It is true as they say, that wonders shall never end. I had another opportunity of discovering the wisdom in this saying this past month when I was told the very strange but true story of a woman said to be a born-again Christian living a life that would make even an unbeliever not envy her. This woman, the story goes, is married with a daughter, her well-to-do husband, hit the bad times and when he couldn’t cope with the situation in the country anymore sat his wife down and told her he was going abroad to see if he could earn a decent income that would enable him to take care of his family. The woman agreed and the man found his way out of the country.
Less than a month after he departed, continuing the story, his wife brought in a live-in lover. Did you catch that? The woman brought in a boyfriend who now poses as the father of their daughter, sleeps in their bedroom, and uses the man’s car and even the clothes that he left! Some friends who were close to this woman were said to have confronted her, but rather than reason with them, she told them to point blank that that was how she wanted to live her life and that however that would hurt her daughter is nobody’s business. What was worse, according to that story was that the mother of this lady was said to be telling her daughter’s friend that for the first time in her life her daughter was truly in love and they should allow her to enjoy herself. Would you believe that!
I was yet to recover from this sickening story when I found myself in a group where one of us told the following horrible story that I couldn’t believe took place in the sacred institution we called marriage. The story was about some married women trying to prove to their lovers how powerful they are in their marital home. They go about splashing the wealth of their husbands on their lovers and bringing them to sleep with them right in the bed they share with their husbands. “They say this is real power”, the story narrator concluded. “ Real power”? I countered, shocked. What sort of power is that? Looking at me as if I had just jumped out of outer space, the lady who told the story tried to explain what power is to me.
“These married women believe they are exercising power when they show off the things they acquired through their husband to their boy/man friends,” says the lady, making a real effort to educate me on the subject. Continuing, she adds: “it all starts with the husband doing his best making his wife comfortable by buying her expensive gifts like state of the art cars, with lots of money to spend, the woman soon gets a boyfriend, most often someone younger than her, and start to lavish her newly acquired wealth on him.
“Women who do this have no qualms about it at all. Making their husband a foot mat for their so-called lovers makes them feel great and happy. These are the women who deliberately marry the man who can make them comfortable because they want to belong in the high society and not because the love is there”. Concluding she asserts: “ But, really, do you want to blame these women when the very rich man they marry sometimes abandon them in the house to pursue their businesses and most often in their mistresses?” Her conclusion reminded me of the confession of an old acquaintance who said her husband had, as she put it, ”become Joseph the dreamer in the house.”
Elaborating, she charged: “My husband will go to the office in the morning, and from there go to the club, he will not come back to the house until around 1.00 am. And when he returns he may or may not eat his food. “The next thing you know is that he has jumped into the bed and within seconds he’s snoring. He won’t even change his lying position until the following morning, just like that no conversation, nothing.
“When he wakes in the morning, he will start to tell me about the dream he had; how he dreamt that his sister will soon be visiting us or that there was the possibility of an impending road transporters’ strike.” Taking a closer look at all these stories, it is easy to see that there is so much marital deceit going on these days. And if the truth must be told, I cannot totally absolve our men from blame. One thing they must remember is that when most women go into marriage, they are usually less experienced, sexually than their husbands.
During those early stages when the marriage is still fresh. Most men normally find it expedient to set time aside to spend with their wives. And during that period too, they ran a crash program for the wife on how she could match their taste sexually. But hardly would this training be over before the woman gets abandoned like a piece of furniture in the house. Can you imagine a man dropping off to sleep after spending the whole day outside only to recount his dreams in the morning? What are women who find themselves in a situation like these supposed to do? Start counting the ceiling roof and bear their loneliness like a cross. Unknown to men, it is this sort of abandonment that creates a workshop for the devil in their homes. To reduce the incidence of women cheating on their husbands and debasing their womanhood in the process, I want to encourage our men to consider their wives and carry them along in whatever they are doing, that to me is the solution.
Abandoning your wife and then spending your quality time outside your matrimonial home with or without another woman is not only unfair or irresponsible but also an abdication of your marital obligation. On the part of women, it must be clearly stated that keeping a man or boyfriend is not an acceptable behavior and should never be condoned. I mean, in case where these women have children, what sort of example are they setting for them? Teaching them to hop into different beds with reckless abandon?
These days children are very sensitive to what is going on around them, this is not unconnected to the fact they are exposed to education at a tender age, so they see these things and they shape their attitude to life. Some very intelligent ones among the children now resent their mother’s behavior and show their disapproval openly. Like the case of a woman whose 10-year-old ran away from the house to protest what her mum was doing when her dad was away from home. When she was found in a relationship days later, she declared that her mum knew why she left the house and unless she promised to stop her offensive behavior, she would not return to her to the same house again.
Persuaded by her father and others to reveal what it was her mother was doing wrong, she refused flatly but kept insisting that mum knew what it was and she should stop it. In the end, the woman has to give in.
I do not doubt the fact that some women are married to very callous men who care little for the feelings of their wives, these men use sex as a means of punishing their wives. But thank God that he gave women the inner strength to withstand this sort of unwarranted pressure. Our ability to control our sexual urges is far higher than that of men. This is a position of strength and we should grab it with both hands and use it to our advantage.
I know quite a few women who, despite the horrible experience they are going through in their marital home, nevertheless still maintain their integrity for the sake of their children. Another thing I want to draw the attention of women too is that the fact that a man decides to demonstrate his love by showing gifts should not be taken as an excuse to bruise the husband’s ego and drag his name into the mud, that is taking the man for granted and it is bad.
If a woman finds that she is been turned into an ornament in the house, she should do two things simultaneously. She should pray to God earnestly about the situation and engage the husband in a constructive dialogue over the matter. This is not an opportunity to pick a quarrel with him. That will only create more problems and harden the man’s heart. Exercising patience is the key. Patience and persistent prayers. If they can employ these powerful tools, they shall have cause to smile and praise God in the end.
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