Dear Agatha,
Twenty years ago, I met the father of my son in
Since she gave me her support, I went into a relationship with him. Because of me, he took to coming to
A year after I got pregnant without meaning to. I have been taking precautions to prevent it because I wanted to finish my training as a hairdresser before settling down. But he insisted on me not taking anything that day.
I agreed because I thought it was within my safe period, but my guess was wrong as I became pregnant.
Honestly, I don’t know what happened or how it all began but immediately I told him of my condition, something not quite visible or explicable changed. He came as frequently as he used to, quite alright, but my neighbour started behaving funny. It got to a point she no longer volunteered her room for us.
One day, I came home earlier than before to hear both of them quarreling over me. She told him he shouldn’t have gone to the extent of getting me pregnant and that he should remember the other woman was her sister.
When I went into the room to demand what all the commotion was all about she changed her story to say that he was having an affair with another woman.
I didn’t know what to say, so I allowed things pass. Until I gave birth to our son, he kept coming and was present during the naming ceremony and also paid my bride price on the day. However, my neighbour packed out the day after the ceremony and didn’t leave any forwarding address. When my aunty and I demanded to know, she said it was better she left without giving us an address as she has caused me enough harm. When we demanded to know what harm, she said I would soon find out.
A month after, I did. My supposed husband’s wife came for a visit. Not only did she made a big scene but told me in plain terms that she would ensure my husband never remembered he had a child anywhere.
She told me I was lucky she didn’t know about me or the pregnancy until I gave birth. She boasted to the hearing of everybody that I would have been dead by now. She said her sister who facilitated our meeting would die a spinster as well as childless.
That was the last I saw of her or my so called husband. I struggled to bring up my son alone. He is in law school now. It was not easy initially but after a while, things improved. I went into couples of relationships but none worked. I ended up having another child outside wedlock.
Fortunately, she is a daughter. After I gave birth to her, my aunty who is my tower of strength and who unfortunately has neither child nor man advised me against getting pregnant again and to accept my situation.
Without warning and from nowhere, he has come back into our lives. I don’t know how he got our address but he has come back to request for his son.
From what he told us, my child is his only surviving child. His other children all died in an accident.
He couldn’t give any meaningful reason why he has refused to come and see us all these while.
I am not comfortable with all these. My son, when I told him of the intention of his father to see him said I should tell him (father) he has no father; that as far as he is concerned his father died when he was born.
Not only is he asking for his son, he insists under the native law, I am still his wife hence he wants me to come back to him.
What baffles me is that his wife is still alive. When my aunty demanded to know what would become of her if I agreed to come back, he said we shouldn’t bother about that.
When I asked after my neighbour, he said she was his wife’s youngest sister, and that she is currently in the village, childless and still single.
Agatha, I don’t want my son to die. That woman is evil. I don’t know what to do. Despite all that has happened between us, I still love this man.
What do you think I should do?
My aunty and son are against my going back. My daughter is indifferent and wants me to decide on what is best for me.
But it is a very delicate situation I am in. what should I do? How do I handle this challenge?
Nikky
Dear Nikky,
Begin by telling him all about the visit of his wife 20 years ago as well as the threats she made and how his absence as well as the condition of his sister-in-law is giving you a lot of concerns.
Let him explain again what happened all these years to have made him forgotten his son as well as the wife he married on the day of his son’s naming ceremony.
Why did he take all these years for him to realise he has a responsibility towards you and his child? Had any of your relationships worked; would he have forced you to come out of your husband’s home to marry him? Would he still have insisted on you being his wife?
What if his other children didn’t die? Would he have come back to his son? Would he have had the strength to pursue his relationship with his son? What about his wife? Whether you accept it or not, what he did to her 20 years ago wasn’t fair. Whatever the problems they were having as a couple, he didn’t have to involve you in it at all. In the woman’s shoes what would you have done? There was no way she would have known you didn’t know he wasn’t free to love when he came to you. He betrayed her in the worst kind of way. Not only did he stop at having an affair with you, he got you pregnant, married you without her consent or letting you know for that matter he was married. It takes more than his coming back to write the wrong of all those years.
As a woman you know how much it can hurt when the one person in the whole world who is supposed to treat you with respect; with all the honesty in the world turns out to be the one to inflict the most cruel blow on you? What he did effectively cancels whatever the woman may have done wrong. If nothing else, he should have told her about you and you about her.
As a matter of fact, the issue for you should not be the fear of the other woman but his lack of insincerity and abject dishonesty. What makes you sure he is not playing his usual game with your emotions? Why should you leave the issue of informing his wife or that of her place in this whole arrangement to him?
Be careful the same thing that happened 20 years ago does not happen again. The major condition of your reconciliation should be both of you meeting to discuss the way forward between the two of you. She should be involved in whatever decisions you both arrive at. Remember she is the woman at home, whose life and home you and your son are about to disrupt and actually disrupted years ago.
Why wouldn’t she be angry with her own sister? What manner of sister would contribute to the destruction of her sister’s home? Even if the sister is a confirmed witch, she had no right to treat her the way she did. To have given you and her sister’s husband freedom to conduct an affair in her home shows she never planned to marry because if she did, she would never have done what she did to her sister’s home.
That she is still single doesn’t necessarily mean the sister did something to hurt her like she threatened to in her fury. We all say things we don’t mean when angry. What her sister did is enough to make God very angry and punish her with the conditions she now finds herself. Deliberately setting out to destroy her sister’s home was a very wicked thing to do.
In more ways than you realize, this man and his sister-in-law destroyed you. Your inability to get a man of your own may not be unconnected with your having a child without a visible man by your side.
For these reasons be sure you get it right this time. It is only after these you can work on your son to accept him as a father. As things are now there are too many unexplained reasons and foggy intentions. You may be his wife and the young man his son but the beginning wasn’t founded on honesty and fairness. It is never too late to do the right things or undo a past wrong.
Ensure you entrust this new journey to the hands of God this time around to prevent a more miserable end.
Good luck.
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