My housemaid is pregnant for my hubby

Marriage Clinic With Agatha Edo, gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com, 08054500626



Dear Agatha,

My husband is bent on marrying our housemaid and I am not finding the situation funny since he is making a public show of it; besides the lady in question is already five months pregnant.

I only got to know recently because I come home late from workand leave early. The most worrisome thing is the unrepentant attitude of my husband who blames me for this shameful act of his.

He says if the housemaid is good enough to look after his home, care for my child, wash his clothes, cook his food then she is good enough to be his wife.

I find this argument irritating and of no help to our situation because he knows the nature of my job. I happen to be a branch manager of a bank. The dictates of my job leaves me with little time for my family; the reason I employed the housemaid to fill the void my absence creates in my home.

I decided to pick the bills of this lady myself so where have I gone wrong? The excuse that I am not always around doesn’t hold water with me because right from the beginning, he knew cooking wasn’t something I enjoy doing.

I am ready to forgive him but he is making it almost impossible for me by refusing my suggestion that the pregnancy be terminated so she can go her way. I can afford to pay her off to stay away from my husband and home.

I am really confused as to how to handle this issue as I cannot afford to share my husband with another woman let alone my paid help.

Although his family isn’t saying anything on the matter but I sense approval somewhere going by the utterances of his mother who blames me for not always being around.

I didn’t expect my husband who is a top lawyer to descend to the level of sleeping with a paid help or to have the time for that matter.

I wonder what kind of marriage he hopes to have with a lady who only managed to pass her Senior Secondary Certificate Examination.

Nothing much is coming from my parents too. Except for my immediate junior sister, I am almost on my own on this issue.

I am not too afraid of this ever happening because as a lawyer he knows the implication of marrying another wife since we got married in both the church and registry. I am prepared to go into legal tussle with him but how do I get this lady and my husband to agree to terminate this pregnancy?

Despite what has happened, I love my husband and want to keep my marriage. Besides, my son needs his father’s presence. I cannot imagine being unmarried.

Please help me find a solution because I lack the idea of how to go about it.

Timileyin.




Dear Timileyin,

You are arrogant! This attitude won’t help you regain your home and husband. If you are desperate to make your marriage work, please come down from your high horse and get real. The issue at hand has gone beyond what you want to what is practicable.

There is no way your husband or this girl would agree to the termination of a five months old pregnancy. If they agree to it, would it stop the two of them from meeting outside your home and continuing with their relationship or stop him from marrying her under native laws and customs? You can only sue if he marries under the common law but if he decides to do it under native laws and customs, there is nothing you can do about it.

Being a lawyer, he understands and knows the law better than you do so the possibility of you defeating him in court is very slim. Chances are he would have taken all the areas of the law into consideration before insisting the lady keeps the pregnancy.

Sincerely, you cannot afford to be confrontational because you are the cause of everything happening in your home. Had you devoted time to your family, cared for your husband, made out time to learn how to cook as well as prepare his meals on the weekend that you are at home, he won’t have any reason to look elsewhere. The fact that you didn’t notice that your paid help was pregnant until the pregnancy clocked five months speaks volume of the time you spend at home as well as the quality of attention you give to the people you live with.

If you were more attentive to your home, you would have long discovered that this lady is in the family way before this pregnancy got to this advanced stage.

Honestly, you are to blame for the mess your marriage has become. Men are like children. They only appreciate the hands that feed and care for them. What do you expect from a man you have neglected for your job? Whatever his educational background may be, he has feelings and is turned on by the simple things that make a man happy. Sexual feelings and urges are primitive so also are the basic things that make men happy. If the educated woman he married is not available, neglects his needs and prefers her official responsibilities to that she owes her family, is he to blame for wanting something different?

You gave your meal to the cat. The reason men marry is to have a woman to care for their needs as men. Not every man wants a show piece for a wife; most men want real women, the ones who can cook and care for their homes. This is the primary responsibility of any woman going into matrimony. If the house maid is good enough to care for your husband and child, care for your home, cook his meals as well as prepare his bed, then she is as well good enough to sleep on the bed she made.

If you were around, there is no way your man would have had all the time in the world to sleep and get your house maid pregnant without you noticing the closeness and acting fast to avert this kind of mess. The fact that an educated man like your husband is determined to allow her keep the pregnancy and marry her should warn you of the futility of you insisting on what you want.

You need humility to negotiate yourself back to relevance into the heart of this man. If your own parents appear not to be on your side, then you must have overdone it.

First, you need to mellow down on your insistence that the pregnancy be induced. This is one pregnancy you have to accept and deal with. The only way to deal with it is to offer this lady all the support to give birth safely. It is only after then that you can negotiate with your husband where the baby stays. Frankly, the best thing to do is to offer to be a mother to this child; take on the responsibility of caring and looking after this child.

But before then, you must decide which is more important to you. Your job or home! While no one is asking you to be a full time housewife, you must think of a job or business that would give you the time to be a mother and wife in every sense of it. You have to make yourself relevant and very available in his life and home to neutralise whatever advantage this other lady has over you.

Making such offer to your husband would show your seriousness at making this marriage work. Your efforts to make amends at this critical time would determine if he would become sorry or not.

It is tough but you must be prepared to suffer further humiliation by being stupidly humble in the process of getting your husband from the arms of this woman you unwittingly pushed him into.

Own up to your own mistakes in your attempts to work something out with him. This is not time for you to blame him for this mess. You have to soften him first before blaming him for his weakness as a man.

Anger and trading blame won’t help you now. To do that would be to kiss away your marriage and home. There is no marriage without challenges but the wisdom and determination of the woman in the house often than not ascertain where the marriage would eventually berth. You must find out apart from the obvious ones the other things that you are doing wrong to have made your husband look elsewhere. You only found out because the woman in question is your house-help. Had he decided to do it far from home, you wouldn’t have known until the situation got really out of hands.

For the sake of the love you have for your home, be prepared to do whatever you have to do to make this marriage work for you including praying for the mindset to put the important things on the front burner.

Good luck