Why would you date a married man?
By Chioma Gabriel
Sekinat thought there was nothing wrong in dating a man who has a wife. Her father had three wives and her mother was wife number two. Her religion also allows that.
But Sekinat was dating a man whose faith permits one wife. She reasoned that instead of pretending, she would go ahead and marry the man who had also agreed to convert from his religion. But she did not reckon with the fury of the man’s wife who took her to the cleaners and although she still went ahead and married Femi as second wife, it was a secret and that left her out in the cold. When Femi eventually died many years later, Sekinat realised to her dismay that she and her children have no place in his family as no provision was made for their upkeep and his family and his church were ignorant of the existence of a concubine!
Would you date a married man and why? Are you prepared for the consequences ? Are you ready to be the mistress, the concubine or the other woman?
In this new series, we bring you experiences of people who dared to venture where angels fear the tread and dated other people’s husbands.
My sister became pregnant for our father’s best friend, Alicia, 24.
My mother died while giving birth to my only brother. That was twenty years ago. Before my brother, she had me and my younger sister Faith. Although my mother died during childbirth, her son survived and that made us three siblings. We are two girls and a boy. My father did not remarry. He said he would not bear to see another woman maltreat his children. He spent all his life committed to our upkeep and brought my mother’s youngest sister who was seven years older than me to live with us. .
We grew up seeing our father suffer for our upkeep and education. He was a father and a mother rolled into one. I pleaded with him severally to take another wife so he would have someone to comfort  him after a hard day’s job but my father refused. He said he could only do that when all his children have completed their education.
I got married two years ago at 22, the same year I completed my NYSC. My husband is a medical doctor while I trained as a nurse. We had a baby boy early this year and my father was so happy.Tessy, my aunty that lived with us got married three years before I did.
My younger sister has graduated but is yet to go for her NYSC while our only brother is a third year Law student. I was happy things were going well for my 52-year-old father and we hoped very soon he will take the woman that would make him happy and maybe, start another family.
But our joy was cut short when my younger sister almost died from an abortion. Her condition is still very serious and you can imagine, she was made pregnant by our father’s 50 year old friend . His family was closest to ours and my sister and I were friends of his two daughters who are in their early twenties. His wife is like a mother to us and we call her mummy and you can now imagine how devastating my sister’s sexual relationship with her husband has made us. My sister claimed the man loved her and was coming to visit her in the university and was buying her things and giving her money. She said her friends told her the man was cool and still young and she began to get attracted to him. All the while our father was working hard to ensure we lacked nothing, his best friend who we also called daddy was sleeping with his daughter to the extent that he made her pregnant and procured an abortion which has left her in a very bad condition. My sister’s bleeding aroused the suspicion of the neighbours and she would have died if a neighbour had not walked in and saw her lying faint in the toilet.
The neighbour raised an alarm which attracted other neighbours and they rushed her to a nearby hospital where the doctor forced her to confess what she did before giving her any treatment. The doctor happened to know our father and his friend. He invited the two men to the hospital and they met each other there. Immediately my father’s friend got there, he knew his game was up. My father engaged him in a terrible fight and lost consciousness due to exhaustion. The doctor eventually brought the police and got the man arrested. As I am writing this, the case has gone to court and I’m sure he will pay dearly but my sister’s life is still in danger. Tell me, what is there in dating a married man, someone you know would never marry you? What type of money did the man give my sister that my father could not afford?
My father is not poor and he is not stingy and he knows how things are with young girls and always ensured my sister and I never lacked. As undergraduates, he was giving each of us more than enough every month as pocket money.It baffles me that my sister would betray our father with his friend.
My father had wanted early marriage for his daughters and had always advised us to keep our heads cool and get our education. I met my husband during my NYSC and he saw I was not the go-go girl and settled for marriage instead. My sister lost a fallopian tube during the abortion and you know what that portends for her future. As for my father’s former best friend, he is now his worst enemy.
