P AGE 24—SUND AY Vanguard , JUNE 29 , 2014 SUNDA
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Is your spouse having an affair? It happens, get over it!
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HE number of marriages that survive infidelity is on the increase. Recently, I met with three women who had openly been unfaithful to their husbands and are still committed to their marriage. They have committed the one sin that is widely believed to ruin a relationship beyond repair and got away with it. Which makes one wonder: did these women get it wrong? Or have the rest of us? Is infidelity really the death-knell for a marriage? These three women’s cases might tempt you to think not! Halimat is now in her early 50s, a successful entrepreneur and a mother of two grown-up children. Her husband of 25 years suffered a stroke two years ago and is now house-bound. “It’s bad to watch him struggle to enjoy a semblance of health he’d once had and the reason I keep up my punishing publishing schedule at my age is to pay for round-the-clock care for Patrick. Thanks to the cash my work brings in, my husband can stay at home where he belongs to enjoy the care he needs”, she said. Halimat’s dedication is precisely what you might expect from any happilymarried couple; people who enter the commitment of marriage with gusto and stick to it forsaking all others until death do them part. Yet Halimat is not one of such people. Far from it. Her marriage took a hard blow when, 15 years ago, Patrick was found to have kept a mistress for a full five years - before the mistress went to town in an effort to make Patrick ‘comit’ to their relationship. Halimat was devastated by her husband’s betrayal but was powerless to kick him out. A few months to their society wedding 25 years ago, Halimat fooled
herself she was madly in love with another man and happily had an affair with him. So careless was she that, Patrick, her fiance then found them in a compromising position. ‘The wedding is off ’ sneered Patrick as he stormed out of Halimat’s room. “I knew he loved me,” Halimat said, “and I was bent on making him change his mind. I used all the tricks in the book to apologise to the point of shedding enough crocodile tears for him to just open his arms and agree we should try again. So, who was I to raise any dust when he later strayed? I have never tried to underestimate the pain of infidelity, someone, somewhere always gets hurt. It might be one of the couple - usually, but not always the ‘ wronged’ party. It might also be the other woman or man in the triangle - it’s too simplistic to dismiss them all as gold-diggers or gigolos. Some are simply naive people who love those whom they should not have loved. Shirly, a psychiatrist nurse got married over 30 years ago to a man she met on one of the hospital wards. “He’d been in a motor accident,” she said, “and as soon as I realised he was from Nigeria, I looked out for him more than I ought. He had throngs of visitors and it was plain to see he was a spoilt brat - a loveable one. It was easy to fall in love with him and his generosity knew no bounds. His parents were rich and he was a junior manager in a good bank. “He was also heavily into drugs. Five years after we got married, I accidentally stumbled into a secret stash of drugs in one of his drawers and realised that contrary to his claim he was
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OUR column to express your loving thoughts in words to your sweetheart. Don’t be shy. Let it flow and let him or her know how dearly you feel. Write now in not more than 75 words to: The Editor, Sunday Vanguard, P.M.B. 1007, Apapa, Lagos. E.mail: sunlovenotes@yahoo.com Please mark your envelope: “LOVE NOTES"
My everything!
