My girlfriend can’t stop flirting and I don’t trust her. She started seeing me when she was with another man and I don’t trust her to say no if another man comes along.

The above extract from the lyrics of the 1966 hit song “When a man loves a woman” written by Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright aptly sums up the kind of power a woman often wields over a man. “What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman’s mind?” pondered Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, in the classic novel Don Quixote. Call it love or obsession, it’s all about power and control. Who has the power and who is in control? Will there ever be peace on earth except there is peace between man and woman? Man is destined to rule, but the balance of power is constantly under negotiation.

I have a serious problem . I’m kind of in love with two different guys. One of the guys is quite a looker, he is absolutely a feast for the eyes. He is exactly my “type.” He always says hello to me when he sees me or stops for a minute, and he’s always smiling at me which I am told he doesn’t do for everybody. I also know that he’s currently seeing somebody but not seriously. On one hand, I don’t want to seem like just another girl fawning all over him; on the other I want to let him know I’m interested without offending his Christianity.

When a junior colleague was having personal problems, especially with her landlord, I let her move in with me and my husband. She’s young enough to be our daughter and I enjoyed her company. It was to be a temporary solution until she found alternative accommodation.

I was my friend’s best man when he got married some years back and I have since got married too. The four of us are good family friends but I’d been secretly in love with my friend’s wife even before they got married. Last year, she came to my office to ask me to assist in paying the school fees of her two children. I was about to have lunch then and asked her to join me