Dear Bunmi,

My daughter is 25 and has a good job. She’s been seeing a married man from her university days. I’ve told her over and over to end the relationship but she won’t. I’m tired of comforting her whenever he lets her down or changes their plan so he can be with his family.

He tells my daughter that he’s not happy at home, as his marriage is in name only. Yet in the years they’ve been together, he has had two more children with his wife.

He says he loves my daughter and would love her to have his children. What kind of an arrangement is that for a young woman? This man is 43, much older than she is, but she seems grateful just to have the odd night or weekend away with him. Surely, she deserves something better?

Pauline, by e-mail.

Dear Pauline,
Women in your daughter’s shoes delude themselves into believing that, no matter how highly improbable and unsatisfactory the proposition may be, their cheating married men will one day abandon their wives and children to be with them, or settle for the next best thing by being single mothers.

What they fail to face is the fact that they have permitted themselves to become sexual playthings of men who enjoy having a wife as well as a girlfriend, and who don’t wish to lose either.

Apart from letting your daughter know that she will not find self-respect or happiness while she continues to sleep with another woman’s husband, she would be denying this man’s family the love and affection that rightly belong to them.

If your daughter refuses to listen, short of telling this man’s wife about his affair so as to end his selfish game, all you could do is wait for the affair to burn out.

If she decides to have a love child, again, that is her decision. No matter what happens, you should be there when things come crashing around her ears if she fails to listen to your advice.