By FRANCIS EWHERIDO

I went with my wife to an office I visit often, but that was the first time I was going there with her. Immediately I introduced her to the two young ladies at the reception, in unison they chorused: “no wonder.”

I knew where they were going, but decided to hear from them rather than assume. For them, my wife is very beautiful, that is why I have not looked their “way” these years, even though they are stunning beauties and we are close.

Being spinsters, I wanted to educate them that no woman (This also applies to men) can keep a man to herself just because of her beauty, so that they do not go into marriage with wrong expectations.

It takes the grace of God and other factors for that major miracle—yes that is what it is, a miracle—to happen. But I did not want it to look like I was de-marketing my wife, so I just smiled and allowed her lap the accolades.

I have talked with a good number of men—both the faithful and the unfaithful—about marital fidelity. None gave the beauty of their wives as the reason for their fidelity.

The number one reason I got is God. They treasure the personal relationship they have with God and do not want anything that will disrupt it. Two of them, but for their refusal, would have been pastors of branches of their churches by now. They “have been in the world and seen it all.

It is all vanity.” One of them was notorious in his university days and used to have threesome with girls. “There is nothing in sex to make me offend my God anymore”, he will always say. Josh, my other friend, was no less notorious.

In fact, we were worried for his wife when they were to get married, because he was deep in another relationship a few weeks to the marriage. Everything changed after he got married. I often tease him that he did not repent; God simply arrested him. His case is a testimony of God’s awesomeness.

Another friend, an Urhobo, says his wife will retaliate if she finds out he is having an affair. For him his wife sleeping with another man is the ultimate humiliation. He will rather die than see that happen. So out of self-preservation, he is forced to be faithful.

Another is a devout Catholic who attends masses daily. He says that going for “mass without receiving communion is like eating eba and soup without meat or fish”. Since he does not “want to receive Christ in a state of disgrace”, he avoids sins of commission that infidelity is.

“I am already saddled with too many sins of omission, why add sins of commission”, he rationalises. He also loves his wife dearly because “she is a nice woman” and would probably have been faithful to her if God was not in the equation, but God is the principal reason he is faithful.

Dom, another friend, radiates an aura of holiness. That is what you feel when you meet him for the first time. Whatever shortcomings he has do not diminish this aura. Dom is one of those naturally gifted people for whom fidelity comes naturally; it is a way of life and manifests in all aspects of his life.

Peter does not “want to have anything to do with the complications that go with keeping another woman; I also do not want to hurt my wife.” His “recipe to stay out of trouble is simply flee from temptation, the Joseph style.”

He does not believe in overcoming temptation; neither does he trust himself to be able to do it. Chike feels men have an innate desire to have multiple sex partners. He is,however, unwilling to satisfy his own desires because “unprotected sex with multiple partners is risky and I hate (using) condoms.”

Some of the most unfaithful men I know have stunningly beautiful wives, so their infidelity has nothing to do with the looks of their wives. They also love their wives and can kill because of their wives, so the issue is not really about whether or not they love their wives.

That is why I often smile when I hear women whose husbands have been unfaithful ask: “Am I not good enough for him?” Madam, you are, but this matter goes beyond your beauty or good deeds.

A man with a stunning beauty of a wife gave himself a target of sleeping, and has slept, with women in all continents, except Australia, at the time we lost contact. Someday, when humans are found in Mars, he will probably go there and continue his escapades. A time might come when he will reflect on his life and either feel justified about his escapades or like King Solomon wonder if it was worth all the trouble.

For now the beat goes on because he has neither repented nor reached that stage in life when, like most aging men, the spirit is willing but the body puts up varying degrees of civil disobedience. No Viagra or external boost can salvage the situation then.

I guess men of all ages have faced their own challenges in respect of marital fidelity. I have not lived in another time, so I do not know the challenges they faced, but I get this eerie feeling that men have probably never faced the kind of temptation today’s men are facing. Nudity and pornography are more commonplace; last week’s Saturday Vanguard appropriately tagged it “weapons of mass distraction.” \

There are more beautiful women now than there ever were and women have become more daring in going for what they want unlike before. One thing is certain though from my findings, the grace of God and self preservation, more than spouses’ beauty, play the dominant roles in marital fidelity for men.