My Second Child Belongs To Her Boss…Want Her Out Now

Dear Agatha,

I got married 17 years ago to a woman who has turned out to be my ruin. She is not only a compulsive nag, but I discovered she is also a liar as well as a very fetish person.

All these wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t stumbled on the fact that my second daughter isn’t mine. I discovered the truth when my first daughter came back from school with a letter written by the school authority that all new students of the school must, as part of their admission letter to the university, go for blood texts on HIV, blood group and genotype.

My wife was out of the country, so I went with her to the laboratory. Since her younger sister too was also interested in going to that school after her SSC examinations next year, I decided to take her along with me too.

You can therefore imagine my surprise when the results came out. The two results were very dissimilar. Both her genotype and her blood group didn’t match her sister’s whose results bore semblance to mine.

I didn’t know what to make of it. My wife and I were both AA and O positive, but she was AS and A. I took the result to our family doctor, who knew all along, that something was wrong with my second daughter’s medical history.

Being close to the family, he refused to be drawn into anything. He told me to wait for my wife to come back before jumping into the wrong reasons.

For the first time since marrying her, she didn’t say much when I confronted her with the results. The tears in her eyes as well as her attitude confirmed my suspicions; my second child wasn’t my biological daughter.

According to her, she belonged to her former boss, who raped her while on an official assignment to Jos. She said she didn’t know how to tell me because I might not have believed her.

I recall the haste and anger under which she left the job at that time despite not having another job then.

This girl happens to be my favourite, the real star of the family and despite knowing the details of her birth; I still love her with all my heart.

The truth is, in another circumstance, I would have forgiven my wife but given her attitude over the past years, I want to use this opportunity to drive her away from my home and life. I realised I made a terrible mistake marrying her but how do I drive away my wife without it affecting the children. My mother who has been having a running battle with my wife wants my wife to go but insists the child is mine, traditionally. Eight years ago, she tried to poison my mother. It was this girl who saw her mother and raised an alarm against her. But for her boldness to challenge her mother, my own mother would be dead by now. For this, my mother loves her more than all her grandchildren put together.

My wife told me that she took the decision to end my mother’s life because she was told that my mother was the cause of her inability to conceive after her second child.

I am confused. Please help me. I don’t want my daughter to go but I don’t want the mother in my life again.

Charles.

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Dear Charles,

I want you to appreciate that marriage is a bumpy journey of many ups and downs. It is a journey threaded in a web of conspiracy, intrigues, politics, friendship, secrets and all other emotions. At no point in it are the answers very clear. Only determination makes it possible for two people, from completely alien backgrounds, ideologies, temperaments and perspectives to life to continue to live together.

She nags because this is her person, it is part of the person you fell in love with, and whom you have stayed with for 17 years.

If she were that bad, would you have still stayed with her for all these years? Is her classification of being a bad wife a label to do away with her in the light of the secret she has kept all these years; to finally grant your mother’s long wish of getting rid of her enemy? Until now, why didn’t the issue of her trying to poison your mother elicit the concomitant reactions from you, insisting she leaves your house on the grounds of cruelty and criminal tendency? The crime of trying to kill your mother is dead serious, if true. If you didn’t take very serious actions against her, it means somewhere in your maze of confusion, you still love her. You may not understand if it is unconditional love but it is only such kind of love that would make a man still keep the woman who tried to poison his mother under his roof without fears that she might be tempted to use the remaining substance on him.

To get past the immediacy of your current pains, look at the mystery of what has kept you together for these years? Precisely, what have made you endured her shortcomings, even when you are going through so much pain and disappointment with the choice you made to marry her?

This is the time for you to be truthful to yourself, to go beyond what you see to those things you don’t see but only get to know when you take the time to look deeper.

Beyond the pains of now and the changes we all go through during marriage is a feeling we must learn to deal with.

This is your primus test, one that would either make or mar your marriage. What is this feeling saying? It is very important you deal with this feeling before moving on to other things because it holds the key between happiness and regrets.

If you are able to decipher this feeling correctly, forgiving her would be easy. It may not come suddenly but at least it would make conversation, reasoning and decisions on the way forward very easy.

