Dear Agatha,
Please help me because I am in trouble. I brought my 18-year-old cousin to stay with me last year when I could no longer cope with the house chores and my job.
One of the conditions my aunty gave before allowing her to come with me is that I should send her to a catering school.
Because of the prohibitive cost of doing so, I persuaded her to wait until this year before she can begin. Due to the demands of my job, I completely entrusted her with my family, allowing her to do the cooking, washing and looking after my home.
I didn’t know anything was going on in my home until I discovered that my cousin was about four months pregnant. She initially didn’t want to tell me whose pregnancy it was until I threatened to send her back to the village. She finally told me my husband is responsible. My husband didn’t bother to deny responsibility of the pregnancy.
I would have gone ahead to abort the pregnancy but my husband is insisting otherwise. According to him, it is bad enough that he has committed the unpardonable act of sleeping with my cousin but to abort the life of an innocent child is something he isn’t prepared to do.
He is pleading with me to forgive him and allow the girl give birth to the child, collect the child and send the girl to further her education in a neighbouring country to give her another lease of life. He claimed he forced himself on the girl on one of those nights I was away on official duties and didn’t know what came over him. According to both of them, that was the only time. Besides, he found her to be a virgin. It is for this reason he is insisting on her having the child and has a matter of fact gone to report the matter to his family. His mother, who has never liked me and I suspect must have a hand in all this, is insisting too that the girl be allowed to keep the pregnancy and that she would take over the care of the child. She said the deed has been done and that there is nothing we can do about it anymore.
Agatha, I am so confused. My friends are suggesting that I do it behind my husband’s back. Give her some drugs that would terminate the pregnancy. The thought of my cousin having a child for my husband is more than I can tolerate. Besides, how do I tell her mother and mine? How was I to know that bringing my cousin would cause problems in my home? Even though my husband claimed he forced her into it, shouldn’t she have told me when I came back?
I feel like killing her. Please help me. What do I do? Quit my home for her, which under the present circumstances appears to be the intentions of my mother-in-law, who is maintaining her stance that my cousin be allowed to give birth to the child.
Tolulope.
Dear Tolulope,
Don’t complicate this situation by involving your mother-in-law in a matter you carelessly created in your home. If you insist on involving your mother-in-law in this matter, you may at the end of the day lose your home to your cousin completely.
Your husband’s mother may not have liked you from the beginning but under the present situation, she is doing her best to manage an already bad situation. She is clearly not the problem here.
As a mother, there is no way she can support abortion. Offering to take care of the child is her way of ensuring you aren’t constantly reminded of the betrayal of your husband and cousin. She is right, the deed has been done. At four months, you will be sending that girl to her grave if you insist on terminating the pregnancy. Besides, being her first experience, getting pregnant and the attendant commotion that it is all generating, making her go through an abortion may damage her for life. As it is, she has a lot going on through her mind. It is one thing to be out to lure a man into one’s bed, it is another thing to have one’s body defiled by a trusted man. If your husband admits to forcing her into the act, you can imagine her state of mind before the act and after it. To have to carry the physical evidence of that forceful and very shameful act is capable of making a woman who isn’t strong emotionally develop a lifetime psychological problem.
Painful and embarrassing as the situation is for you, don’t do anything that would further drive this girl emotionally and mentally. In her state, she needs care and love; so do the sensible thing of allowing her go to stay with your mother-in-law. Yes, you may be the one hurting now but this girl is the victim of your own carelessness as a wife and your husband’s inability to control himself. You used this girl to fill and execute your functions as a wife, mother, and caretaker of your home while your husband used her to satisfy his animalistic urges.
Were you around on that night, he wouldn’t have found solace in the arms of this girl. The fact that your official responsibilities kept you away from performing your wifely duties opened the door to this temptation for your husband. In that sense, you are liable for not being there when your husband needed your warmth.
Granted, today’s women have to work to help keep the family together financially but many of the choices we make come with painful consequences.
You must, along the line, have taken certain things for granted. For your husband to have wanted you so desperately that night is a signal that you have been neglecting the important aspect of your marriage and womanhood. Had you satisfied him sufficiently before taking off, he may not have been so pressed to do it with your cousin. If he were that promiscuous, it wouldn’t have been just that night. A man whose wife knows her onions wouldn’t exhibit that level of desperation, he would have been able to wait the few days you were away.
Because of the evidence of what he has done, it is very easy to brand him as the one at fault but if you are truthful and serious about resolving the salient problems within your marriage, you will use this incidence as a springboard for redeeming your marriage from the many issues you have hitherto ignored.
To help you put things in their proper perspective, do you consider your husband as one whose libido is insatiable? In the years you have known him, married him, has he ever given you reason to regret having him for a husband? How often has he complained about your neglect of him? When travelling for your official assignments, how much time do you devote to him privately? What quality of sex and attention do you give him?
You see, it is all right for women to argue the point that if women can abstain from sex for a long time, men should be able to too. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case in real life. Men are excited by what they see and with the number of pretty and near nude women parading the streets everyday, many men have more than enough to cope with. a wise woman wouldn’t be so careless to leave her man for long without first making sure he has enough of her to last the period of her stay.
We know that some men, no matter what their women do to stop them from straying would still stray, but the issue here is for the woman to do her best at all times.
Trust must have made you rely so much on your cousin but again this is the mistake many women make. It is always risky to leave a grown girl in the house alone with one’s man. Anything can happen from the blues. It is within the nature of man to misbehave.
Don’t listen to your friends. Keep them out of this because their kind of counsel isn’t what you need now.
Prevail on your mother-in-law and husband to go with you to see your family members. Allow your husband and his mother do all the talking to protect you from unguarded utterances that might further inflame the situation or cause further division within your own family.
Believe me; the option of your mother-in-law and husband remains the best.
God will heal you in His own time and season. Don’t for now try to do it on your own. Allow the tears to flow because you have been hurt but don’t allow those tears blind you to the begging issues in your marriage, which this problem has unearthed. Facing them would move your marriage to the next level. Sometimes, issues like this are just God’s way of reminding us of our own follies.
Good luck.
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