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. 

She wants marriage but I don’t

Dear Agatha,

I am a keen follower of your column and though I’ve been out of the country for a while I still feel your solutions vital and very helpful. I left Nigeria about five years ago and ever since I’ve only dated women from this part of the world even though there are quite a number of Nigerian ladies here.

In December last year I decided to end any relationship I have with these foreign women to make room for a Nigerian lady and my intention was that the relationship would lead to marriage.

There is this Nigerian lady I have been dating since we first met in March in the church. At first she seemed perfect but I later realized her parents are separated. She has so many family issues that are discouraging me. Perhaps the worst is her mood swings. She doesn’t even measure up to any of the foreign ladies I have dated. 

Normally I would have walked out of this relationship considering the fact I have a family to take care of back home and I don’t want any distractions but we are presently in counseling in church and she has found a way of  publicizing our relationship to the  church and everyone who cares. I am not enjoying this relationship anymore but I also don’t want to hurt her, her family or my image in church. What do I do?  Promise.

Dear Promise, 

If you are not comfortable in and with the relationship, end it now before it’s too late. From the tone of your mail, it is obvious you don’t find the whole episode interesting and you are only managing the relationship. For someone who has commenced marriage class, this is all wrong and an indication of the danger ahead. It is wrong to marry to please other people. At the end of the day, all those people you are today trying to please will ask query your reasons for marrying this woman when the problems come. They would wonder why you didn’t stop the process when you knew it won’t work. Marriage is too important to one’s life to be treated the way you are contemplating treating yours.

It is best you hurt her now, incur the displeasure of the church rather than after you are married. There is no offence in breaking a relationship but so much moral and religious issues involved when breaking a marriage.

When it comes to marriage, both parties should sufficiently want it to enable the union stand the test of time. With you feeling she doesn’t measure up to the standards you want in a woman, there is no way you would ever be happy or proud of her enough to appreciate her unique nature as a woman.  The strength of any marriage comes from both parties knowing they have made the right choice and are united in keeping the marriage through its turbulent times. Because marriage is a lifetime journey, you must be sure you have the right kind of attitude as well as determination to make it work at all cost.  She may not appreciate you walking out on the relationship now but given the choice of facing a doomed marriage, she will gladly have you walk away from her now than to face the embarrassment of having to explain to the world why she couldn’t keep her marriage. 

Sometimes it pays to be cruel in order to be kind. She may not appreciate canceling the marriage now, but in later years when she finds the man who will love her unconditionally, she will come to appreciate the sacrifice you made for her and thank you for being man enough to do the honourable thing.

Good luck. 

He absconded without traces; his son needs know his root

Dear Agatha,

I would like your opinion on the way forward in my relationship that has produced a son. My partner and I have been and lived together for five years, but the last two years have been turbulent. Despite the intensity of the storm, I was trusting in God to make it work. 

He got transferred immediately I got pregnant and he quickly used the opportunity to walk out of my life. He didn’t even bother to come and see his son when I gave birth. As I write, he doesn’t know his son let alone provide for him. He hasn’t even given a reason he can’t see his child. 

I honestly would like your help on how to get the boy to know his roots, his paternal family.  This is where the real challenge is, since I have vague knowledge of his father’s people and town. Deep down in me, I know his father is trying to hide something from me. If it is about culture and tradition, my son belongs to him. So I can’t fathom why he has refused to see let alone acknowledge the presence of his son. 

Do you think I should try to locate him through my limited knowledge of his place? I am confused.

Mama.

Dear Mama, 

It baffles me that you lived with a man for five years without knowing any member of his family or where he comes from. How do you explain this to your son if you are unable to locate him at the end of the day? What impression do you want your son to have of you in later years? What if he denies the paternity of the child? How do you defend your staying with this man for five years without knowing anything about him? Who were his friends? If you were talking about a causal relationship your story would have made sense, but a man you lived with for five years? It calls to question the issues you played up in this relationship as well as the values you marketed.

What you are doing is what you should have done before packing in to live with him. 