The tragedy of being unable to have a matured discussion on this matter is the danger it presents to the family you have built over the years. From your own admission, the girl in question is your favourite as well as that of your mother. What would be your excuse for terminating her closeness to you, her love for you and yours for her? Is your love for her simply on the premise of her being your daughter only or the person that encases her body? Does your love have to do with the hopes she represents by her special gifts, her promises for the future and the dreams embedded in her own achievements as a person?

If your love for her is simply based on the fact that she is your daughter and nothing more, then it might be difficult for you to continue enduring her presence in your life, in which case, it would be easy for you to transfer the affection to your real daughter. In this case you would not lose much by asking your wife to go with her daughter because at that point she ceases to be your daughter altogether and becomes the sole responsibility of the woman who gave birth to her.

But if the love is more profound, with a combination of all the other things, it would be impossible for you, to let go. In your hurt and pains, you would always remember with clarity the first time she was placed into your arms, her first smile, word and step. You would not fail to remember all those things that make her history and yours interwoven. It means over the years, that she has touched you in no other way anybody has been able to do.

The implication of not having her in your life would be the death of a part of you.

For the sake of this girl, whom you have come to love as yourself; whose presence gives you the fulfillment of a father, who has been able to bridge the gap between your mother and wife forgive her.

I know it is hard to forgive a deceit, a person who kept such earth-shaking secret from you. But it is too late in the day to punish her for it because the life of an innocent party would be affected if the wrong decision is taken.

If truly she was raped by her boss, would you have believed her if she had told you then? Would you have given her a chance to defend herself considering it happened in a hotel room during an official assignment? It would have been easy for you to take on the wrong end of the stick. While not trying to defend her decision to have kept the information away from you, but we are all humans. Some situations leave us with no other choice but to keep quiet about certain things. At the point she did it, it wasn’t meant to hurt you or anybody but to secure her home and preserve the love and dignity of the man she married. How would you have felt knowing that another man defiled your wife? Would your ego have been able to take it back then?

Nothing happens without the knowledge of God. He may have planned the secret to be revealed at the point He knows you would be more matured to handle it.

You must also consider the fact that she too was a victim. The fact that she was raped and got pregnant from the unpleasant experience and has had to endure the secrets with all the attendant fears and dread of being found out is more than enough punishment for her. It isn’t easy to keep such a secret and must have been relieved by all the development. At least now, she has the freedom in her heart to face life without fear.

Love is all about forgiveness and the best way is for us to look at our own inadequacies too as a person. In our own, shortcomings lie on the strength of another and in their own failures, our strength.

Both of you should use this opportunity provided by this incident to fine-tune your marriage. It is an opportunity for you to allow all your suppressed anger to overflow without care. After the storm comes the calm.

Marriage endures through the process of forgiveness and endurances. Once you make up your mind to forgive, God would make it very easy for you.

Good luck.

My Wife’s Been Sleeping With Her Boss

Dear Agatha,

My marriage is blessed with two children, 15 and 13 years of age. I thought I had the perfect marriage until I found out the truth concerning my wife and her boss. For close to five years, she has been having an affair with her boss, something almost all our friends knew about but didn’t know how to tell me. Even my younger sister knew about it but decided to keep sealed lips about it to avoid being implicated as the reason my marriage crashed.

Actually, nobody told me anything about my wife’s infidelity. I found out by accident. One day, two months ago, I had this sudden impulse to see her. That morning we had a bitter quarrel which had become frequent following her refusals to pay attention to the home and children. She was also avoiding making love to me as frequently as she used to when we first got married.

I can’t say when it started precisely but over the years, our lovemaking got increasingly far apart. In some months I would be lucky if she allowed me near her twice. Even those times were real struggles.

It got to a point, I had to source for my satisfaction elsewhere but she still remained my wife, the one woman I wanted to be with all the time.

Never one to report my family to anybody, I bottled everything inside of me. I wasn’t ready to fight her for sex. I felt it was too demeaning for me. I kept asking her what the problem was and she kept telling me nothing. She said her workload was the reason she wasn’t having too much time for the family. I offered to pay her salary so she could have more time for the children and me, but she labelled me selfish and arrogant. She even accused me of trying to kill her dreams.

That morning, for the first time I beat her up for mocking me as a sex starved man who can’t think straight, all because I tried enforcing my rights as her husband after six weeks of not having sex with my wife.

