Dear Agatha,
Thanks for being there for us. I have been married for 18 years to a man I can best describe as a beast. He uses every opportunity to beat and maltreat me. He deprives me of sex while he is so generous with other women. There is no friend of mine he has not slept with a situation that made me jettisoned all my female friends.
I have also learnt to keep my female relations out of my home after he almost succeeded in forcing my younger sister to bed.
Severally I have tried to leave him but all to no avail. The first time he sent his thugs to drag me home and the last time I tried, he used charm on me.
The charm I later discovered was to ensure that any man who sleeps with me beside him would die. This is not fair considering the fact that he hasn’t been to my bed in the last three years. I refused him any contact with me after he tried to make love with me while charms were tied around his waist. That day he gave me the beating of my life. It was at that point I decided to end the marriage.
The issue is how do I get him to remove the charm from my body since I am ready to leave him for good to settle down with someone else?
Besides being cruel, he is very fetish. He has threatened to eliminate me and to inflict the children with strange illness if I leave him or take them away by force.
Agatha, the issue is that I am fed up. But how do I do it without putting the health of my children at risk?
Bose.
Dear Bose,
Besides what you have said, what are the other issues involved in your marriage which makes it a dead end for you? What went wrong with the whole process to make it this bitter and unbearable for you?
If you are accusing him of being fetish, is it that you didn’t know from the onset? That you were unaware of his passion for the occult? What have you done as his wife to change him for the best? What efforts have you put in terms of prayer to get him off the habit? While a woman can claim she didn’t know from the beginning that her man is an armed robber, a womaniser, liar or a dupe, she cannot claim ignorance of her man being fetish. Charm is something those involved in it do with impunity. Along the line, you must have found objects, which point to his religious preferences despite what he claims to be to others. A man who would tie charms around his waist certainly didn’t begin it today. From the beginning he would have manifested his passion for charms, which you elected to ignore then. For the purpose of the argument, what words of God did you offer him to show him the right path to? He could really be doing what he is doing out of ignorance.
At what point in your 18 years of togetherness did the beating start and also the womanising? Did he start out cruel and unmindful of your feelings? When he tried to sleep with your sister, did you tell anyone in the family? I ask these questions because if you kept all these to yourself, it would be difficult for an observer not to blame your desire to end the marriage on your newfound love.
Only a liar would tell you that his or her marriage isn’t without challenges, the difference is the effort and determination people put into making it work in spite of the odds that colour the canvass.
For some of us, the hues are so dark and indefinite that they blind us to the possibilities of an amicable settlement.
Granted the picture you painted evokes sympathy in your favour but look inwards, what did you fail to do, that could have made the differences?
You see it is always all right for us to blame others for a situation we helped to perpetuate. Without mincing words, you are part of the mess your marriage has become because as a woman, you have what it takes to bring your influence to bear on your husband. You don’t have to nag or fight to get your way, a wise woman knows when to use her knees to fight her battle.
That you have found someone to marry you even before leaving his house shows you are as guilty as he is and that in some parts, he has reasons to do what he has done to you. His reactions may come from your disloyalty to him, a possible reason for his ruthlessness to you.
He is only using what he knows and has to protect what is his. Sincerely, nobody can blame this man for wanting to protect what is officially his right. That he is sleeping around doesn’t make it right for you to sleep around with a man.
You have every right to leave him on account of this but to engage in affairs of your own while still in his house packages you as a cheap and morally bankrupt woman, who has little respect for both her husband and the dignity for her body.
Whosoever this other man is, there is no way he would ever give you your full respect, given the fact that he knows about your loose morals as well as your lack of respect for the marriage institution. It would take a miracle for the man to have you for keeps. Besides, any man who dates a married woman is lacking in respect for himself as well as showcases the contempt at which he holds the sacredness of the institution. You can bet it, after a while he would get tired of you and move on to a woman with little responsibility. He doesn’t love you but the lack of responsibility your marital status offers him. Once you vacate the marriage, he would flee because of the responsibility that comes with new status as a free woman.
Like you said, if the marriage has depreciated to an all time low level, the best you can do is to quit. Let him threaten you; give it up instead of having affairs under his roof. This is very provocative and capable of making the sanest man do something violent.
A married woman is supposed to guard jealously her nakedness from another man because her body is the pride of her husband. Allowing another man see her body while still married destroys the self-esteem and pride of her man.
The ideal thing for you to do is to call a meeting of your family as well as his if surely you both cannot leave together again to intimate them of your decision. There is no way he would beat you in front of everybody. Let them know too about the threat on your children as well as the charm he has laced you with.
Once a couple has gotten to that point, when reason takes permanent leave of the marriage, it is best they go their different ways to protect the dignity of the marriage institution.
Telling your parents and his about the charm would force him to remove whatever fetish thing he has laced your body with and remove the frightening threat on his children.
But do take your time before rushing into something new because you may find out after you have left him that you still have feelings for him. Waiting would make you sure of your feelings.
Good luck.
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