Thursday, November 10, 2011

Before lust for my boss ends my marriage…

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


Dear Agatha,

I am in love with my boss. I have done everything to fight my feelings for him but none of it is working. I know he is married, have met his wife severally as well as his children but these are not enough to make me fall out of love with him.
The irony of it all is that I am married too. But each time, when in the arms of my husband, I yearn for his. It is simply driving me crazy.
The issue now is that I recently cried out his name while my husband was making love with me. This is really causing crisis in my home as my husband is insisting I explain my relationship with him. Nothing I have said has convinced him that I am really not having an affair with my boss.
He is threatening to confront my boss and that would mean losing my job, which is very lucrative. I really don’t know what has come over me because despite the problems brewing in my home over it, my feelings for him haven’t changed.
I feel like sleeping with him irrespective of what happens after.
A friend I shared my problem with said I am suffering from a severe case of infatuation. The whole thing is making really crazy. My marriage is in trouble and all I can think of is my lust for a man who doesn’t see me as a woman?
The whole thing is getting out of hand and I urgently need your help before I lose my marriage of 10 years with two children as well as my job if the threats of my husband are anything to go by. Already, he has reported the matter to my mother who is even more confused than I am over the matter.
How can I get out of all these mess?
Confused Wife.

Dear Confused Wife,

Unless you take a firm grip on yourself, you risk losing everything over nothing. How can you explain calling out another man’s name while in the arms of your husband? In his shoes, how would you feel? Do you really expect him to believe your story that nothing is going on between you and this man? Everyone would think something intimate or special must have been going on between the two of you to call out his name in passion when you were intimate with your husband.
The sad thing about all these is the needless burden you would be bringing to this man and his family if your husband makes good his threat. How do you want him to explain to his family and the world that he is innocent of your obsession with him? If you were his wife, do you think you can bring yourself to trust him again or trust him enough to defend him? For you to call out a man’s name in passion takes a different kind of feeling.
It is therefore in the interest of everyone concerned that you take a firm grip of yourself. You are not a dreamy eyed teenager who sees life through rose tinted glasses. You are a mother, an adult that knows the implication of what this kind of passion can do. Don’t drag this man down for something he isn’t guilty of. There is nothing as painful as being made to suffer for an offence one is blameless of. If you can manage your spouse at the end of the day, would he be able to make his wife believe him that he knows nothing about your feelings for him?
If you truly have something deep for this man, for his sake, fight this feeling with your entire mind. Doubtless, we don’t determine our feelings towards people, but we can fight them if we want to. That is what adulthood and responsibility demand. At every point in life, we should be able to take responsibilities for our actions at every point. Once, we are unable to publicly account for our actions, it then becomes not just a burden to us but also to the people around us. This matter of your feelings has gone beyond you; it is now the concern of everyone around you.
It has become the burden and shame of your mother whose motherly skills and values are coming under scrutiny. If you get kicked out of your home on account of infidelity, irrespective of whether you did it or not, it would bounce back to her nurturing of you just as it would make people including your husband, question the paternity of your children.
When a woman’s reputation comes under doubts, she rubs it off on everyone close to her.
If you have been married for a decade, it means you are not a young woman oblivious of the gravity of not being able to discipline her emotions. What has this man got to offer you that you are not getting from your husband? For you to survive 10 years of marriage, a lot of efforts and sacrifices must have gone into it on either side. So why waste all those years for something that isn’t real, that exists only in your imagination?
However, your feelings underscore lack of satisfaction with something in your marriage. Can you identify that thing? It is time for you to think deep. Granted that a time comes in a marriage when it becomes so boring and one is tempted to look for excitements outside; it behooves couples in such instances to sit down and talk.
Rather than allow your imagination grow your feelings for this man, the ideal thing would have been for you to pause and ask yourself what is so special about your boss that is making you go weak at the knees.
Your feelings are not the wrong things, but the way you are handling it. Every attempt should have been made by you to import those feelings into your marriage and relationship with your husband.
Having lived with him for 10 years, your relationship should have gotten to a point of being able to handle everything. Although it would have been difficult to tell your husband what you are feeling for another man but not out of place to discuss your emotional confusion with him.
Being your husband, he would have been able to help you manage the situation by drawing closer to you.
Sincerely, it isn’t too late for you and your husband to mend fences. All you have to do is tell him the truth regards your feelings and thoughts concerning your boss.
You have no choice at this junction, but to admit what happened. It would enable both of you realise all the things that are wrong with your union. Without both of you really taking time out and confronting your challenges, your marriage won’t survive this problem. Whatever it is that you are not saying or afraid to admit to yourself, this is the time to say it, so that your life and marriage can move forward.
You have gotten to that point you cannot pretend everything is okay with you and your marriage anymore.
Telling him the truth would also encourage him to open up on issues he has also been pretending are normal. Once these issues are in the open, it would help your marriage a great deal, no matter how unpalatable they may appear in the beginning.
Besides talking, there is also the need to stay very close to God. Although many dismiss references to the spiritual in certain matters as baseless, but the truth is that there is no ignoring the possibility that what you are going through has some spiritual links.
On your own pray and ask God for help in confronting and defeating it. Even if you and your husband are able to resolve this, if it was spiritually programmed to destroy your home, no amount of dialogue will help. Only a close relationship with God can defeat this power of lust.
You may also have to consider leaving your job for something else. Your husband may insist on it as a precondition for resolving this crisis. Don’t fight him over it. Besides, if you continue to work in that office, you will never be able to completely overcome your feelings for this man.
No amount of money you make from that office is worth the happiness of your home and children. There is more to life than money. If leaving the job and vicinity of your boss would preserve the respect your children have for you as a mother and earn you peace in your marriage, please do it.
The action would go a long way in convincing your husband of your innocence. It is one sacrifice that won’t be too much for you as a mother and wife to make for the stability of your home. It is called removing yourself from temptation’s way.
Just continue to always ask God for help.
Good luck.