and he’s just so busy he takes days to reply, which frustrates me. I can’t concentrate in school because I’m so lonely without him. Please help me, as I am falling apart.

Broken soul

Dear On-the-mend,

Okay honey the time’s come for you to face the writing on the wall. If he is taking days to reply to you and if you say that it is not going well at all, then this relationship is most certainly over. If it makes you feel any better, most people find it very difficult to survive a long distance relationship and it’s not surprising that this has happened. You need to start moving on. And you will survive, even if it feels like the end of the world. The world is full of people who have had breakups and most of them get over it.

So taking the cue from this guy, it’s time to back off, just as he has. Stop all contact with him. It’s tough but a clean and total break is essential if you are to move on. If you continue talking to or texting him, on the off chance when he does respond to you, you will keep falling back and eventually make life incredibly difficult for yourself. You’ve already been helped along this way naturally, when he moved away from you.

After you do this, deal with feeling sorry for yourself. Don’t be ashamed that your relationship ended. Instead face up to your negative feeling and mourn in any way that feels natural to you. If it means you want to bawl, please go right ahead and do it. Have your pity party.

After you get over the initial grieving, start getting yourself a life. Now’s the time to take that class you have wanted to for a long time, start exercising or volunteering somewhere … just do what makes you feel good. Get back in touch with friends and start going out. Get those endorphins pumping!

If being okay isn’t coming naturally to you, you may have to fake it. The good news is that, that’s the best way to make it. Just go through the motions some of the time, give yourself time and you’ll get over it.

Dear Khala,

Our parents separated when my brother and I were very young, and I rarely met my father who moved to Lahore and rarely called or supported us. My mother struggled and worked to bring my brother and me up. Now that we are older and I am married, our father is trying to come back into our lives. He says that he is very sorry for ignoring us all these years and that he will try to make up for lost time. He has also become very religious. My father now wants to meet my children also although he never called when my second son was born. He came to my wedding as if he was a guest.

My brother and I are confused about whether we want to meet our father. We remember that he really treated our mother very badly. He was mean to her and beat her up, which we saw. He was also cheating on my mother. My father never got married after he left my mother.

We don’t know what to do. Please help.

Daughter

Dear Wronged,

All of us are born with a basic sense of justice. You are asking Auntie what course to take because you know there is something not quite right about jumping up and welcoming your father effortlessly into the family fold after he virtually abandoned all of you to struggle on your own. Your confusion (and one can even sense some reluctance) on the issue is evidence that the consequences of what he did to his family have come back to haunt him. It may seem harsh, but the truth is, you reap what you sow. So purely from that point of view, you are well within your right to say no to his request to let him into the family.

However, perhaps you are looking for something beyond justice. He is after all your father and you may be toying with the idea of forgiving him. And by all means do that. If nothing else, it will help you move on from the pain in your past. However, forgiveness does not mean that you give someone the license to re-enter your life and wreak havoc again.

If you think he has changed just because he seems overtly religious, you might want to think again. Abandoning young children all those years ago and now coming back because he is lonely and wants a family are both selfish acts. Think about all this before you and your brother decide what to do.

Auntie will not reply privately to any query. Please send concise queries to: auntieagni@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 24th, 2014