adminAnn Ruthenburg
HELLO readers this week I am flu-less. Yes, thanks to the holiday and ginger tea, I am 85 percent better kikiki.
Okay, this week I received a lot of mail, thank you everyone. I promise I will acknowledge you all soon, you know flu and all. But I did got an interesting mail that caught my attention.
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It reads:
Greetings Marriage Dr, my name is Mai??? (please do not print my name everyone knows my husband).
I have been following your columns from the beginning and I never miss them. Recently you hit the nail on the head for some of us. It is so real. It is like you are in our homes. I have been left breathless or should I say shaken.
I am not a mistress, nor am I having an affair, nor am I thinking of it. I am a wife of a man who has been having many affairs for over 40 years. Yes, you read correct over 40 years. We were married in our late teens in the days where people married for love, there was no money, no cars, no houses, no good education, just him and me.
I had kids straight away as was expected and became a housewife. He continued his education. Initially we were on the same page, we were both extremely religious and our values were simple. Over time he graduated. I had more kids and somewhere in between did a typing and then bookkeeping course, but that is it. He got a job as a civil servant and we settled down into a normal civil servant lifestyle.
In our 30s his stability and faithfulness at work got him promoted to management, which changed our lives forever. His new position demanded change from him in every way, from his dressing to the way he spoke. His car was now the latest, our three-bed-roomed home was now six bedrooms.
I was given a car that I was not licensed to drive so he bought me my licence. Our furniture changed. I could spend money anytime anywhere. The problem was his promotion did not incorporate me. After all, my life was my home and relatives and church, you know the traditional housewife. Now my traditional husband was now a cultured westernised white collar manager.
He spent long hours at work and left me in charge of our home and family life. I did not complain because I had everything and so much money, everyone admired me and still do.
Then he got promoted again, which meant moving away to another town. Everything changed again, this time not so great. Yes, a bigger car, kids were sent overseas to study because the company was paying, a bigger house and another company house, maids, cook and gardeners. We flew to every African country possible, but he would leave me shopping or in the hotel and spent all his time with his workmates. He travelled to China a lot, but never took me. He attended conferences and workshops in Victoria Falls, Kariba, Nyanga e.t.c, but never took me. I was so busy anyway with church events and the home and talking with kids overseas and a house full of relatives all the time, that it stopped bothering me after a while. It became our life, simply who we were.
Until a couple of years ago when a church-mate saw my husband at a local hotel with a young female he works with, acting too close for comfort. She said as soon as he saw her, he tried to act indifferent, but she had already noticed it. It was not long before I received more and more of these stories. After I questioned him, he started putting passwords on his phone and computer, he started taking calls away from me late at night and in general his attitude started to change.
He no longer just seemed busy, now he seemed distant and uncaring as well. Every question I asked him about his misdemeanours was met with “do I not support you in every way? Do you not have everything a woman could want?” These statements would then be followed by him threatening to leave if I continued pestering him and so forth.
Much investigation over the years has shown that my very religious husband has slept with every young secretary at his company in the last 20 years since his promotion. He has spent thousands on them I hear and even assisted some to purchase cars and the like. He does not seem to have a mistress of sorts, but no one wants to say because it seems they have all benefited from him in one way or the other.
I have tried to commit suicide on different occasions, but I have since given up. I took the issue to all his relatives and then mine, but no one wanted to do much because they too are benefiting financially from his good position. Even the church leaders are hesitant to push the issue with him too far because he is a keen tither. After a few years of severe depression, almost going insane, being told I have demons in me and ending up being taken to a local prophet for deliverance, I realised the only one affected by my husband’s affairs was me and like you always say Doctor “if you do not like it — leave”.
The problem was where was I going to leave to? If I left I would lose too. I took time to look at what I had gained over the years. I had everything a woman could want, except the one thing I wanted — his faithfulness. Was lack of love a good enough reason for me to leave this amazing life I had? I am uneducated. I am nearly 60 years old, my kids are grown and most of them are married. We are leaders in our church. The whole town knows my husband because he is influential. I have enough money to feed hundreds of families in this city without it breaking our bank. I can travel on my own or with friends anytime, any day. He bought me/ us a farm where I spend many of my days. When I have had enough, I come to the house in town. Our other house we are renting out. We are currently building another house. I have a bottle store down town and a takeaway.
I find love in my kids, in my God, in my friends, in my family and in life. We all have our ways of showing love. I have concluded that my husband’s way of loving me is by giving me a comfortable life. Others say he is paying me back for staying with him all these years. Others say I am just being used as a marriage symbol, but in public he shows off younger women.
Whatever the story is Marriage Dr, I weighed the issues a long time ago and seriously I believe I am better off and happier with him. Maybe I am a fool, but I am a happy and wealthy fool.
I thank you so much for your columns, your advice is brilliant and wholesome. I send them to my daughters overseas, and at church we constantly use your words to correct behaviour in the young people. But for me it is 40 years too late. I cannot leave everything I have and suffered for with this man to some youthful girl who has never had her heart broken to save her life, and has never paid any marital or relationship price. Her biggest qualification is “thief of married men” — no not me.
Tell all those ladies out there, I am not going anywhere, I am not leaving. No matter what he tells them, he will never leave me, he has too much invested in me and his family, so no mudzimu and no prophet and no amount of threats will make me go. And to the current girl let me say “there will be others after you, so do not get comfortable. Comfort belongs to me, his first wife.
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Well, readers I was as surprised as you. All I can say to you dear is, do what works for you. God will deal with him. I hope though that, you use protection because you are not too old to get HIV.
I also hope the house, farm, a shop, car and bank account is in your name. Because if not, that so-called useless young thing might give your husband a heart attack if his sugar gets too high and she will inherit everything, you are supposedly comfortable with.
Just my little word of advice. That is it from me now folks.
Until next week God bless!
Anastasia can be contacted on 0772 933 845 (messages only)
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