Dear Agatha,
I need your help urgently before I make the worst kind of mistake in my marriage. Three months ago, I discovered my husband has been unfaithful to me.
In fairness to him, he had the grace to admit to the relationship with a female colleague in his office. Following the dust I raised, he terminated the relationship. But my worry is the lady, being also a top manager like my husband in the firm, I’m afraid that both of them would soon resume the affair.
I have put pressure on my husband to resign and look for job elsewhere, he refused insisting he won’t give up a lucrative career for me or any other woman.
Following my insistence he resigns, he has stopped pleading for forgiveness and now calling me bluff. He says I am at liberty to quit the marriage if I am unsatisfied with his assurances that he won’t resume his affair with the other woman.
I love my husband and don’t want to lose him to another woman. Our marriage is three years of age and blessed with a son. On my insistence, I became full time housewife because I want to give my child and home my very best.
Now I am afraid that he is going to dump me after the sacrifices I made, giving up my own job.
Please help me because his stance is making me scared. Surely if he is as much in love with me as I am with him, wouldn’t he consider giving up this job for another one? He is connected and can get another job if he applies his mind to it? So why isn’t he considering doing this for me? Is it too difficult a thing for me to ask?
Janet.
Dear Janet,
Granted that your husband has breached the trust you have for him by having an affair, but demanding he quits his current good job on account of your fears of him resuming the affair is untenable.
That is taking your fears and insecurity too far.
Doubtless, this affair has bored a huge hole into the foundation of your marriage, it is however not enough reason to put the marriage through additional stress that have the capacity of further driving a wedge between the two of you.
There is no damage trust, patience and tolerance cannot solve permanently. The issue here is not whether he leaves his current employment or not, but his ability to stay truthful to his promise of not betraying you again.
If you push him to leave this place, what are the assurances that he wouldn’t continue or that he won’t go into an entirely new relationship with another woman in his new place of work? Would you again insist he quits that job too?
Besides, the lady could have been someone he met in the course of his job or he gave lift to. It is just incidental that this one is his colleague. His affair could have been with just another woman outside his official workplace or the places you associate him with.
Which is why, you should look for something more tangible to hold on to rather than insisting he quits his job as prove of his love for you.
Issuing him with ultimatum would only complicate things between the two of you. This is because no man likes to be told what to do. Pushing him into resigning his job, as prerequisite of your trust would make him rebound at whatever promises he made to you.
What you should concern yourself with is how to get him back into your arms, not how to drive him further away from you. In the first place such ultimatum you gave him is sure to cause more problems between the two of you. Apart from such proposition being unreasonable, it would force him into taking decision he would ordinary not have thought of.
Even though he is the guilty party, having begged your forgiveness, he expects you to allow sleeping dogs lie, not forcing him to put his career on the line.
What do you stand to gain by insisting he leaves his job? Is that the only way, you think, he could terminate his interest in this other lady?
If you must know, your option would leave him with no choice but to fight for his ego as well as his pride as the man in the house. He may be the guilty one but it won’t stop him from telling you and everyone else he feels is behind your pressure that he is still in charge of the affairs of his home. The truth is if you push too hard, you would end up being at the receiving end of the whole development.
When a woman pushes a man to the end of his limits, he is being unwittingly given the mandate to also take extreme decisions which though, he may end up regretting but would still do them to show the woman that he cannot be dictated to.
Besides, what you are insisting as your condition for forgiveness is suicidal. You are a full-time housewife with no income of your own. You and your baby depend on the income of your husband, so how do you propose he cares for you and the baby if he is out of employment? There are several equally connected people who still don’t have jobs. Having a career you really enjoy is through the grace and mercy of God, not necessarily through connections. Granted, connection do open more opportunities for those with it but more often than not it doesn’t give the same type of spiritual satisfactions which people who really enjoy their career get.
And what makes you think a job is automatically waiting for your man to pick at his asking? And even if a vacancy comes up, would it be in the position he wants and what if someone with stronger connections bids for the same position?
You just have to be reasonable as well as learn to put the interest of your family above your own pains. Every day, women come face to face with the reality of a mistress tucked somewhere but wise women have learnt to fight from the point of weakness rather than from the position of strength.
Fighting the enemy from the position of weakness doesn’t make the wife the fool but a wise woman, who is determined to keep her home from falling into the waiting hands of the enemy. For that woman to have dated your husband, it means the thought of being in his life on permanent basis has at one time or the other crossed her mind.
It also means, given the opportunity, she would grab it with both hands. Your husband too may have found one or two interesting things about her to warrant him going out with her, and after all she isn’t the only woman he has seen since he married you. The implication of this is, he definitely finds something interesting in her and if given the opportunity may end up with her on a permanent basis.
You must do everything possible not to give both of them the opportunity of exploring the interest further than they have already gone. To do that could mean you losing your home permanently to this woman over whom you are determined to make your husband and home suffer needlessly.
From your own account, he didn’t force you to resign. You did it out of your own choice and willingness to give your family the best of your attention. So to accuse him of being unappreciative of your sacrifices and going ahead to use it as reason for him to also do same for you is not only unreasonable but also totally childish. What you now demand of him has no direct bearing with the issue at hand, it appears that your so-called sacrifices didn’t come from a heart that clearly thought about the consequences of doing so.
If you really did it out of love, it won’t become a weapon to be used to pressure your husband into doing things your own way.
Rather than worry yourself over this other woman, work on your deficiencies, those things that may have made him go into the affair. Although men would always find millions of reasons to be unfaithful to their partners, more often than not, one reason remains thorny. Can you think of any thing your husband has always complained about? If you don’t know, lovingly coax the reasons he went into the relationship. The purpose is to use whatever reason he gives you to win him back. Even if he refuses to give a reason, pay him a visit at the office, to get the opportunity to see your rival and see what ideas you can steal from her and improve on to keep your husband interest on you.
Since you don’t work, check your clothes and body care. Can you be compared with the other woman? You may have shifted too much attention from him to your son. This too could make him very lonely and needing of confidence boosters from his mistress.
You won’t be the first woman to make these types of mistakes but you can make the difference in your own marriage by urgently making your husband the center of your world again. If the other woman is giving the attention you are not showing him at home, then your marriage is in deeper trouble than you think because like children, the heart of the man is with the person who shows him the most attention.
The bitter truth is that if the same conditions prevail in your relationship with him, he would continue to have affairs. Therefore, stop putting the pressures on him and show him all the love he needs to come back home to you.
Your battle is best fought on bent knees in prayers and certainly not by issuing ultimatum to a man whose name you answer to, and under whose roof you live.
Good luck.
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