At this point, I didn’t know where all the problems were coming from. It was not until that day when I walked in on her and her boss kissing passionately in the man’s car at the car park. She was too engrossed that evening to observe my car. I simply couldn’t control myself as I gave her the beating of her life at her office car park.

I was beyond caring and was ready to face charges her office might bring against me.  Surprisingly, no member of the security came to her rescue, not even her lover, who zoomed off.

She didn’t come home that night. I didn’t care but she came the next day in company of her mother. She must have gone to Ibadan that night to get the mother who is more like a mother to me than an in-law.

She went on her knees with tears rolling down her eyes to beg for me to listen to her. Since I didn’t want to be rude to her I stormed out of the house without saying a word.

My greatest challenge now is the role of her family as well as my mother, who for some inexplicable reasons seems to love my wife unconditionally. They are all begging me to forgive her. She told the family at a meeting the entire truth about her infidelity. To her credit she didn’t hide anything from them, including how she has been treating the children and I.

She claims not to know how it all happened but that whatever powers the man had over her died the day she was caught. I hear that she isn’t the man’s first victim; that in all the places he has worked, he has a record of dating and destroying the homes of highly influential women he worked with.

Our mothers, especially mine, who is very spiritual insists she was under a spell hence her appeals to me to take her back. She has since resigned and is now willing to be a full time housewife but I don’t know what to do. Deep down I love her dearly but how can I forgive five years of torture and infidelity?

Agatha, help me because I am very hurt and the pain is still very fresh. For now, I simply want to be left alone, to lick my wounds and deal with the pains, not take her back and forget what she did to me. They all seem to think it is an excuse not to take her back. I want her back but I also want time to be on my own but nobody understands. How do I make them?

Daniel.

 

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Dear Daniel,

Your reactions are very normal and a natural path to achieving complete cure. There is no way you can immediately forget this incident without the assistance of time.

They may all misunderstand you because you are harping on the wrong reason for your wanting some time to be alone. You have to summon the patience you don’t have to push your point, focusing on the dangers ahead if you don’t first get rid of all the residues that arose from her relationship with this other man.

Irrespective of whether he used charms or not, some fact simply cannot be wished away. One of those facts is that while you struggled to enforce your rights at home, she gave willingly to another man. I guess this is one of the issues aching you, one you seem to be having problems forgetting. It is so because it has to do with your pride as a man.

I understand all the insecurities that come with such feelings, especially the one that has to do with insecurity, fear of her still not finding you good enough, of constantly comparing you with this other man.

Sit your family members down and explain that unless you take time off to sort out your fears, come to terms with all that has happened you may not be able to give her the type of attention and support to sail the ship of your relationship back on course.

Let them appreciate that being the injured party, there is no way your feelings can get back to normal without first allowing the efficacy of time heal you of all the different in-between emotions you have had to deal with during the last two months.

Make them understand that the time you need is essential and is not for you to get back at her but to ensure you both don’t go through the stress of your current situation. Tell them it is the only antidote to your being able to completely forgive her.

Since your mind is made up to have her back, allow her to move into the house because frankly that is the only means you can get your families to listen to you after which you can travel outside the country on your own.

Actually, this is something you can both negotiate outside other family members. She more than the others would understand your need to be alone at this important time provided she has your assurances not to abandon her. Whatever her misgivings may be, she has no choice but to give you all the support to become the person she unwittingly lost.

Beyond this is your need of the help of God. You need God now more than ever before to help you heal properly because a lot depends on you being able to forget this ugly incident once and for all.

Good luck. 

To Be A Good Wife

Dear Readers,

As promised we continue our discussion on the marriage institution this week.

Why does something so beautiful turn out to be so ugly as the years roll by? Why do we end up with more tears and pains than the joy we started with at the end of the day?

The answer is simple. Many times, when making the all-important choice of a partner, we limit our reasons to the immediate forgetting that the success of marriage depends more on the future.

Only a few men and women bother to look beyond the physical attributes of their partners to be. Women especially forget that it takes more than mere looks to keep a man’s interest in his home and marriage.

Women being the bedrock of their homes should wake up the cold fact that it takes more than a pretty face and sexy body to make a marriage work. It takes God’s wisdom and plenty of lessons in tolerance to turn a bad situation around.

