He wants me to monitor his wife

With Auntie Agatha

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

Dear Agatha,

I live in this kind of compound where everybody pretends to mind his or her business. I used the word, pretend because we all seem to know what is going on inside the private rooms of one another.

There are six flats in our house and the landlord occupies the two flats at the last floor. He has three wives and several children.

From what we gather each time there is an outbreak of fight between the man and his wives, the women are in charge of taking care of the children.

The first wife is an established business woman so her children are better off. The last wife came in as a full time housewife. By the time she had her first child, she realized the mess she was in. she practically became a nuisance to all the tenants as she begged for money to take care of her needs.

Sometimes, the first wife would give her money to buy things for the baby. By the time the second child came, she became desperate to find a job or begin a business. It was at that time, the husband started romancing another woman so he didn’t bother with her anymore.

I don’t know what happened but there is this man in our compound the other tenants are rumoring gave her substantial money to begin a business. She has even bought a car and is hardly seen at home. 

The wife of the tenant who has been away for sometime is also complaining and threatening to deal with whosoever is trying to destroy her home.

But the problem I have now is that our landlord has enlisted me and my flat-mate to monitor his wife and report back to him. He has promised to write off our outstanding rents if we come up with reports of his younger wife’s illicit affair with the tenant.  

He has also threatened to tell the wife of another tenant of my affair with her husband if my flat-mate and I don’t play ball. 

I don’t know what to do because I may have my own moral issues but monitoring his wife? I don’t know what to do. Furthermore, do I tell his wife about this issue? I’m close to the woman in question.

Confused Lady.

Dear Confused Lady,

If the landlord has problems in his family, let him manage it his own way. You were not there when he decided to get married to this particular wife or took the decision to manage his home the way he liked.

Marriage is a personal decision of the persons involved. Your landlord knew his limits before deciding to go into polygamy. He knew the consequences of getting married to women he can’t adequately provide for. Marriage isn’t just about producing children; it is also about a man taking responsibility for the children born to him.

What right thinking man asks his unemployed wife to care for her children? Where is he expecting such a woman to get the money from? Is donating sperm the only thing that makes him a husband and father? The moment a man fails to play his role as father and husband, he abdicates every right he has over the woman to other men that find his wife attractive.

Before any man can make such a law, he must have done the right thing of setting the woman up in business or employment. What makes him a father if he cannot provide for the children he fathered? Whose name are the children answering to?

Even though the lady in question is reaping the fruits of her greed by marrying a man who already has two wives, the truth is, it is their private matter.

While I’m not defending the decision of the woman to have an affairs don’t get involved in his private affair. If a man cannot manage his home, he shouldn’t get others involved in his mess.

The worst he can do is to ask you to quit his house; it won’t be the end of the world for you.

Although you also haven’t acted right by dating another woman’s husband and a neighbour for that matter; don’t allow the landlord use your indiscretion to make you do something you don’t ever want to do.

The truth is, if you fall for his threats now, he will keep using it to blackmail you into doing whatever he wants you to do, including also having his way with you.

You should ask yourself why he came to you and your flat-mate? Aren’t there other tenants in the house he could have asked for this kind of assistance? He came to you because he is aware of the kind of life-style you have adopted.

Given the kind of things his wife has acquired of recent as well as the gossips about them, he definitely knows what is happening but is looking for an excuse to force you into sharing his bed.

Besides, your secret is an open among the tenants. The woman you want to monitor may also be aware; the wife of the man who she is having the affair with his landlady may also not be ignorant of your games with the other tenant and could be referring to you when she declared war on the woman attempting to destroy her home.

Something tells me the landlord isn’t as concerned about his wife’s escapades as he appears to be. He certainly has something up his sleeve which at the end of the day may not be in your interest at all.

If it is his wife he wants to expose, it is a simple matter of paying someone to trail the wife and her lover to their hideout. He doesn’t need you to do his dirty work. There is something more at stake here.

You may have offended him and he is now out to have his pound of revenge or simply looking for ways to evict you from his house. Whatever his plans are; they are ominous for you especially as he knows you are close to the wife in question. He might just be under the impression that you know one or two things about his wife’s movements and escapades.

This could be one of his reasons for asking you to monitor and report back to him his wife’s movements.

Therefore, the time has come for you to move and redefine your life because even if you get a serious man interested in marrying you; that isn’t the kind of place to bring him to as people would expose your past to him.

I don’t think you should get yourself involved with the man or woman either. Once you tell her of her husband’s plans, you are already involved. They are all adults and know the implications of what they are doing.

Like I said before, greed was her motivation in agreeing to the marriage. Her decision also to go outside her home for the material things of life is also greed driven.

Once you decide to tell her, it means, you have compromised and therefore under obligations too to report your findings to her husband.

When next he demands for a report of the assignment he gave to you, nicely explain to him that you don’t have any to give him; that you may have made mistakes in your life but you don’t want the extra burden of knowing you helped to destroy another woman’s home. That if he has any issue with her, he should personally do what he has to do as a man and not use you to achieve whatever he has in mind.

For your sake, begin the process of relocating from the place and beginning a kind of life your income can sustain.

Good luck.