Besides, since leaving, how have you been reaching him? Is it that you don’t know where he stays or where he works? For him to have left you, refused to come and see his child, especially a son, means there is something fundamentally wrong somewhere. This isn’t a typical case of him not knowing that you have given birth, but that of him refusing to come and see his child. There appears to be more to this than you are saying. 

For a man you lived with to refuse to see his son, his first child, it is either he is having problems or doesn’t trust the paternity of the child.

In your five years of living together, has he ever complained of you? Has he ever had reason to complain of your sincerity and faithfulness to him? Have you ever been unfaithful to him? How would you describe yourself as a woman and partner? 

At what point did you tell him about your pregnancy? Was it after he left or before he did? How did both of you relate before he left for his new station, were you in the best of terms? What was the relationship between the two of you like after he left? Was there any form of communication after he left? If yes, at what point did it break down and what efforts did you make to reconcile with him?

When the going was good between the two of you, were there plans for the two of you to marry? Did you get pregnant with his consent? That the two of you lived together as a couple doesn’t mean you two must marry. It takes more than the decision to be lovers for a couple to decide to marry. You may have the idea that it is more than enough but for a man who is afraid of commitment; it is enough for him to go into hiding at the slightest escape.

First before you go up in arms against him for not seeking his son, ensure he is hale and hearty. Irrespective of how much he has hurt you and your son, you must show concern for his well being first. It is only when he is well that you can push the case of him not looking for his son or taking care of him. It is only after you have assured yourself that he is okay that you can push the case of him refusing to know and care for his son.

Even at that, you also have to know some of the challenges he is going through by listening to his reasons. Granted he has no excuse to leave you alone with a child, but you can only be justified if the agreement to have the child is mutual. That a woman and man are having an affair doesn’t give her the right to impose a child on him. If you didn’t get his consent to be pregnant bear the humiliation of explaining your decisions to him before presenting your request to him. This is the only way to get a recalcitrant man looking for an excuse to run from his responsibility to listen.

Instead of searching for him in a town you don’t know, begin your search from his office. You must at least have an idea of where he worked or works. Besides, there must be some friends in the environment you both stayed who would know one or two things you don’t know about him. Search for the person he was very close to, to get the information you don’t have about him. 

If all these prove futile, deploy your limited knowledge of his village to locate him. And if you do find him, your business isn’t what he is trying to hide but that of him acknowledging his son and making sure his family knows about the existence of your child.

In the meantime, prepare yourself to care for this child alone. Don’t delude yourself that seeing him would change anything at least not immediately. The only way you can vindicate yourself is to ensure you give this child your best in life by praying for the strength to be more than a mother to this child who is the unfortunate victim in all these drama.

Good luck. 

What can I do to my weak emotion?

Dear Agatha,

 I’m an ardent reader of your column and really like the way you help people with their issues.

My problem is that I’m too emotional, every little thing gets to me and people have capitalised on that to treat me anyhow. My ex-boyfriend treats me anyhow because he knows it gets to me, even to the extent of shedding tears. What will I do to overcome it? Secondly, I need a good male Christian who will understand me and treat me like a lady.

Worried girl.

Dear Worried Girl, 

Stop wearing your hurt on your face. By making your emotions obvious, you unwittingly arm people with the weapon to use against you. Life is a jungle where most people are forever looking for opportunity to harm or cause the other pains. There are people out there who are waiting patiently like a vulture for a clue into one’s frame of mind, life and thoughts to enable them know how to cause that person harm. 

At times they get their clue through deliberate provocation, which makes emotionally susceptible people like you easy targets. You just must develop the confidence in yourself not to allow anybody get under your skin. Develop a very thick skin to whatever life throws at you. Smile even when it hurts to protect yourself against those waiting in the wings to jubilate at your pains.

Your boyfriend as well as all the others who have hurt you one way or the other knows you are weak emotionally and lack the confidence to fight back.

By building your confidence, you position yourself to be heard and respected no matter the situation. Once these people know that you have the guts to challenge them, tell them off and refuse to be intimidated by their ways and attitude, they will think twice before dishing you a meal. 