The lessons don’t begin when a lady gets married, no; it goes back to when she is still young and in her mother’s house. Women both old and young need to refocus on their roles to make the institution work.

The era of pretences should stop. We should acknowledge once and for all that irrespective of whatever other dreams we nurse, the inordinate ambition of every woman is to end up being married. It is a thirst, which at one point in our life would never be assuaged by any means but meeting and ending up with a man of our own.

This is why some women become desperate and do all sorts of things to get hooked.

When women learn to stop playing games, the issue of working to make a marriage work would become a more serious subject in the everyday syllabus of women generally.

The fact that a woman drops her maiden name for the name of her husband means that God didn’t create man and woman to be equals so every woman should know from day one what her roles would be as a married woman.

Two captains cannot man a boat. One has to be the head while the other is a co-pilot to make things work. The marriage has the man as the head while the woman functions as the co-pilot. Her role is to provide a loyal support base to her husband. Give protection from the outside world through well thought out ideas and suggestions. Even if better than her man, never must this fact be obvious to anybody, not even the children. A good woman would do everything to protect the image, dignity and progress of her man even at her own expense. She should never maltreat her man, advertise his weaknesses to the outside world or tell anybody about his faults.

Unmasking her man in public encourages outside interference, which ultimately destroys the home. 

Men by nature are arrogant and very egoistic. So a woman in a higher position of authority than her husband must device ways to ensure the man doesn’t feel insulted by her offers to help. She has to take quality time out to study the man, know how he likes certain things done, what he feels most comfortable with so as to know how to package her offers while still making him appear to be in charge. When a woman is brash and rude in her ambiance, the tendency is for the man to begin to make up stories in his imagination about another man performing the roles he should be playing in the life of his woman.

When the man becomes suspicious, nothing the woman says makes sense anymore. He becomes violent, unreasonable and threatened. He begins to complain about almost everything and then he goes out to look for a woman who would make him feel like the man he is.

So, a woman must always have the right attitude in her marriage to make things work. A lot of things, sometimes very minor, could threaten the pride of a man or instigate his suspicion.

The right attitude constitutes showing absolute respect even when the man is misbehaving, learning to be humble and adopting a tireless patience. Yes, these things are very difficult especially when the accusations are baseless and the attitude of the man is uncalled for, but marital wisdom demands it of every woman because right from the beginning of creation, God invested the running of the home in her hands.

Besides, with the right attitude, a woman can get her man to do almost anything without him even realising it. Men by nature are babies who constantly need quality attention. The woman who plays her role of mothering them effectively earns the gold trophy of their heart and affection. She should at every point anticipate her husband’s needs as well as challenges even before he voices them.

To be a good wife, the young lady going into marriage must be ready to play the role of mother in addition to being a wife. To have next to the fairy tale happily ever after, a woman must be ready to make the necessary sacrifices from the beginning of her relationship with the man. Marriage is not idealism, it is not a dream so women should stop daydreaming and learn to focus on real issues. 

Most often than not, not only do women go into marriage with a set of ideals that are very far from reality but also insist on implementing these unworkable ideals to the detriment of the institution. When goal posts get changed at will, it causes a major disconcertment within the marriage, which in the long run could lead to a couple going their separate ways.

Therefore, a woman from the beginning must learn how to patent her marriage to suit the peculiarity of her husband’s personality.

To achieve this, a wise woman must from the very day she meets her man, begin a detailed study into his life, desires and dreams. She must make it her business to study her man like a good student a book so as to know what she is up against. The idea most women have of trying to change their men overnight is one of the high reasons marriages are collapsing day in day out.

No man can be changed with force or tricks. Change comes when respect is demonstrated. So, a woman must never marry a man, no matter how desperate, she knows from the onset has habits or attitudes she isn’t comfortable with. This also goes for men. Any habit a man or woman refuses to drop during courtship cannot be stopped during marriage.

So, every man or woman contemplating marriage must be honest and realistic about what he or she wants, what they would do as well as accept the differences in their attitude.

Couples must be willing to accommodate those things that cannot be changed about their spouses. It is what gives marriage its strength and character. We must strive first to achieve an individuality that makes it easy for us to bend to the will of our partners without the feeling of being forced to.

