By Bunmi Sofola
Just how much pain can a person in love put up with? You think you have your priorities sorted out, your principles just so. Then it happens. You fall in love and your partner turns out to be this stranger you never knew you’d continue to live with. “I’ve been with Pious for a year and a half now, and I know deep in my heart he’s my soul mate,” Segi bared her mind recently. “He loves me and treats me like a princess. The only problem is, he’s very jealous. I daren’t even keep in touch with male friends now as it’s just not worth the interrogation. Socialising with men, even in a group, is a total no-no. I hardly ever go out without him, yet he knows, I’d never cheat on him. I need to prove he can trust me…”
I looked at her in amazement. There she was asking how she could prove her trustworthiness as if she was the one at fault and my blood boiled. She was not the one at fault here. Buy the sound of it, she wasn’t to blame for anything and was bending over backwards so as not to make waves. Yet the problem wasn’t hers, it was her boyfriends. He may be her soul mate, but he’s jealous when he has no reason to be. It might have been acceptable for him to have his doubts at the start of the relationship. But after 18 months together, he ought to be feeling secure.
Segi might believe Pious loves her – but it’s a possessive type of love. She’s cut off her friends and given him far too much control over her life, all in an effort to make him happy and the fact she’s worried about all she was doing to please her control freak, shows she knows it’s not healthy. The answer is not to carry on tiptoeing round him. It’s to make him realise the reasons he gets so edgy have nothing to do with her or her actions. Perhaps in the past other people have let him down – it may be his family, friends or previous partners have betrayed him – so he’s wary in relationships.
Or could it be he doesn’t feel he’s good enough for him as he’s scared she’ll find someone better, so he’s overly anxious all the time. What this man needs is to really believe Segi won’t betray him – and she can help by telling him lovingly but firmly, that he’s seeing the while picture wrong. It was other people who let him down in the past, not her. Then fight for a bit more freedom for herself. Contacting good male friends she’d shunned all because of love is a start. For his peace of mind, she could s how him texts and e-mails she’s sending. As his trust grows, she can then work her way up to being able to spend an evening out with a group that include male friend without her ‘ADC’ right behind her!
This won’t be easy. Pious is bound to get more anxious and insecure, and Segi may well be tempted to back down so as to avoid friction. But giving in would be disastrous and she needs to convince him love should be built on trust rather than jealousy. Whilst assuring her man she loves him, she shouldn’t limit her own life just to make the relationship work.
Phillo, a mother of three and 14 years married believed she’s finally put her jealous husband’s fear of being let down at bay when she got the shock of her life. “After assuring me he would be the last one to let me down by cheating, I began to suspect he was having an affair when he started to get calls and text messages at all hours. If told me if was to do with his office. I later found a supermarket receipt in his pocket for a bottle of champagne, some ready-made supermarket foods and a box of chocolates. He told me they were for colleague in the office who was leaving.
“Not long after, I was at a shopping mall when a pregnant woman came over to me. She knew my name and the names of my children. I asked if we’d met before but she shook her head. She told me she knew my husband. As she said, this, something just clicked. Call it a woman’s intuition. I asked if the baby she was carrying was his and she nodded. I left the mall in a daze. I’ve always told my husband that if he cheated on me, our marriage would be over. Now that it’s happened, I’m not sure what to think. I thought I could never stay with him knowing he had made another woman pregnant but now I needed to take a stand, I dithered.
“He was seemingly contrite when confronted him. He said the affair was over but could he wish away his unborn baby? I still love the rat
and I know I couldn’t cope as a single parent. After all these years, I can’t imagine life without him and I don’t want to put our children through the pain and upheaval of divorce. But will I ever trust him again? Never! Can I ever really be sure he won’t cheat a second time? If he could cheat once, he’d do it again knowing he could get away with it…”
Chioma believes living with a cheating partner destroys your self-esteem, your pride and even your health. “I first discovered that my husband was cheating shortly after we married. I confronted him and he told me he was sorry and that he would never do it again. While pregnant with our fourth child, I discovered that three other women were expecting babies around the same time – all fathered by my super-stud husband! I should have left him there and then but I was too emotionally drained by my pregnancy to have the strength.
“Over the next five years, he cheated on me repeatedly. I became hugely depressed and my children suffered because of it. In the end, he moved into another house with one of his floosies. I wish I had thrown him out the first time he cheated. At least then I would have felt proud of myself for taking a stand. If you married into a polygamous family, you expect to live with other wives. But when you swear before God and man to forsake all others’ one would have thought you would stick by that vow…”
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