Dear Auntie,I am a 21-year-old girl. I was only five when my parents divorced. My father married someone else and my sister and I were brought up by my mother. Recently my father has got in touch with us and wants us to stay in touch. He talked to us very honestly and told us that he was young and had not been getting along with my mother when they divorced. He wants to get to know us and my sister’s children better.

We don’t know what to do because my father had given my mother a real tough time during the marriage. He was having an affair with the woman he is now married to, during the time he was married to my mother. He wants us to meet that woman also and accept her as his wife.

While my sister and I want to meet our father, we don’t want to meet that woman who hurt my mother so much and because of whom our lives changed completely. What should we do?Hurt daughter

Dear Hurt,There is something called natural justice in the world. If you don’t work hard, you don’t get a raise. If you don’t prepare for an exam, you fail. And if you abandon your children, your children will most likely abandon you. Your father is facing the consequences of his actions. Explaining away wrong behaviour as a result of youthful impulsiveness and wanting you to socialise with the woman who broke your mother’s home tells me that your father is perhaps not aware of the massive impact of the wrong that he committed. Somehow, the way he is expecting things to be hunky dory between his wife and his children, tells me that he hasn’t quite learnt his lesson. It tells me that, that selfish streak is still lingering in there somewhere.

You two, on the other hand, are justified in your stance. By getting back in touch with him and from the general tone of your letter, I feel that you have clearly forgiven your father. This is wonderful as by doing so you have released yourself from the pain of the past. However, forgiving him doesn’t mean that you let him back into your life to inflict yet more pain on you. By wanting you to meet his wife, he will be doing precisely that. Forgiveness is this case means that you let it go, but you don’t forget it.

You have seen your mother suffer and you would have to be saints or emotionless robots to want to meet the woman, who was partly responsible for ending your parents’ marriage, with a smile pasted on your faces.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you allow let people back into your life so that they can continue with their destructive patterns. It means you let them back in, but not the drama. So make it clear to your father: we’ll meet you, sans the other woman.

Dear Khala,I am an avid reader of your column and believe that you will resolve my problem. My problem is that when I approach women that I like or when I want to say something to them, I freeze. I feel like I am at a loss for words. That’s the reason why I am stuck in the friend zone with females and am unable to take friendships to the next level.Kindly suggest to me what I should do about this problem because I need a strategy which is rejection-proof. I have asked many men about this and they all have the same story. In fact certain men have a wrong perception about women. I want to guide those men (especially nice guys) who would treat women like princess. Kindly help me.Good guy

Dear Guy,Can you forget about the girl’s gender and just talk to her as if she was another person? If you treat a girl as if she was just another person, rather than a female, your job of getting to know her better is pretty much done. Also act like yourself. Don’t make things up, do not try to impress her and definitely talk to her without a motive or an end in mind.

Girls have a strong sixth sense. Don’t let that scare you, just understand that that means that you should keep your intentions friendly and nothing beyond that, unless of course something transpires. If her radars sense that you are trying to impress her, or that you are not being totally respectful or that you have some other intentions on your mind, the conversation will not get very far. She may not say anything, but she will avoid you like the plague after that.

And sorry to inform you, there is no fool-proof strategy. Just as you won’t show interest in a woman you don’t find attractive, girls do the same. If you don’t make the girl’s pulse race, she will not want to take it to the next level not matter how amazing a personality you have or what you look like. So yeah, there’s the X-factor.

Follow all of the above and good luck!

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