I had a very curious conversation yesterday.

A wife whose husband was caught cheating on her was told by her husband that he missed the lady he was cheating with and would like his wife and the lady to become best friends.

To this end, he made the lady he was cheating with write a letter of apology to his wife and also a formal letter requesting that she and the wife go out together on a friendly date so that they can both start afresh.

The wife said she told her husband she didn’t want the friendship of his “girlfriend”, and the husband said if she does not accept the friendship, the two of them are done as a couple.

I was puzzled by this conversation.

The wife said it was not the first time her husband had made such a proposal to her in the course of their marriage.

She said he had a previous girlfriend whom he introduced to her and even encouraged her to become prayer partners with.

She said she didn’t know the lady was his cheating partner when she was first introduced to her.

Her husband only told her that there was a lady in the church who needed a bit of mentoring, and he would like her to help the lady out.

She said she noticed that anytime she would want to pray with the lady, she would cross her hands across her chest and refuse to close her eyes or even say Amen.

She said she always wondered what was wrong with the lady until one day, when her husband came to pick her up from the office, and the lady was seated on the passenger side beside her husband in front of the car.

She said she didn’t count it as anything important, so she sat on the back seat.

She said as her husband was about to drive out, one of his friends ran up to the car and opened the door of the passenger side where the lady was seated and ordered her to get down and move to the back while he also opened her own door and told her to move to the front.

She said her husband just sat there, looking at them in amusement. She said it was that gesture by her husband’s friend and the lady’s behaviour towards the friend when he did what he did that made her realise her husband was sleeping with the lady.

She said she reminded her husband of this and other instances from the past and asked him why he was insisting on making his lover and her become friends.

She said he replied to her by saying, “This lady is a good woman; she is not like those previous ones, and I want the women in my life to get along.”

I asked her what she wanted to do. In my opinion, her husband is a polygamous man by nature, and he would not change.

She agreed.

She said she does not want to divorce him.

I said, “He will never change.” I also said this man is not looking to have a concubine or a side chick; what he truly wants is a second wife. He is a polygamous man by nature, and he will have no rest until he marries a second wife and maybe more after that.

This is why he is hell-bent on bringing this strange woman into the same space with his wife so they can become comfortable with each other.

She said she knows. She, however, does not want a co-wife, but she has resigned herself to the fact that he would always have a side chick.

She said she has made up her mind to let him do whatever he wants as long as it does not require her to become friends with the other lady or ladies in his life or share her space with them.

She would just focus on her job and raise her children.

This was the same stance most of our mothers took in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s when they discovered that their husbands had other women in their lives.

I know too many stories from that era, and it led to the popular nickname of “Abelejayan” among Yoruba mothers in the 90s.

The women would say, “As long as he didn’t bring her home to me or make me see it, he is free to do whatever he likes.” It was the price most of them paid to stay married, and they would often refer to it when their children were getting married or when they were admonishing their daughters about marriage in general.

Growing up in Ibadan, I saw many dynamics of human relationships among adults that really puzzled me.

Abelejayan’s have a clique; the younger ones of today have it on X. Association of side chicks.

The side chicks and wives of those days have a lot of unspoken rules. We may be sleeping with the same man, but we must never meet. You must not come close to my general area of residence, and I will avoid your general area of residence.

We will not attend the same events with the man we share, and I will keep out of your support system and crowd, while you must also keep out of mine.

Concubinage is a thing in Ibadan, a well-established norm.

Some of us may ask, why is the lady not leaving this man? Why stay in this marriage? Why couldn’t she just walk away?

The same reasons the mothers gave them are still valid today. Some women don’t want to be single parents; some believe half bread is better than none, and being married to a cheating man is better than being single and unmarried.

Sometimes the man is financially buoyant and compensates them financially as his wife. In this particular lady’s case, she said she had always worked and been the one taking care of herself since they got married in 2016.

Some women become bitter as a result of this sudden change of fortune in marriage; some become cynical, nonchalant, distant and quiet. Others go into depression, and in some cases, the reaction is full-blown hatred and apathy.

This is why divorce is the healthy option for some women who find themselves in this situation.

It separates them from the man; they don’t have to deal with his antics daily, and they can choose to remain single and celebrate or pursue remarriage with a reasonable partner in the future.

For other women, it is not a big deal. They would just shrug it off and move on from the marriage emotionally while leaving only their shell behind to play the duty role of a wife.

Some women who find themselves unable to cope with the new terms of staying married would go into self-exile. They would travel out of the country while still married to start a new life far away from Nigeria so that they wouldn’t have to face the shame of being divorced or having to share their husband with his new catch.

I know several cases like this.

Marriage is not for everybody; I have said this several times, and I will continue to say it. That utopian idea of “Till death do us part” only works for about five per cent of married couples.

Statistically, 50% of marriages would end up in divorce for one reason or the other. Those that end up in divorce would have gone through hell until the path to reconciliation had been walked.

The other 50% that didn’t end in divorce would have long stories of forgiveness, endurance, acceptance, resignation, constant bickering, estrangement, abandonment, separation, cheating, financial issues, behavioural issues, fertility issues, long-distance relationships, and so on to contend with.

In this modern era, people would be better off getting empowered to meet their own needs and signing social contracts on how to raise children in harmony instead of yoking themselves together to a certain future when neither of them could truly tell what tomorrow holds.

Or maybe signing a one-year, two-year, three-year, or maximum of a five-year contract that can be renewed, terminated, extended, or cancelled, with all the possible terms and conditions of both parties well written by competent lawyers to protect both parties and stipulate the arrangements regarding children clearly so that both parties will not be unnecessarily encumbered in the name of marriage.

-GSW-