Dear Agatha,
There is this problem in my family, which I can’t handle alone and worst still; I can’t share it with anybody for fear of what it will do to my parents.
I found out that my mother is sleeping with her driver. I caught them in the act when I came home suddenly from school without informing anybody. I wasn’t feeling fine and since I wasn’t getting better, my roommates suggested I came home for proper treatment. I didn’t tell my parents because I haven’t always been the strong kind. My father, who was ever protective of me would rush to school assuming it was one of my many crises.
Being a while I have had my crisis, I didn’t want to bother them unduly especially as I suspected it could be typhoid since I had all the symptoms. It was something I could have handled myself being a medical student but I guess it was just an excuse to leave campus for home even if it was just for the weekend.
My mother’s car wasn’t parked in the usual place so I assumed she wasn’t in.
Perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed if they didn’t use my room as their love-nest.
The shock of seeing my mother in such an intimate position was enough upset on its own but discovering the identity of her partner was more than I could tolerate.
My screams brought the gateman rushing into the house but I quickly recovered enough to lie that I fell.
I didn’t bother to wait for my mother and the driver to get decent before storming out of the house back to school; my reason for going home forgotten.
It has been six months since I spoke with my mother or allowed her near me. My father is worried and is beginning to ask me questions on why I am refusing to come home. My mother has kept sending messages of plea for forgiveness but how can I forgive her? Get the picture of her naked body under her driver out of my mind? Will I be able to look her in the face and call her mother?
I am actually writing you on my sickbed. In the last couple of months my health has taken a worst turn, enough to make my elder brother who resides abroad to come home. Everybody is worried about me but I just can’t open up to what the actual sickness is.
Please help me. I don’t want to die. How do I handle the situation without hurting my father? My mother until that episode was one of the most responsible women I know; who took seriously her marital vows. Despite my closeness and love for my father, he is the one who has his eyes outside his home as I have repeatedly seen him with different women but my mother? I still can’t believe she did what I saw her doing.
Laura.
Dear Laura,
First is the urgent issue of your health. Bottling it up, refusing to talk about it or forgive your mother would only make your health condition worse.
Six months is a long time to hold back so much inside of you, especially as you don’t enjoy the best kind of health. At the stage you are in now, you need to make peace with everybody.
Despicable as your mother’s act is, please do find it in your heart to forgive her. Your mother’s condemnation or judgment isn’t within your powers to make; you didn’t create her, nor are you her husband. Allow God to do His work, pass His judgment while you do yours of calling her and asking her what made her do it as well as the kind of examples she is setting for her children.
Your line of questioning and attitude is enough condemnation for her; enough agony on its own. To have you witness her shame is enough judgment.
You will achieve nothing by telling your father about it but would have done a lot for their marriage if you are able to have a frank talk with your mother. Call her alone and hear what she has to say about the episode you witnessed. Demand to know when it all started, her reasons and what she intends doing with the relationship.
Though, nothing can justify sleeping with her driver or any other man while she is still legally married to your father, knowing her reasons may help give an insight into the state of marriage of your parents.
If she isn’t the promiscuous type like you rightly observed, then something your father did may have pushed her to the limits. While I maintain it isn’t an excuse but you must understand many of the dynamism at work in your parents’ marriage.
What you saw may be the end product of so many years of pains and endurance; of disappointment and rejection and silent torture from your father. The fact that you caught her sleeping with the driver, someone who works for her, below her class, tells of a level of frustration.
If the incident you witnessed is the end product of several years of emotional agony, you won’t be doing both of them any good if you keep ignoring your mother. Your mother is as guilty as your father so if you are able to forgive your father of his many strays, you must be able to forgive your mother too. Whatever offence your mother is guilty of in your moral court is what your father has always been guilty of.
That she is a woman doesn’t make her guiltier than your father. In God’s reckoning they are both guilty of the same offence. One of the major laws of marriage is faithfulness to one’s spouse. The fact that you father appears to be the one that broke the laws first, his conduct might not be unconnected with your mother’s behaviour.
Whatever the problems are, urge her to tell you. Assure her that you are over your condemnation and are now set to help her overcome whatever the issues are with her marriage.
Because God has given the assignment of restoring sanity into your parents’ marriage make sure you do it without bias. But before agreeing to talk to your mother, make her promise to stop her affair with her driver as well as a promise that she will never do it again with another man.
Carefully take mental notes of what the real issues are and bring them up with your father without telling him about your mother’s affair.
You could use your health condition to extract a promise from your father to stay faithful to your mother. Make it appear that your worsening health situation has to do with the salient issue of his unfaithfulness to his wife. Ask him how he would feel if his wife were the one playing around with other men? Such pointed questions would help him think deeply about the harm he is doing to his marriage.
The fact that two of them are still willing to go on with the marriage underscores hope, so, aid them with prayers and never forget to make them realise that they have something good to look forward to through their children.
Good luck.
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