She pushed me out and took over my home

Dear Agatha, Please help me deliver my marriage from the claws of this desperate woman that has taken over my husband and marriage. The woman happens to be my former friend. She was the one I turned to when I was having challenges in my marriage. She was the one who told me how to put my husband in check by taking me to see her pastor who gave me a substance to put in my husband’s food. She was also the one who told me to deny my husband sex, refuse to accept the amount he was giving me as house-keeping money with the argument that it was too small for me to do anything tangible with; who taught me how to wear clothes my husband didn’t like. She was the one who also taught me how to lie to my husband to enable me attend parties organized by her and friends. There was nothing I didn’t tell her about my marriage. Since she claimed her husband and children were abroad, I believed everything she told me to do. The last straw that sent me packing out of the house was when my husband in livid annoyance slapped me for lying to him about my whereabouts. I had accompanied this friend of mine to a party and we stayed so late. I didn’t know my husband was back from his trip. When I got home, rather than apologise to him, I instead told him off; with the argument that if he can afford to keep late nights so can I. Anger made him to slap me and I didn’t hesitate to reply with a slap of my own. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep inside the house that night. He threw me out. I called my friend to inform her of the development and told her I was coming over to her house. She told me she wasn’t at home; that I should go over to my parents whose house was at Ibafo. I didn’t understand what was happening until some few months later after she kept rejecting my calls that I heard she has packed into my home. According to my house-help who traced my parents house, my friend came to see my husband the next morning with the story that I went to see one of my numerous boyfriends and that she was fed up with advising me against my kinds of friends and lifestyle. I learnt she also told my husband that she didn’t allow me come to her house because I am not the kind of friend she wanted to be known with. I was told she never went back to her house after that night which explained why she kept rejecting my calls and the reason my husband never bothered to come to see me and our two children despite my father and his people pleas. I am perplexed because I need my husband more than ever before. I know she used charms to trap my husband but how can I make him believe me? I tried going to his office but he has left instruction that I never be allowed in. His friends, I contacted, he fought them all. Please, Agatha, help me get my husband back, I beg you. I love him very much. Desperate Wife. Dear Desperate Wife, Isn’t this realization coming too late? You don’t treat a man you love the way you treated your husband. Love and respect go hand in hand. You cannot be in love with a man you obviously lack respect for. Earnestly, you asked for it. How could you be so foolish as to entrust your life and home to somebody whose history you don’t know? If you were that familiar with her, you would have known if she was telling the truth about her marital status. Even if it’s true her husband and children are abroad, didn’t it occur to you to pause to think what she was doing in Nigeria when her family was abroad? Her story should have warned you that something was definitely wrong somewhere for her to be living apart from her family. Children usually stay with their mother and not their father. What were you looking for; a married woman in parties at night? Did it ever occur to you that you were setting yourself and marriage up for failure? What responsible woman leaves her children to party with single women till late in the night and stands up to slap her husband? Does it mean you couldn’t think for yourself or resist the overbearing influence of a friend you met in your mid-life? How can you explain a mother and wife coming home at the time you said you came in? Even if something happened that made you stay back that late in the party, shouldn’t you have gone on your knees immediately to beg your angry husband? In the first place, why would you attend a party without your husband’s permission and when he travelled? You didn’t stop at that: you slapped him in return for a situation you created? If this man never comes back to you, you asked for it. Your smart so called friend doesn’t have to use juju to keep him. You foolishly gave her every weapon to fight you. From everything you told her, she knows your husband like the palm of her hand. She knows what he likes, how he wants certain things done; what he expects from his woman and with the knowledge she has of you, would do everything possible to avoid your mistakes. A determined and smart woman knows the right words, buttons and attitude to employ to get a man she wants. Your foolishness has become her gain. Even if she deployed other means to trap him, you offered your home to her on a platter of gold. Frankly, it would be a while for your husband to get out of this woman’s clutches. She is a fool and would have put in place structures to ensure he doesn’t wake up from whatever spell she might have cast on him. For her to befriend and send you out of his life without you knowing her real motive, you can bet, she is several steps ahead of you. The sad thing is that you unwittingly destroyed whatever happy memory your husband has of you through the kind of attitudes you put up. Is it your rudeness, the guts of replying his slap, your suspicious lifestyle and neglect of your family, you want him to remember and come back to? Through the help of this woman, you thoughtlessly erased whatever fond memories your husband had of you. Unwisely, you also created suspicions in his mind regarding the paternity of those children. Unfortunately, when a woman adopts a careless and suspicious lifestyle, her children are usually the first to be rubbished. Your husband is most likely to believe what your friend said because of the evidences your recklessness have presented him. If he isn’t bothered about your children, it is because he thinks; you may have foisted their pregnancies on him. In his shoes, given the kind of things you have done through the active support of your so called friend, would you blame him for not wanting to see you and your children? Granted they are his, but in his current frame of mind, he is clearly not ready to listen or reason along that line. Even if he wants to come back, there is nothing so compelling about your person he wants again in his life. In addition, your friend might also have told him that you are a frequent visitors to the homes of herbalists and spiritualists, an accusation you cannot deny since you through her support have actually visited one of them and laced your husband’s food with a substance given you. For now, let him be to avoid causing more harm to your marriage. This isn’t the time you strike when the iron is at its hottest. The wisdom here is to allow this very iron cool; give your friend the false security in her new position as the woman of the house before appearing again. Only a woman who is alive fights over a man. Your friend is desperate enough to kill so, be careful. If you have a job, re-order your life by learning from your past mistakes. Save to get a place of your own so that you and your children can begin life anew. That done, pray to God for His help in freeing your husband from the claws of this woman. If you trust in God; have the confidence that there is no situation above Him, you will get your husband back but you must be prepared to make the sacrifice by being patient as well as learning the supreme lesson of humility. As long as you are willing to learn from all these, you will smile again. Good luck.