I’m the houseboy, sex machine, alias husband…

Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626 Dear Agatha, Two years ago, I met and married this woman eight years older than I am. As at the time I met her, I was desperate for financial assistance. My business wasn’t going as it ought to. Nothing seems to be going in my favour. My girlfriend of five years was also mounting pressure on me to get married because time wasn’t on her side anymore at 32. I was getting fed up with everything when she chanced into my life. Right in front of my office, her car broke down. Observing her through the windows, I knew she knew next to nothing about car. She looked like one used to giving orders and being driven. I had to come down the stairs to assist her with the car. That was how we became friends. Before I knew what was happening we had become a pair. Naturally my girlfriend, who got very angry and upset with the whole thing, fought her. It was all the excuse I needed to end the relationship. Despite pleas from family members and friends, I ignored everybody and went ahead with my decision to marry this woman who by then had given me N2million to boost my business. Without informing my family, I agreed to go to the Registry with her. I only informed my parents after the ceremony was over. Her friends were our witnesses. It was after I married her that the scale fell from my eyes. I am nothing but a glorified houseboy and sex machine. I also discovered that her children, three of them, are fathered by different men who are responsible for her upkeep. They are all influential men, from the three main tribes of Nigeria. They all pay her well to keep the children off public glare. She is equally into blackmailing these men for one juicy contract or the other. When any of these men comes to the house, she introduces me as one of her staff. That day, she would not allow me near her room and right in my presence sleeps with them. Any attempt by me to assert my position as her husband usually meet with denial of money and the little luxury she allows me. Sometimes when her other male friends come, she sends me to sleep in the boy’s quarters. The children neither respect any of her friends nor me. On two occasions, she actually urged me to sleep with one of her friends; when I refused, she ordered my office closed and all the cars I drive seized. Whenever I oppose her, she will cut me off everything. She only allows me near when she needs me in her bed. I feel used. The worst thing is that my former girlfriend found someone else and got married about a month ago. I discovered I still love her and want her back in my life. My business isn’t moving as I want to. I feel so helpless and don’t know what to do. From the little I have seen of her, she won’t hesitate to kill me if I attempt to leave her. She is too connected for someone like me to mess around with. The beating up of one lady I tried to date early this year shows she can be very ruthless. I feel like I am in prison. Please how to do I get out of this can of marital bondage I have committed myself into? I want a real marriage where I can have children. This woman isn’t ready to have children with me. She married me for reasons best known to her. The only time I ate her meal was the day we got married. I get invited to her room whenever she needs me. I don’t know what to do at all. Terry. Dear Terry, You have a choice to continue to live under the conditions she has imposed on you or do the manly thing of walking out of the charade you call a marriage. Even though you married her out of selfish reasons, greed to get access to her money, the fact that she sleeps with other men under your nose is enough reason for you to file for a divorce if you want to. This is in addition to asking you to sleep with her friends. You have every ground to ask for an annulment of this marriage. But it is something you must be prepared to go through. Nobody can make you stay if you don’t want to. You are still married to her and enduring the situation because of greed. Another man would have asked to leave the very first time she introduced you as her staff to her male friends. The fact that you stayed, agreed to play the role of a staffer while the men slept in her room portrays you as a young man determined to do anything for money. Unless you are truthful to yourself, you will never have the motivation to end this thing. If you are honest with yourself, you must have seen one or two signs in the beginning that told you the kind of person and marriage you were going into. But because you wanted to reap where you didn’t sow, you went into it ignoring the pains your action would bring on your ex and your parents. The woman settled for you because she knew from the beginning that you aren’t the kind of man that would give her problems in her business and life. She wanted someone she could cage, bend to fit into her cupboard of tricks to play the role of a husband to her. She threw some money at you and you did exactly what she wanted. The fact that you were willing to turn your back on your five-year-old relationship and parents for the chance to marry her confirmed her précis of you. Only greed could have made a man act the way you did. It is rather too late in the day to wish for your ex. God has compensated her with another man. So allow her be. You clearly didn’t value her when you had her to yourself. Another man did and has demonstrated that by marrying her. There are two major kinds of marriages. One we go into with love and happiness, and the other with the motive of greed. Sincerely, beyond telling you to take a complete work from this marriage, there is no other help that can be offered you. But one thing is for certain, once you get to that point when you can no longer endure the humiliation, the fear you have of her killing you or doing something to you will disappear. That is the point when your endurance level disappears; the peak when the fear you have now will completely disappear. By then, the urge to be free and have a proper marriage, live within your means and grow the needed respect as a man will make you act. But until that time comes, nobody can make you see reason because right in the middle of your dissatisfaction with her now is her refusal to give you the kind of money you expected from her. Granted that you sometimes have the vision of having a normal marriage, you are still too much into what you can get from her. You must be honest enough to ask yourself why you married her. Once you are clear about this, you will know what to do with yourself, life and this marriage. No life is worth its glow without certain measure of risks. In the same way, there are different kinds of deaths. You can elect to stay in this marriage and kill your essence as a man or take the risk of being killed by recovering your self worth as man. Good luck.