Dear Agatha,
I have been living with my partner for about 13 years now. After all these years of being together, we would have been expected to settle down firmly into the relationship by now. Unfortunately, we are still embroiled in different kinds of crisis, the major one being the opinion of my friends who think I shouldn’t have married her after she has slept with three of them.
What makes this particularly unpleasant for me is the fact that they said it openly to her face.
The first time I began to suspect her was when I travelled abroad. On my return, I discovered an unusual closeness between her and one of my friends. When I voiced my discomfort at their closeness, she assured me he was only trying to make her not to feel my absence too much. I believed him only to discover a letter he wrote to her, ending it with “I love you”. When I confronted her with this letter, she denied the existence of such a letter.
I got suspicious of the second guy when a younger friend of his came to our house to ask from my wife, whether she was hearing from him, when I should be the one they should ask this question. From that incident, I knew they wanted to pass a message across. Alert me to what was happening between my wife and this man.
The third guy incidentally is the friend of the second guy. I actually met him through this friend of mine. According to my partner, the guy who is also a student in the same school as my wife came to her room one afternoon and slept off after she gave him food. She said, he appeared tired but people living in the same hostel with her who found him asleep in her room read the wrong thing into the whole situation.
Agatha, I have been suspecting her since I discovered that she had told a lie about being a virgin. She told me her former boyfriend tried to deflower her, but since she didn’t feel him penetrate her or see the telltale sign of blood, she believed she was.
Please, advise me on what to do, because each time my friends taunt me with this, I always feel less than a man. For days I will never be myself and it affects the way I treat her and the children. I have repeatedly demanded she tells me the truth, but she keeps denying all the allegations. I don’t understand what is happening. Why would my friends say all these things if the allegations were indeed bunch of lies?
Segun.
Dear Segun,
You have been with this woman for 13 years. What do you know about her, something nobody else does about her? Can you be categorical of in her behaviour, disposition and attitudes?
You two are having this major issue in your marriage, because you both didn’t bother to put in place the right structures before jumping into marriage.
If both of you have lived together for 13 years, you should be able to know if what your friends are saying about your wife are correct or wrong.
At any rate, what types of friends do you surround yourself with? And what type of friend are you too? Are you the only one who is married? What sorts of company did you all keep? Are you the major financier of the group in which case, they see your woman’s presence in the scene as inimical to the confraternity? How come after 13 years of marriage, you still surround yourself with men who from all indications are no better than secondary school boys on their first ego trip?
There is an adage I am sure you are familiar with, ‘show me your friends and I will tell you who you are.’ The fact that all your friends seem to be sleeping with your wife and making public shows of it, you too should look well at your backyard for clues. No matter what, there should have been a friend among the whole lot of them, who would defend the honour of your home and marriage. That they are all united in daunting you of their visits to your wife’s bed, calls to question your own integrity as a friend and person.
It also points at a previously unresolved issue between you and these friends who may have met behind you to pay you back in your own coin.
Take a trip down memory lane, did you at anytime hurt anyone of them by taking a woman who should have, by right, gone to another person? Did any of them indicate interest in her before you? How would you score yourself as friend? Devoted or fair weather who takes without giving? If these friends are united against you, a self-appraisal will help you situate the situation between you and your wife. It has to be honest for you to understand the motive of your friends as well as their determination to ensure you drive this woman away.
One question you must also answer as sincerely as possible is why you are still in the company of these friends? What value are they adding to your life as a married man and father? Who among them is married? What is your relationship with their wives? Frankly, if your were good friends, they would, no matter how morally bankrupt your wife may be, resist any attempt at sleeping with her because of the regard they have for you. For them to admit to sleeping with her, writing her love letters, going to her room to sleep on her bed in a hostel where they know she is married shows a motive deeper than what you think.
While I am not saying your wife is innocent, there is the need for you to be very careful on this issue. If your wife is saying she didn’t do any of these things, ask yourself what sort of friends sleep with the wife of their friend and still feel no shame in bragging about it?
Sincerely, I think you are better off without these kinds of people hanging around you and your woman. Even if she is guilty of all they said she did, telling you what they did with your wife underscores your need to be wary of their intentions. Friendship is about loyalty, respect and trust. Clearly, these lots don’t have loyalty to you, lack respect for your person and are all out to humiliate your manhood. If you are not careful, by the time they finish with you, they would have succeeded in destroying anything that is important to you.
Distant yourself from them because it is the only way you can tell if your wife is indeed truthful to you or not.
By secluding yourself from them, you will be able to study your wife without the influences or persuasion of the so-called friends. It is very important you get to know the kind of woman you are married to. It is obvious both of you are miles apart. If indeed true she is having all these relationships with your friends, you have a right to know why she is doing it. Irrespective of what your decisions would be at the end of the day, knowing would help make a lot of things clearer as well as point you at your own deficiencies too both as a man and husband.
The real issue here is beyond the affairs she is having with your friends. It is more of the values you both presented on the day you met as well as got married.
What values do you have as a man? Our values in life comprise of the kinds of friends we keep, the kinds of clothes we wear, environment we live, where we go and what we discuss. These are what influence our ways of thinking and mould us to be who we are. You must know what your values are to determine what your elasticity level of tolerance would be. As it is now, you can’t be sure if all they are saying about her is the truth. Until you seclude yourself and family from them, and act as the married man that you are, you may not know where this huge smoke is coming from.
If the motives of your friends were to break you and your woman up, they would stop at nothing to turn an innocent act, on her part, against her. Feeding and allowing a tired friend of yours to sleep in room isn’t out of place, after all it was in the afternoon and they were not in the bed together. She did what any good wife would have done in similar situation for a true friend of her husband.
Whatever happens at the end of the day always put the interest of those children first. Don’t be hasty in coming to a judgement unless you have unquestionable evidences of your own to avoid regrets that come from unfair accusations. Wisdom demands you should not condemn her on account of what these people are saying, because they lack the credibility to judge or make major decisions for you.
Good luck.
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