This principle draws strength from the character of our children. Because a particular child is difficult doesn’t make the child less of our own. When a couple is determined to succeed, learn to focus realistically, the friendship and maturity to deal with issues, differences in their character would only serve to strengthen the union instead of destroying it.

For any marriage to work, it is more than having children. When couples are unable to find the lyrics that best suit them, the one they understand, the blessing of children alone cannot make them stay together.

Even when the man is caught pants down with another woman, with the right understanding, such matters can be handled with the maturity it deserves without tearing the family apart. It requires an agenda of absolute reality in a business involving emotions to make it work.

Mutual respect is priceless. For a man to get the respect of his woman, he has to learn to be responsible. Responsibility entails providing for the family. A man doesn’t have to be rich to do this. Even when the woman is the breadwinner, responsibility is also about giving moral support to the woman and helping her in her roles as breadwinner and mother.

When a man puts pride aside, some of the issues that look so difficult would become easier to solve.

Both parties must work at achieving an understanding, which in difficult times work to save the union from needless struggles and pains.

Importantly, couples must learn to keep their families at bay. When men give their mothers and family members too much power and say in the running of their homes, anarchy is what they get at the end of the day. The tricky nature of women makes it impossible for two women irrespective of their different roles in the life of a man cooperate to help the man achieve peace in his life. So, a man should ensure he and not his mother is in charge of his home.

Above all, couples must never fail to pray always and give the reign of headship of the home to God.

Good luck. 

What Makes A Good Marriage?

Dear Readers,

Today, we aren’t going to treat any particular letter. Monday being my birthday, I decided to do something unusual, go into our clinic to discuss one common problem couples and singles have kept asking. A problem I cannot address comprehensively if responding to one of your letters. It is a problem causing many marriages severe aches and sometimes resulting in amputations or deaths.

It is an issue which is making many wonder at the merits of getting married or the reason for marriage itself generally.

Some have said it is only for baby making, this they can do without putting up with the associated complications marriages bring.

But is marriage only for baby manufacturing? What makes a good marriage? Why is the institution facing so many problems at a time?

Too late couples realise the wrong choices they made; wrong decisions they took and things they ignored when they still had time to make amends.

The morning after is the time of reality; when couples wake to behold the face of the stranger they have decided to spend the rest of their lives with. This wonderment soon transforms to severe irritations, disappointments as well as deep-rooted regrets, which if not properly managed could lead to the collapse of the union.

But how does something so wonderful at the beginning end up being so bad? How do people who once vowed to love each other till death part them end up being such bitter enemies?

So many factors come to play in the making of a good marriage. But first let us go back to the origin of marriage. What did God intend to achieve with it and what has gone wrong with His plan?

What has brought so much pains and confusion to a partnership that was designed at creation to bring so much joy and fulfilment to the human race?

God, in the Garden of Eden after creating Adam realised he needed a companion, a helpmate, someone to share his space and drive away the loneliness from his life.

In His wisdom, He took a rib from one of Adam’s to create him a helpmate—the bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

So why didn’t He simply form Eve from earth like He did Adam? The essence of this is to remind the woman of her place in a man’s life and the man, to always offer protection and care to the woman. And the fact that once the decision is made to become one, there is no going back because the bone removed from a man’s ribs cannot be put back, so also the blood that has come together cannot be separated.

Unfortunately, a lot of couples are oblivious of this. Women most especially forget that when they leave their parents’ home for their husband’s, new ways must give way to old ways.

Many things couples complain about in marriage actually started manifesting long before they took their vows; goes back to the time before they met.

How many young men and women prepare for the institution right from the time they start becoming aware of their bodies? How many youths actually study marriage like a compulsory subject; one that has the power to define who they become in future?

How many of us see the marriage institution as one we must do well in to make it in life? Important to what we become in life?

To address some of the problems couples have in marriage, young men and women must begin early to plan for their marriages long before they meet their partners. This stage entails that they have a real imagination, not the storybook idealism so many young ladies nurse. It entails being able to recognise from the beginning the potentials as well as the possibility of ending in marriage. This would save a lot of couples the headache of wrong choices as well as the characteristic regrets that come with it.

It would also help couples know what to focus on when they are having a relationship.

