WHILE it may be many men’s dream, when Fred discovered his wife of 17 years and mother of his two children in bed with another woman, joining in the ‘fun’ was the furthest thing from his mind, even though his friends still won’t quit teasing him about it.
“I may be different from other men, because I have friends who tell me I was joking because I should have just joined the both of them,” he said.
“But to tell you the truth, when I saw them my heart sank and my desire disappeared.”
He said the situation affected him so much that his blood pressure could not be stabilised for a long time.
“My doctor kept giving me tablets until at one time I was taking four different blood pressure tablets. This is a woman I married after I lost my first wife tragically, and I have always treated my women with due respect and love. Always. I don’t act as if I own her. I have always given her freedom.”
He said giving her too much freedom could possibly be one of the reasons that led her to get involved with another woman.
Fred discovered his wife’s extramarital affair four years ago and has since been trying to salvage his marriage. The first thing he did was seek counselling.
“And you extend the love a little further by giving her the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “I was told by a Reverend that once those things happen there is seldom any return [to normalcy]. And I am not about having threesomes. Because when I said ‘I do’, I said it to one person, not she and friend,” he said. “So based on what I was told that there is never usually any return, I allowed it to run a course hoping that in time she would realise that this was not her. Because it’s more than one woman I know who has been that way and have reverted.”
What has made the situation worse for Fred is the fact that he was the one who introduced his wife to her new partner.
“They always seemed very affectionate towards each other,” he explained. “And she would come to the house. On one or two occasions I would see them kissing at the back door just before she departed. And on another occasion I was home and the girl was there and the two of them were in the room locked up. I don’t remember where the children were at that time. I got curious. Above our room door is a design pattern, so I climbed up on a chair and looked through the pattern and I saw the girl kissing her breast. They were both in the bed naked. I took a picture of it because that is where I started gathering evidence. So from that time I started thinking about separation.
“I have held on now for four years just trying to give it enough time to see if it would change,” he said. “I even said to her, ‘I will work with you through this’. She used to sleep out on weekends. But she said she didn’t want a divorce. We have two small children and she would be missing on weekends, leaving her children and husband.
“After counselling and trying to work this thing out with her I said, ‘Listen, you are so caught up in this thing and can’t let go, I would rather you let the girl come and visit you here so you can be with the kids rather than leave them home alone all weekend’. It was a bitter pill for me to swallow because I had to endure the two of them locked up in the room and I didn’t disturb them. So for that you can call me a big frigging idiot or a ‘maama’ man – call me anything you want. But that was all in trying to lend support. Because it was not like I was there and watching her. They were locked up in the room and I was in the other room with the children.”
James said the situation is so traumatic for him that if he now sees an attractive woman naked he cannot get an erection.
“That is how much this thing has affected me, and it’s not because of the tablets that I am taking. I’m just totally crushed and demotivated,” he said.
He believes part of his wife’s reason for her affair is that he spent so much time working and trying to care for her and the family that he may not have shown her enough love.
He said though he has exercised as much patience and understanding as possible and tried to be supportive to her, this is not the best idea and he is not thinking of filing for a divorce.
“A gentleman supports his wife in many forms and things that you know you share. Life is about sharing, but my sharing now is viewed as negative because I’m being told I behave like Mr Perfect. So right now I don’t have a wife. I’m not sleeping with my wife but I still have to be mature and approach the subject the best way I can.”
