Dear Agatha,
I have this secret I have been keeping from my husband of seven years.
I never intended to keep it away from him but did for fear of losing him.
When we met seven years ago, I was almost giving up on ever getting a man of my own. All the other relationships ended abruptly the moment I tell them about my children.
I had one at the age of 16, and another, when I was 19.
The fact that I had them for different men made a lot of these men skeptical about marrying me, a situation that got me increasingly desperate.
I was 33 when I met my husband and had to trap him into marrying me by getting pregnant the second month after our meeting.
I knew from our discussions that he would never agree to an abortion, so, when I told him about my condition, he had no option but to marry me.
Almost immediately, I insisted that my mother should take my children to their fathers, so my husband wouldn't find out about them.
I equally warned them never to get in touch with my family or me again.
My mother didn't approve of my decision but since they were my children, there was little or nothing she could do.
This decision was easy for me, because my husband was transferred two weeks to our wedding, about our fourth month together.
But, now, having been married for seven years and losing two children, I want my other children back.
I heard from my mother that my first daughter got married two years ago and has a set of twins.
The people I went to consult after the deaths of my children all blamed me for their deaths.
According to these churches and spiritualists, my other children are unhappy with my attitude towards them.
They all told me that the fate of other children I might have for my new husband would be the same with the dead ones, until I bring the ones I sent away close to me.
I am pregnant again and doctors have warned me not to attempt another pregnancy after this. They said my womb is weak.
It would have been a different thing, if I had told my husband about these other children from the beginning, but how do I tell him after seven years of marriage that I have grown up children and that I am even a grandmother?
How do I placate my children, especially my first daughter whose wedding I didn't attend?
I don't know what to do anymore.
My husband is 43, and from what I know of him, lacks the temperament or maturity to sympathise with my dilemma.
Worse still, I am aware he is involved with another woman.
Won't this revelation send me out of his life completely? I am scared.
Debisi.
Dear Debisi,
Whatever challenge you are going through in your marriage was self-inflicted. Why did you have to keep something as important as earlier children a secret from your husband? The excuse about men leaving you the moment they found out about these children could not justify your silence all these years. When were you planning to tell him? Were you ever going to tell him if your children by him hadn't died, and you are required to open up to save the life of your unborn child?
Were you ever going to acknowledge those children again as yours?
At this stage, it is too late for lies and fears. You have reached that state in your life where only the truth is acceptable.
This is because, no matter how much you wished things were different, they will never change from being what they are now.
So brace up to face your past once and for all.
We all come with some form of skeletons from the past.
There is every possibility that your husband too has one or two things he doesn't want to remember from his past.
In all honesty, you weren't fair to this man. You didn't give him the chance to react before assuming he would throw you out of his life like all the others.
The fact that he accepted the ownership of a pregnancy barely two months after you met and agreed to marry you in less than four months of your meeting, shows a man with some level of decency and sense of responsibility.
Since you knew he would never allow you abort the child you were carrying for him, you should have capitalised on that fact at the time, to come out clean.
Doubtless, he would have felt like every other person, including you in his shoes, would have felt at the knowledge of the existence of these children. Nevertheless, he would have had the opportunity of choice.
If he leaves you now, nobody would blame him, because your marriage to him was premised from the very beginning on falsehood and scheming.
For him, the major issue may not be the existence of the children, but the fact that you didn't trust him enough to confide your past in him, and your refusal to give him the chance to state his mind in a matter that concerns him too.
You may argue that the children are your personal business, but your marriage to him makes them his business also.
Now, not only do you risk losing your husband, but the respect and love of your children. Had you handled it differently, he probably might have gladly adopted the children and you; with you having the last laugh over all the bitterness and disappointments of your past.
Unwittingly, you have given this man a reason to question your credibility as a woman and mother.
No explanation you give now would ever be enough to erase whatever impression this situation will create in him. Sincerely, it would take the grace of God to change his new opinion of you.
Whereas, in the beginning, he could have sympathised with the circumstance leading you to have those children when you did and for different men too; it would certainly not be so easy to convince him now. You have simply boxed yourself into a very tight corner.
It would not be easy for him to trust a woman who can hide such important information from her husband for such a long time.
In his shoes, what would you make of a man who conceals for that length of time the existence of a child?
Whatever may be the consequences, tell him. It is never too late. The worst that can happen is for him to tell you to leave his house, but you would at least be free to re-establish relationship with your older children, as well as the grace of safely having that baby inside you.
Telling him would free you of the judgment of God, who, in the first place, has a reason for bringing those children you abandoned for marriage your way.
Whatever situation a woman finds herself in, she must never turn her back on her child.
You really have to beg God and your husband for mercy and forgiveness.
The law of marriage is premised on honesty, integrity and trust; none of which you have. Earn yourself some level of integrity by owning up to your mistakes and facing its consequences.
If you put God first, no matter your husband's depth of pains, God will give him the grace to forgive. All you have to do is to be really sorry and mean it.
Good luck
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