The success of marriage begins from the very first day a couple decides to date. This help to stabilize the couple as they deal with the politics of the early days of marriage, of combining families as well as their different schedules. These are must challenges which when combined with the task of self-discovery would be too much for a couple to handle without tempers flying and the use of unpardonable words.

Because marriage is more of who we are in the inside than what we look like on the outside, a lot of time is needed by any young man or woman to think of the sort of person that has the ability to bring out the best in him or her.

Just like we prepare for our studies and job interviews, young persons must learn to prepare for this institution they never graduate from.

Marriage requires understanding from both parties to survive difficult times. So the first quality is understanding. When a marriage has understanding partnership, most issues become easier to manage. Lack of understanding is the bane of most marriage because it breeds suspicion and disloyalty. When a woman understands the nature of her husband and the man his wife, nothing anybody says would cause problem between them. It makes it easier for them to second guess each other perfectly and know when an issue should not be brought up or reasons for certain actions without the explanation from the other party.

It makes the wife most especially able to handle the issue of infidelity. If when it happens, this understanding makes it possible for her to forgive.

With understanding comes unconditional friendship. To be friend with someone, you have to understand the person’s shortcomings. A knowledge of a person’s shortcomings makes it easier to make the necessary adjustments in favour of the friendship.

When couples learn to become friends, forgiveness comes easily and issues become easier to resolve. Unfortunately, many couples play up the issues of sex and love, refusing to appreciate that good sex can only happen when a couple functions in an atmosphere of pure friendship and understanding. Love also cannot happen without mutual respect, a solid by product of friendship.

Love is living oneself in another’s body. Love is taking in the complete essence of another person without complains, suspicions, impatience as well as tolerance.

Therefore, for love to happen, plenty of selfless sacrifices have to have taken place because love always demands of us something very precious. But because most people have succeeded in juxtaposing sexual feelings for the real thing, marriages are increasingly being burdened with issues it has no business dealing with. This is why more and more couples are finding it difficult to find their equilibriums and couples going their different ways.

What is love and what is sex? Are they one and the same? What is the place of sex and what is the significance of love? What is the difference between having sex and making love?

Sex is the animalistic urge we all feel. It comes so strongly and sated by mating with any available person. It has no feeling, promises, niceties, responsibilities, tenderness, respect, friendship, consideration, companionship and co-operation love envelops. Sex can happen with anybody.

Love is however the quintessence of everything that makes man special and different from all other animals. It is deep, thoughtful, an act, comes with all the features sex has not. It is a complete package that comes from the soul, something very rare which can only happen between a couple that are very good friends, understand what they are doing and have respect for each other. These are the conditions for quality lovemaking, the type God intended for man and woman can happen. When a man and woman come together in the dance of flesh, it is not only to satisfy an animalistic urge, have babies but also to renew the vow they took to cherish and love each other till date.

But the issue is how many couples have this, a thorough knowledge of what love means; deliberately set out to have it?

For a marriage to succeed this clear distinction has to be made; dating couples should invest time to study their different values as well as develop a rare type of respect that makes friendship possible.

When premature sex gets into the way, it makes unbiased assessment impossible because feelings that should not be placed get given pride of places. The end result is the disappointment that has made marriage more of a battlefield rather than a partnership of loving emotions.

From the very beginning couples should learn to patent their relationships to favor them and not attempt to live their lives through another man’s dreams.

Next week, we would discuss the specific duties of the man and woman to each other.

Good luck.

My Marriage Is In Serious Trouble

Dear Agatha,

I want you to help me as quickly as possible because my marriage is in very serious problem. I recently found out that my husband cheated on me and the person involved is the girlfriend he left for me.

I found out by accident. He forgot his phone at home and going through his text messages, I chanced on this one written by his ex-girlfriend expressing regret at what happened between them.

She begged my husband to forgive what happened and promised it would never happen again.

I know she is married so I don’t know what could have happened to make them do what they did.

Naturally, I was very hurt because when my husband came in, I challenged him with the evidence of the text I had read. Before then, I had called the woman to give her the tongue lashing of her life. I called her unprintable names.

In fairness to her she simply told me sorry and hung up. She must have switched off her phone because I couldn’t get through to her again.

This increased my anger and believe me if I had her husband’s number, I would have called him to tell him what happened between his wife and my husband. At least her home too would have been on fire like mine. Instead, I waited for my husband.