We'll never know ourselves unless we find people who can listen, who can enable us to emerge, to come
an occasional user, he was obviously an addict. Thankfully, he accepted help and I used my medical connection to get him dried out. But his love for women never abetted. I might have turned more blind eyes to his affairs than most women could imagine, but I did so in full memory that in our early years together, I’d cheated with one of his colleagues but he overlooked it simply because I lied I was forced. He must have been too high on drugs to fish out the truth.” The question still remains: wrong as infidelity might be - is it really the deal-breaker we have always believed it is? “If you raise sexual infidelity to a level of such importance that it becomes the only misdemeanor beyond the boundaries of forgiveness, are you not also making sex the most important thing about a marriage?” asked Sharon, a marriage counsellor. “What about respect and honour? What about help and support? What about comfort and compassion? There are so many worse things that some couples do to one another. The relentless bickering over details too scant to mention;
the put-downs in public, badly masked by frozen smiles, the meals in restaurants, picked out in deafening silence of nothing left to say.” She then recounted her encounter with a couple, married for 30 years. “He is, to be blunt;a lascivious rogue. I once had to fly on a business trip with him, and at the end of a 90-minute flight he had arranged a date at our destination with the woman sitting next to him... AND a date with the stewardess. But when his wife is with him? A different man appears; a man pulsing with adoration so genuine it lights the space around them. When she walks into the room, any room, he stands. Yes, After 30 years. He will chat animatedly to old friends but pause, should she tell a little joke, the better to let others hear and to join his uproarious laughter at the end. Her wine glass never, ever, falls empty; the tiny touch to her arm tells her, constantly, how lovely she looks. “Does she know about the other women? Probably. She might feel jealousy. But fear? No chance. This man is going nowhere. While I do not applaud his tom-
out of ourselves to discover who we are; someone who's close enough to sense when fears and tears need to be shared. Because it's only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eyes. I know that I'll never have to ask God for everything, because with you I know I've got everything I ever wanted. Love is meant to make you feel good about yourself. Foverever shall be your days of light-heartedness & joy. You're Loved! Brainz Henry jarulelah@yahoo.com 8036304266
Seed of love
I have searched for the meaning of the word love to no avail. It is only you and you alone that truly
catting, I do feel - yes a sneaking envy for what they have and for what they have still to come.” The Width Of A Woman’s Hips Reveals Her Appetite For Sexl HIPS may provide clues to a woman’s sexual appetite, scientists said recently. They found that curvaceous women tend to have more sexual partners as well as more one-night stands. The researchers suggested that women with larger hips may be less restrained because their anatomy makes it safer for them to have a baby. The scientists recruited 148 women aged between 18 and 26 from the streets of Leeds. Chosen because they were a variety of shapes, the subjects were measured in the city ’s university and quizzed on their sexual history. The results revealed a link between hip width the distance between the bones that jut out at the top of the pelvis - and number of partners. The difference between a generous hip width of 14.2 inches and above and one of 12.2 inches or below was particularly clear. Researcher Colin Hendrie said: ‘We found that smaller women
tended to have a couple of sexual partners, which were mainly in the context of relationships. The wider-hipped women also had a couple of relationships but they tended to have many more one-night stands. ‘So they had a couple of relationships and maybe six, seven or eight onenight stands as well.’ The study found that if one night stands accounted for at least three quarters of a woman’s sexual partners, she tended to have hips at least 0.8 inches wider than a woman who mainly had long-term relationships. Waist size was found to be less important than hip size. Dr. Hendrie said that - because women decide when to have sex - the findings cannot be explained away by men finding large hips more attractive. Instead, he thinks that women with narrower hips are innately more cautious because childbirth is more dangerous for them. Childbirth is quite traumatic, particularly if you are smaller,’ he said. ‘The theory is that these women won’t be having wild parties but have sex in relationships, so that if they do get pregnant, they have someone there to offer assistance and support.’ He was writing in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour. Separate research has found that a typical woman needs four dates to assess a new boyfriend. During that time they will tick off a ten-point checklist to judge qualities such as their potential lover ’s trustworthiness, sense of humour and whether they ‘click’ together. Not until the fifth date will the average single woman consider having more intimate relations, according to the study for Singles247.com, a dating website.
defines love to my heart and gave it a meaning. You have indeed planted and nourished a giant seed of love in my heart. Akachukwu Ferdinand. 08063819314
Dear Blessing
I Will REMEMBER you not as the one who BROKE my Heart BUT as the one who TAUGHT me How to LIVE with broken Heart. STILL.... Love YOU sweet heart Emma Mine Delta State mine4christ@gmail.com 0705103774