A Reader wrote: I have followed your columns way back from your Punch days when I was in the university. Most of the times, your articles are so down-to-earth they speak to me – as if you are writing about me. In one of the editions of Sunday Vanguard a few months back, you wrote about why second marriages might not work. I am a living example of that. I’d been married for over 12 years with three children when I changed jobs for a challenging management post in a bank. The salary almost doubled what I earned and I quickly made friends with a colleague who was about the same age. Her name is Tina and it was inevitable that both families met.
“We attended each other’s functions and Francis, Tina’s husband, was a particularly friendly chap. Tina had regaled me with stories of his affairs but I saw the reason why women found him attractive – he was dishy!
When Tina travelled abroad on a course and Francis came to the office, I wondered what he wanted. Thinking he needed help with his bank account, I went to him. But he said he just dropped by because he was lonely and missed Tina so much. He also missed her home-cooking. I was touched and promised to drop some packaged meals at his place. He was to put them in the freezer and help himself whenever he felt hungry.
“True to my word, I dropped the meals at the house of a very eager Francis. He offered to pay for them, but I refused. He insisted I stayed for a drink. To be frank with you, Francis had always intrigued me. I mean, he must have something special for all those women to be panting after him. So, when he made a pass at me, I didn’t resist. Like a lamb to the slaughter, I let him lead me to his matrimonial bed. I wasn’t disappointed – Francis really knew how to bonk! Why else was I risking my marriage for this? He made my head spin with his love-making, transporting me to places I never imagined possible.
“That was how our affair started. So though Tina and I worked together, I parcelled off the guilty I felt at helping myself to her husband. I knew we were playing with fire – both of us were married with children and Tina, my friend, was the one who’d introduced me to her husband. That shows the extent of her trust and complacency in her marriage. Seun, my husband and I had since lost the magic of our early years. Even then, he wasn’t as hot as Francis was.
Comparing Seun to Francis was like comparing a Christmas sparkler to a rocket! My head had already been turned by Francis’ sizzling, scorching ways.
So the affair continued for about a year before the bubble burst. I was returning from another illicit date with Francis when my husband was waiting for me with a disgusted look on his face. “Tina just rang”, he spat. “She saw you with her husband coming out of a hotel. She said she’d become suspicious of her husband yet again and had followed him only to see both of you together.
“All the glow of our love-making drained out of me. “We are just friends having a meal together …” I panicked. Seun warned I shouldn’t insult his intelligence. Instead, I should be thinking of what to tell my friend when I faced her in the office the next day. As for this sham of marriage, Seun told me it was now dust. He couldn’t cope with the thought that his wife had been having a torrid affair with a supposed family friend for months. What I had was not a fling, he told me nastily, it was a relationship and I was now free to pursue my passion.
“The hardest part was facing Tina in the office. She made a scene and all eyes were on me as if I’d committed a crime. Our head of department invited us both to his office when he heard the commotion, and to be fair to him, he didn’t pass judgement. All he said was that we’d both fouled up the office atmosphere and one of us would have to be transferred to another branch. I quickly offered to go. I felt really awful at first. But Francis was really sorry for breaking up my marriage and quickly found me a flat, which I moved into with two of my children.
“My eldest, a boy, decided to stay with his father. So that was how Francis and I became a reluctant couple, Tina stayed put in her matrimonial home – she’s used to her husband’s philandering. Whatever sadness I felt at the death of my marriage was quickly erased by Francis’ love-making. Fate put on its final seal when I discovered I was pregnant. It wasn’t planned and I was really angry with myself. Francis, on the other hand was delighted and before the baby was due, insisted on a traditional marriage. Seun had already instituted a divorce anyway and I would be a fool to contest it with a full-blown pregnancy!
“I couldn’t socialize because most of our friends were aware of what happened and they weren’t sympathetic – especially the married ones.
They openly disapproved of it. The birth of our son didn’t help much. I couldn’t find a convenient house help and when Francis visited, I wasn’t the temptress he was used to. But as soon as the boy was a toddler, we were back to a semblance of romance. Only as the years rolled by, I still felt like the other woman – but without the excitement and sparks. Tina still lived with her husband and when Francis took our son to visit his four other kids, my blood boiled because Tina would be there probably with her disapproving look.
“Seven years after my husband threw me out, passion with Francis now meant screaming arguments, not frenzied love-making. He’d since had a couple of affairs I was aware of and we kept falling out, then falling into each other’s arms. Only the making up because less and less. Seun had already remarried though he had a very good rapport with two of our children that lived with me. I’d made my bed, building it on deceit. Was lying in it now my just desert? It was then I started having panic attacks and palpitations. My doctor said it was stress-related. My illicit love life was affecting my health.
“Now that my complaints had become second nature, I saw Francis less and less. He’d bought us a flat in his son’s name and wasn’t really keen on sex. When I discovered he’d started yet another affair, it didn’t even bother me until I learnt that she was pregnant. Francis had always believed I had affairs from time to time. If I could do it when I was properly married, what stopped me from doing it now that I was a quasi wife? I couldn’t blame him really – betraying my ex-husband’s trust for a fling with him has damaged my credibility.
“As he spent more and more time with his younger wife, I saw very little of him. Tina is still married to him and he’s set up home with his younger lover. These days, on the few occasions I see Tina at official functions, she was gloat at me with a wry smile. A husband snatcher who’d been given a dose of her medicine. Thank goodness, I still have my job – it’s a stabilising force in a world of passion gone wrong …”
– Your faithful reader.
(Vanguard)
