What should I have done after seeing nude pictures of my wife and her colleague?

By Bosede Olusola-Obasa - Nigeria

My four-year courtship with Tumi terminated in an elaborate wedding, which held in Benin City, Edo State. The wedding was sponsored by my wealthy and influential parents-in-law. I must confess that as a bachelor, their level of wealth was what first caught my fancy. That is not to say that I did not love Tumi at all despite the fact that she is not so pretty, very fat and lazy.

Anyway, soon after we got married, I got a transfer at my office to go and head our new branch in Lagos. My wife could not go with me because we had just bought a beautiful house in Benin and she was also a career woman. Except for these reasons, I would have immediately requested that she went with me because I could not bear to live alone, especially as a newly-wed. Nevertheless, I had to answer the official call to resume work in Lagos.

Typically, I am a very sociable person, so I knew that I could have some difficulties staying true to our marital vows. And really, it was not easy for me emotionally; I sorely missed the tender caresses and cuddling from my wife. Before I realised what had befallen me, I was neck deep in a silly, erotic relationship with a colleague of mine in the office, she usually stopped over at my official quarters to see how I was faring. I believed her visits made great sense to me because my relationship with my wife soon became reduced to mere but seldom telephone conversations since I visited Benin bi-monthly.

This colleague of mine is not yet married and she seemed to always offer me reasonable opinion, among other fringe benefits. What I did not realise however, was that my wife had got herself entangled in a similar web back home. Yes, we had a number of domestic staff working for us at home, but I don't expect any of them to adequately keep her company. As I later found out, she became very engrossed with a guy called Nwosu that they did so many abominable things together. But that was not the worst aspect of their escapade. Even before my discovery, our relationship fluid became very scanty that we did not yearn to be together anymore; but I never looked forward to a divorce because her parents had done so well for us.

A lot of things seemed to happen simultaneously that time as her father was fingered as one of the major debtors of huge non-performing loans threatening the life of a financial institution. Immediately, he began disposing his properties to recoup some money to repay the loans. I travelled to Benin for my annual vacation at that time and found a picture storage card on the window in our bedroom and decided to view the content. I was taken aback by my findings -several shots and different postures of nude pictures of my wife with her colleague! When she returned home that evening, I asked her about the pictures. She was shocked that I had found out, but she was not remorseful.

Angrily, I locked her up in the bedroom and took the keys away to cool off somewhere. To my surprise, she was moving around freely when I returned; she had called Nwosu on the telephone to break the door and free her. I was so furious and went to his house the next morning to warn him to stay away from my wife, but he thoroughly embarrassed me. My legs were wobbling as I returned home. Our marriage was less than six months at this point.

Shortly after this, my wife was said to be pregnant but I told her that the child could not be mine; I sent her packing. My aged parent got to know of the development and said that I should not have sent her out of the home. Their views were premised on the good times her parents had shared with our family. They said that I should avoid being seen as an ungrateful person, especially at such trying times for Tumi's father. They offered to go with me to my in-law's place for a resolution meeting, which was primarily to give us room to determine the true paternity of the unborn baby. Agreeing to such an arrangement turned out to be my greatest mistake ever. Tumi's parents embarrassed and harassed my parents and walked us out of their house. They threatened to hand us over to law enforcement agents if we wasted time about leaving the premises. I was reduced to everything but a man. Did I over react on these issues? Where exactly did things go wrong?

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