He didn’t say anything beyond apologising for the mess. He explained that none of them planned for what happened. That she came to explain the problems she was having with her man and while she was crying, he took her into his arms to console her and that was when the unexpected happened.

When I told my parents what happened, my father pleaded with me to forgive him that the reason he gave is genuine and that it happens to even the most responsible men.

Agatha, to be sincere I don’t know what to do. I have refused to allow him near me.

The other woman too has come to my office to apologise. Even though I disgraced her the first time, it didn’t stop her from coming the second time.

Even if I want to forgive him, how do I do that? How do I get the other woman too to suffer what I am going through in my home? I feel she has no right to keep the peace of her home while mine is on fire.

It is so difficult not to hurt her back the way I am hurting inside. Please help save my marriage.

Alicia.

 

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Dear Alicia,

Your marriage is intact and would remain so if you are matured enough to let go. Life isn’t always one-plus-one equals two.

In most cases, the additions we get from life simply don’t add up, refuse to follow all known mathematical formulas.

In the first place what is marriage? What does it mean to you? When you were marrying this man, what dreams did you have? Why did you choose him above all the men who came to you? What makes him different? Can you remember? What are those extra special things he has that you know you cannot live without?

These are the things you must remember now that you are going through so much pain at what he did.

I appreciate the extent of your hurt and emotional betrayal but when you add up all you have going for you as a couple, you will realise that your marriage is worth fighting for.

There is no marriage that doesn’t have its high and low moments. At least your husband showed remorse; unlike the experience of a whole lot of other women whose husbands would dare them to do their worst.

That he is begging you and not querying you for going through his phone is an admission he didn’t mean to hurt you.

Unpardonable as what he did is, certain situations just happen without it being premeditated. From what he has explained and the text of the woman, the affair wasn’t planned.

It happened without any one of them planning for it to occur. Temptations come in different forms. Some we can avoid, others simply happen from the blues without any warning or premonition.

What happened between them is a classic case of temptation without any notice.

The mind took advantage of their former relationship and closeness. At the point he took her into his arms, he simply wanted to reach out to a friend, one who was suffering and needed comforting. At that point neither of them knew that it would lead them into committing adultery.

She too didn’t intend it to happen. She came to the only person she knew had the ability to make her forget her pains; an obvious testimony of the type of relationship they both had. When two people part amicably, they remain the best of friends. Because they had both been in a situation where each offered the other comfort, love and support in trying times. It wasn’t out of place for him to take her into his arms to comfort her.

He did it out of a deep need to comfort a friend. He cannot be blamed for trying to ease the pains of a friend. Truthfully, both of them might not be able to explain how they got to the point of making love and may not have known what was happening until it was too late.

This is because of the familiarity of the positions. At one point in their lives, these hearts beat as one, were free to explore and give to each other without restrictions. At the point he took her into his arms, the past replaced the present; their bodies remembered what it was like; their hearts received with joy the familiarity of their love blocking reason from interfering.

Without contesting it, this is no excuse. However, maturity and a deep understanding of the dynamism of the human body and minds would help you comprehend what happened between the two.

From the extent the other woman is going to placate you, it is obvious she didn’t meant it to happen. What would you gain by telling her husband? Isn’t the guilt of knowing she broke her own vows effortlessly, causing your home pains more than enough for her to cope with? Nothing you do or say would compare to the burden of her guilt. Don’t also lose sight of the fact that a problem she is having with her man brought her to your husband in the first place.

What happened between them is innocent but if you insist on punishing her and telling her husband, you may be setting the stage for the break-up of your marriage and their come back as a couple.

Listen to your father and allow bygones be. A terrible mistake has been made. Don’t complicate things further for you and everyone else. Learn to forgive them so you don’t end up being bitter and resentful of every good thing happening around you.

Ask for the wisdom and tolerance of God to overcome this period of your marriage. Forgiving them would make you the heroine in this saga. It would make your husband more determined not to hurt you again and that woman an ally later.

The happily ever after in marriages comes from the sacrifices we are ready to make for it during a storm like this one.

With the right attitude and a firm faith in God, you will overcome it and come out stronger and better.

Forgive them and give your husband the chance to make it up to you. To be frank, extra marital affairs are best tackled on one’s knees not by fighting.

Good luck.