Dear Agatha,
Please help me because I am thoroughly confused. I recently found out that my younger sister, from the same parents, who is living with me is having an affair with my husband.
How do I handle this? What do I do?
Betrayed Wife.
Dear Betrayed Wife,
This is a nightmare indeed but one you must wake up from immediately if you are to wrest your home and happiness from the grasp of the devil.
I appreciate the pains of being betrayed by these two people you perhaps trust more than any other persons in the world.
Unfortunately, there is no denying your relationship with them or avoiding them at all.
The first thing to do is to take your sister to your parents and inform them of what she has done. There is no way you can continue to trust her to stay with you or trust your husband near her or any other female that comes to your house. For him to have slept with your sister has cancelled the trust to bring any female into your home at least until this episode is forgotten completely.
Wisdom demands that at this hurtful and critical point in time, you refrain from making hasty decisions. To do that would amount to you hurting yourself more than you are already feeling now.
At this crucial point ask yourself these vital questions; what is most important to you now? How much do you care for your husband and home? Whose happiness and well-being is most important to you; yours or that of the other people in your life?
Many people would come with their different opinions, some telling you to quit your home because what your husband did is abominable, disrespectful as well as insults your person and position in his life. No doubt, what he has done is a combination of all these and much more but think deeply of all the other women whose marriages have had to endure worse things, like their husbands sleeping with their daughters. A lot of marriages are living with the burden of infidelity. As a matter of fact, many people would regard any woman who packs out of her home on account of her husband having an affair stupid. Unfortunate and painful but this is reality, one thing every woman has to be prepared for at anytime.
It just happens to be your sister; there could have been other women before her including some of the friends who would be urging you to end it all.
When such nastiness comes into marriage, the thing to look at is the best option for everybody, especially the innocent children who would be affected by the decisions you make today.
Your sister will eventually get married and begin her own life, forget that she ever had anything to do with your husband or the pains she caused you. If you leave your husband, you will be the one that will carry the burden for life, whose memories of that time will remain evergreen. Your children will be the ones that will have to grow without the love and support of both parents living together. Eventually, the family will, whether you like it or not, make an attempt to settle you and your sister, with the pitiable excuse that you can’t be enemies forever.
At that point in time, should you refuse the peace treaty, people will brand you all sorts of names, casting you as the villain in a situation where you started out as the victim.
Beyond the pains of the situation, what do you think could have caused it? Were you neglectful of your duties at home, leaving them to your sister to execute on your behalf? Sometimes, in our quest to make money under the guise of helping the family grow, we forget the important things of life, the real reasons we are wives and mothers. If you are one of those women who neglected her home to her sister, by implication you also handed over your husband to her. Though not an excuse for what they both did to you, the truth is that some of us are to be held responsible for the matrimonial calamity we suffer.
It is important you examine your own complicity in this whole matter. It is the only way you can handle this situation with the objectivity it deserves. Admit to your own faults as well as all the other salient ones your husband may have complained about previously which you ignored. It will help you understand a lot of things about this entire episode. It will never explain the logic of your husband sleeping with your sister but it will help open your own eyes to many of the avoidable mistakes we make as women in our homes.
This is the time to call on your marriage creed, which we recite without a detail study of its contents and meaning. It says for better for worse, through thick and thin; until death parts. Your worst time is definitely now, the thickest part of the storm of life but like all storms, there is always thinness somewhere. Look for the thin side to this situation to enable you move forward.
There is the need for both of you to have a private talk as a couple. It could be a shouting match but you both must talk about this incident with a view of moving forward.
Be honest in your talk and submissions. Acknowledge your mistakes as a couple and well as grow a new determination to succeed where before you both failed.
Honestly, only God can wipe away all the memories of this situation so pray for His presence from now on in your marriage and life. With Him, all these pains will go away.
Good luck.
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