Pains over my sister’s pregnancy for my husband…

Dear Agatha,

I am in a very hot soup and what is happening to me appears to be like a story from a movie. I am still hoping to wake up from this nightmare. I have gone to several places to seek help including a radio programme, but my problem persists. And with each day, it becomes more complex and too confusing for me to handle. 

I don’t know where to start or how to solve this problem facing me in my marriage. My husband impregnated my sister. After her Youth Service, she requested to come over to Lagos to stay with me. My mother didn’t particularly like the idea of her coming living with me in my matrimonial home, but being my sister and one I like very much, I overruled my mother.

It didn’t end my mother’s concern as she kept calling my sister to behave herself without causing troubles for me in my marriage. Curious to know why mother was always cautioning her against causing problems for me, she just laughed over the matter and dismissed mother as being paranoid. Since I didn’t really grow with them, I have lived all my life in boarding schools outside the country. I know very little 

I honestly didn’t have any reason to suspect she was having an affair with my husband until I noticed she was pregnant. Not that she told me about her pregnancy, I chanced on her antenatal card and asked if she was pregnant. She told me yes and when I asked her who the man was since I noticed she had one or two men always around her. She told me the owner of the pregnancy is someone I know and who I would approve of.

Bothered that my husband may not like the situation of her staying in his house with a pregnancy. I told my sister to hasten the process of bringing the man home to meet my husband to avoid problems for me in my own home.

To my surprise she told me not to worry about my husband that he wouldn’t mind, because the owner of the pregnancy is like a twin brother to him. Her attitude was at that point beginning to irritate me so I decided to inform my husband myself about the development. I had expected him to be enraged with anger, but he instead broke down in tears begging me to forgive him. That my sister practically raped him on one of those Saturdays I went out.

He said he has been begging her to abort the child when she came to inform him of the pregnancy but my sister says she cannot afford to go through an abortion again. According to him he has done everything to erase the incident but my sister appears determined to hurt me for a reason he doesn’t understand.  To demonstrate his helplessness, he even went to the extent of buying her a ticket to travel abroad to save me the pains of knowing that she is carrying his baby.

As if wasn’t enough shock for me, when I confronted my sister, she told me its her turn to pay me back for having everything she has always desired as a child. She said whereas, our parents made her stay in Nigeria, I was given the opportunity to school abroad. For the first time I experienced real hatred from the eyes of the person I love with all my heart.

My parents especially my mother is devastated by what my sister has done. She is currently on admission for high blood pressure. My father and the rest of the family have disowned my sister just as my in-laws too have also disowned the pregnancy. My husband is sending everybody to beg me to forgive him, but my sister remains adamant despite pressures from everyone that she terminates the pregnancy. 

Agatha, I have always trusted my husband and know that he would not deliberately do anything to hurt me, but how can I share him with my sister or explain to my children that their cousin is actually their father’s child? All his friends are also united in my favour. He went as far as getting his managing director to come and beg me to forgive him. I am really confused. I have known my husband for over 18 years and never has he once betrayed me even when he had all the excuses to.
Should I quit or remain and fight for the man I really love?

Temidayo.

Dear Temidayo,

The question is do you love your husband and home enough to weather this storm? Do you believe he didn’t deliberately do this and that your sister actually seduced him into doing this? Your decision to stay would depend on the level of trust you still have in him as well as what you belief.

It would be a complete lie to say you have the patent for this situation. A lot of women both in the past and present have and are going through similar situations.  When issues like this come up, the best thing is for you to take a break from everybody to enable you do a thorough and frank assessment of all that is happening around you. Even if everybody begs you to go back, without you having the attendant commitment to the marriage again, there is little anybody can do to make you stay in it. Therefore you need the time out to reflect on what is important to you most as well as what you would miss the most if you walk out of this marriage on account of what this man and your sister did to you. 

It is also to enable you heal properly from the twin betrayal of your sister and husband. Frankly the issue has gone beyond if he is did it with his clear mind or not, but the fact that your sister is carrying his baby. How the baby came into being is not as important at this point in time to how you would cope with the constant reminder of your pains after the baby is born. 

If you fail now to take a far-reaching view of the whole incident, you will find out that the problem will never go away and that you will never be able to function fully as wife, mother, friend and woman for that matter again both to your husband, the children as well as to your larger family.  You will never regain the trust to come close to anybody. Granted what you are going through is bound to have psychological implication on you for sometime. Your ability to face the truth, accept the things you cannot change and prepare yourself for the future with the child would however go a long way in determining how long you would suffer this hurt.

If at the end of the day your love is strong and elastic enough to move your marriage beyond this terrible point, take the child from your sister as soon as it is born. It may sound insensitive but it is the only way to deal with the situation once and for all. This way there is no postponing doom’s day, rather it is bringing forward all the problems that the future would bring if the child remains with the mother and giving your husband or sister an excuse to see each other over the child.

Yes, the presence of the child will always bring about pains in the hidden part of your heart, but you would have prevented the other problem of your children accepting this child as well as the reality of their aunty being the mother of their sibling and cousin.  It may never cure completely you but would create the greater opportunity of your husband making it up to you. 

One thing you should never forget is that child. No matter how much your husband is sorry for what happened, a time would come when he would want to see his child, not matter how much he hates the mother. For some strange reasons men seem to take more pride in their children than women. It is akin to the same pride the farmer has when his seeds are doing well. Every child confirms the viability of the man; that he is man enough to father a child. 

This is why fathers who denied their children at conception often come back to claim the same children they initially claimed weren’t theirs. Over time, your husband will think back and wish for his child when the season for it comes. By accepting to take in the child, you would be protecting yourself from evening pains as well as helping this deep wound heal permanently.  Besides, your decision would also make your sister see that no matter how much she tries to hurt you, take away your happiness as well as your uniqueness, she will never succeed. For someone who is out to damage you, leaving your home for her would be giving her the visa to continue to hurt you and your children who would have no choice but deal with her on account of they, being your husband’s children. 

Like life, marriage has its ups and downs. What makes gives us the edge is how much sincerity, sacrifices and selflessness we deploy at every given time. The consensus maybe for you to quit but when you think of the length of time you have put into this relationship as well as the many sacrifices involved, you will know that nothing good in life comes easy. If you are determined, this marriage would succeed and become one to be envied; it is just a matter of knowing what is important to you.  Going away will definitely give you the time to think straight as well as appreciate some of your own minor mistakes in this situation.

As for your sister, don’t bother fighting her, submit her to the hands of God who knows and sees everything from the end to the beginning. 

Just be prayerful and all the will of God to prevail. 

Good luck.