I can’t live to trust him again…

Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626


Dear Agatha,

I have been married for 24 years now. Two years ago, I discovered my husband has a love child and when I went to him to confirm if the information is true or not, he told me he wasn’t ready to talk to me about it.

But recently he woke me up not only to confirm the existence of this child who is 22 years of age, but also to inform me of his intentions to invite him over to the house.

I was shocked that for 22 years not only has he kept such vital information from me but that he has also being unfaithful for that long. I plan to end my marriage because I don’t think I can bring myself to trust him or believe anything he says again.

Mrs. Idagu.

Dear Mrs. Idagu,

Definitely the presence of a 22 years stepchild in a marriage of 24 years of age should shock you. You won’t be human if you don’t feel betrayed and pained at what your man has done to you.

You are equally right to feel that you can never trust him again as well as wanting to put as much distance between you and the man capable of hiding such important information from you.

Yes, the first impulse is to end the marriage but when you reflect on all you have been through as a person and as a couple, you will discover that going your different ways may not look so enticing at the end of the day.

So many things and factors make marriage the mixture of the bittersweet experience it is. The patterns are often too complex and confusing for us to interpret correctly. Trying to attribute a particular pattern to the institution often than not leaves a person very mystified and tired.

Because marriage draws its strength from the complexities of the human mind, it is only logical that from time to time, it would suffer major setbacks as well as hurtful experiences.

Doubtless, the fact that he could hide such a fundamental information from you all these years, makes this case extremely full of twists and turns but not enough for you to make you forget all the struggles, aches, peace and joy you have invested into the survival of the choice you made more than quarter of a century ago.

For you to have stayed with him all these years, something very right must be going on in your marriage. You may not have taken note of the reason until now but doing so now would help you recover all that you are about to throw away because of the disappointment you are now feeling towards your husband and marriage.

But take time out of all the pains and betrayals that have now characterise your marriage and go back to the very beginning. Trust me, this is the time your marriage needs such sentimental trips to the beginning of it all.

What was the attraction then? I am sure a lot of men must have come to you, with all sorts of proposals before he came to you. For you to have settled for him, you must have seen something different, a special feature that makes him completely different from all the other men whose offers you turned down.

Can you recall what that is or why you found all the other men unsuitable for you?

This is the crucial time you need such aids to help point you at the right directions. You need to have something very tangible to hold on to, something very personal between the two of you to make you want to stay and fight for your happiness. If you continue to focus only on your pains and sense of betrayal, it might not be easy for you to ignore the pains of this moment or the determination not to group this child with the father.

We all go through very dry spells in life and marriage especially. At almost every turn, the institution manifests thorns and needles that keep puncturing into emptiness all our carefully laid out plans.

Without doubts, stepchildren weren’t part of your plans when you married him but now that it has happened, there is nothing you can do to change reality.

This is one of the nightmares of many women, but one majority of marriages is daily contending with which means you don’t have a patent for it.

Given the age of your marriage and this child, chances are he and your first child would be within the same age bracket, which means you must thread your reactions with a lot of caution. Wisdom demands you allow him come into your home first, give you both the necessary opportunity to talk as two adults without the presence of his father.

For the sake of your children in particular, you must not do anything that would aggravate the situation especially against the background that he is a son and for the reason that your husband is one of those men who doesn’t talk much. It is always very easy when provoked to lump things together. If you are too hostile to his son and him, he may be driven to become hostile to your children irrespective of the salient fact that they are his children too.

The momentary hurt of your rejection of him and his son may make him also reject you as well as your children. For this reason be careful because whatever you do now would boomerang on your children. African men and their families are always very sentimental about things like this. If you don’t handle it with care, focus would shift from what he did to righteousness of your reactions. Those who may have supported your cause would be forced to offer protection to this young man against your children.

Whether you walk away from this marriage or not, it won’t change the paternity of your children or their relationship with this young man.

Besides, natural inquisitiveness of the young may not make them support your decision to leave their father because of this man. The excitement of meeting and getting to know him may pit you against one or two of them.

After 24 years of marriage, where do you want to start? Why do you want to leave your home at this time for a marital offence that is as old as time itself? What would be your gain? Would it change the way the man feels about his child or make the child vanish into thin air?

In addition to meeting the boy, insist your husband making him talk about it. Let him know you are very hurt and disappointed at him. That your pains don’t come from knowing he has a child but that he could keep the information from you for 22 years. Tell him his attitude makes you completely afraid of the many other things he could be hiding from you.

It would afford him the opportunity to explain the reasons for his actions as well as provide you with clues to how his mind works and his assessment of you.

That he could keep the information from you all these while might not only be out of fear but something deeper. Do you know what it could be? Knowing it could be the key to a lot of the challenges you are going through in your home. Besides you ought to know who the mother of your stepson is, his history as well as person. Don’t forget he shares a fundamental history with your children, an important one you must never take for granted.

This might be the best opportunity for you both to revisit some unpleasant scenes in your marital journey. What are your own faults too? Can you imagine why he went to this other woman so early in your marriage? What were you like then?

This calls for absolute sincerity because it is the only way this matter can be buried for good. What sort of home did you give him back then? Though it is no excuse for him to do what he did, but most men only need the slightest reason to misbehave.

If you fail to look deeply into the past, to appreciate all the mistakes you both made in your early years, you may never be able to move beyond this point.

Some of the major mistakes and damage we do to our marriages go back to the very beginning, especially the first seven years. Those years set the major pattern in our marriage. Once the euphoria of the wedding becomes over and a couple settles down to the process of marriage, if care is not taken, those nascent years may drown all their hopes leaving the marriage an empty shell of regrets and broken promises.

While not trying to pre-empt him, your combined mistakes of those early years may have brought about this problem and the fact that you both managed to stay together all these years doesn’t mean the problems caused by your early attitudes went away.

If you are truthful, you would notice that the people you are now aren’t the same people that signed the wedding register 24 years ago. The years have redefined your person and this isn’t because you are getting older and wiser, rather it has more to do with the disappointments. Most times we have learnt to adjust our attitudes along the line of not wanting to be disappointed anymore than we are instead of along the line of understanding that as individuals trying to build a home, pains and disappointments are parts of the natural processes.

Wherever it would come from, forgive him, because leaving your home would only create an opening for another to enjoy your investment and hard work. You have worked to make him achieve whatever he has achieved – this is your time to reap. Nothing is worth leaving your labours for another to gain.

Don’t give another woman the satisfaction of getting into your home from the back doors.

Above all, learn to pray because God has all the answers.

Good luck.