As for you getting another man, you must first of all work on yourself before contemplating another relationship else you would end up having the same kind of problem. Nobody is saying you should be a bully or rude, the fact remains that life entails being able to be firm in more ways than one. Most men cannot withstand a ‘yes woman,’ who lacks the guts to stimulate or challenge them intellectually. Even though men claim they want docile women, the truth about relationship is that they want a woman who can get them standing on their toes, one they would miss when not around. By being constantly a ‘yes woman,’ you leave your man with nothing to miss or interesting to recall. It could be a very boring relationship. Whenever angry express it boldly don’t present yourself as a weakling. 

Good luck.

Lying got me her love, now she kicks over that

Dear Agatha,
Please help me.  I am in danger of losing the most important woman in my life. I told a thousand lies to cover a single lie. I didn’t intend serious relationship from the beginning, but as time went on, I became very fond of her; my feelings for her grew stronger.
Fearing the repercussion of her knowing that my feelings for her weren’t honorable at the initial stage, I didn’t know tell her about my new feelings for her. I figured she might never forgive me as we had been dating for fours then. To crown it all her family members, especially her mother knew and accepted me with love.
Somehow she found out the truth and became livid with anger. She found out that I had all along being lying to her about the course I studied in school, my family background and other things. Like I said, I didn’t plan to be serious with her when we first met, so I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong by lying about my family and me. Then I figured she wasn’t going to be around to find out the truth. I really want to spend the rest of my life with her. Her mother has forgiven me, but my girlfriend is finding it difficult to forgive me even though she said she had done that. Her attitude has changed towards me, saying it would take time for her to ever love me again.
Agatha, please help me. She is my all in life. I don’t mind if you help me talk to her. I still love her. I don’t care how long it will take her to love me again I want her back in my life. Please help me talk to her. 
Leo.

Dear Leo,
I called her as requested by you. She assured me she has since forgiven you, but has moved on with her life.
Judging from her response, I think she is still hurting at your avalanche of lies and would need time to properly heal. You must try to understand that it isn’t going to be easy to immediately forgive you what you did to her. Your lies created more than an image problem for you. Even if she forgives you, how is she going to trust you again if for four years, you have lived a lie with her? The only thing she is sure about you for the four years she dated you is your name. It would take more than forgiveness to make her trust you the way she did.
For now she doesn’t trust anything you represent and can’t tell after all the lies you have told her for four years when you are telling the truth now. She not only feels used, but also betrayed by the man she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. There is also the issue of her family witnessing the humiliation of your duplicity.
Even if she forgets all the lies you told her, would she ever be able to erase the memories from the minds of her family members? Her mother can claim to forgive, but would she ever forget when an issue that has to do with you comes up? This isn’t just a matter of you lying to her, but also that of your credibility as a human being and the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with?
Relationship strives on trust and once there is a breach of it, getting it right on track may not be so easy since issues that would also require her to trust you unconditionally would always come up.
Had you just lied about your feelings for her she may not be as angry as she currently is now but to lie about your discipline, your family and other important facts? In her mind now the question is, who really are you?
You acted irresponsibly and hurt her in the worst way a man can hurt a woman. Knowing that she gave herself to lies is perhaps what is upsetting her the most. Until she is able to reconcile the man she thought you were to the man you really are, allow her be. You are definitely not the man she fell in love with. She fell in love with an image of the person you pretended to be and unless she heals properly enough to look beyond your current wrap, there is nothing you can say or do to make her change her mind.
If you love her that much now, you just must learn to pay the sacrifice of being patient and prayerful to make her go beyond the point of forgiveness and forgetting altogether. In issues like this, the forgiveness part is the easiest, but the forgetting side that is hardest to do.
As it stands now, only God can make her change her mind especially as she said she has moved on with her life. For now, continue to go through her mother to help you talk to her, at least for her to be your friend. Don’t expect any miracles immediately, if she agrees to be friend with you be contented until she makes up her mind again about you. She has to be sure she can trust you again.
Good luck.