Prelude: In my attempt to ascertain which of
man’s vices is worse, I am presently examining the weakness of sexual
indiscretion and infidelity. It is obvious that whatever pleasure it brings is
nothing compared to the embarrassment, humiliation and collateral loses that
accompany any ensuing scandal. If you are in any doubt, ask America’s Bill
Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton and several others who have had their fingers
burnt by clandestine affairs!
And we’ve
only just started.
I would like to take off with a saying in my native
Yoruba. “Ikun n’jepa, ikun n’redi, ikun o mo pe oun to dun n’pani”.
Translated, it means “the squirrel pounces on a nut, savouring its taste, the
squirrel does not know that what is delicious can also kill”
If a man is married, or has a lady to whom he is formally
engaged, he is expected to stay sexually faithful to that relationship. This is
not necessarily for the sake of any religious dictate, it is more for his own
good. Often, what circumstances present to him as an opportunity to enjoy himself
outside his partner, stealing a quickie here and another surreptitious moment there,
may indeed be an entrapment that is deceptively packaged for his destruction.
I am not sure if this is peculiar to Nigeria, but there
is the tendency here to assume that infidelity is a common issue among our
menfolk. It’s almost taken for granted that a man, especially if he is of a
fairly comfortable financial status, is always under such intense pressure from
the opposite sex that he is bound to find himself in an affair sooner or later. The Yorubas have a cynical way of putting it:
Gbogbo wa ni ole, eni ti ile ba mo ba
ni barawo” (No man is absolutely innocent. Our pious appearance is a facade.
In reality, most of us are just as bad as the unfortunate one who got caught in
the act).
How factual can this sweeping assumption be? Certainly, the situation cannot be that bad.
There are certainly many honourable men who would stay true and forever
faithful to their marital vows no matter the pressure to do otherwise.
However, what I do know as a fact is that given the
choice, every woman counts her partner’s faithfulness as the virtue she anticipates
and treasures most in a relationship. It would be strange indeed to see a woman
who does not care, or who would subtly encourage her husband’s escapades,
except where she is also enmeshed in her own secret flings. What you find in most cases is a wife who
would protect, by any means possible, her home from being infiltrated by the so-called
strange women. Some females are known to
wish their men ill fortune, or at least withhold any meaningful support they
could afford to lend towards his business or financial breakthrough, if he is
not trusted to remain faithful and solely-focused in affluence.
In all these, it remains a knotty riddle still, one
that women have not been able to solve for ages, how a man can swear to loving
a woman so deeply, even with ample evidences, yet still be unfaithful to her at
the earliest opportunity she turns her back.
How does it always start?
It creeps in silently. Usually so. A man convinces himself he is not out to
cheat: it’s just a casual relationship, a simple friendship that has no strings
attached, with a colleague in the office, a school mate or a chat mate. At
other times, she is just someone he assists monetarily now and again out of godly
compassion without the slightest desire for recompense, whether in cash or kind.
In similar vein, she could be an
affluent lady he encountered accidentally, to whom he subsequently reaches out
for financial bailout once in a while. The scenarios are endless.
Whatever may be his original intention, a man often
arrive at this point of being comfortable in the company of this lady outside and,
with time, they find themselves alone together more regularly. One thing leads
to the other, as they say, and ultimately he eats the forbidden fruit.
Although some experts have listed “emotional
disconnection from one’s partner” as a major cause of infidelity, I daresay
that most adulterous men would argue that they remain affectionately connected to their
spouses and that they lack absolutely nothing in terms of care, affection,
faithful commitment and everything else a virtuous woman is capable of giving.
Sometimes, it is a man’s perceived
sense of insecurity or unhappiness - having convinced himself that he is
largely ignored, unappreciated and unloved at home. This leaves him vulnerable
to the external woman who tries to fill the supposed void through occasional sexual,
emotional or financial offers.
Who is fooling who?
It suits the average man’s
ego to believe that he got himself a lover due to his irresistible personal
charm, especially if the ‘catch’ is one with good, all round personality. Afterall
he had gone through a long thought process and elaborate scheming, creating
coincidences of encounters and conversational opportunities, all leading to a
date and ultimately to sex. Hurrah! He
feels triumphant, and considers himself worthy of a grand trophy but for the
clandestine nature of this particular conquest!
Unbeknown to him, the woman
merely allowed him to feel victorious and to enjoy his self-deceptive
manoeuvring. In reality, she has been the one with the control lever from the
beginning, even before the first thought left him!
Crossing the red
line.
It’s always better to run. As
fast and far as you possibly can. You could be mocked as a weakling; it’s okay.
Derided as being fearful of a harmless adventure because of your spouse’s spell.
And so, what? Truth is, you don’t have to
prove anything. Just run.
For some men who got ensnared,
it’s a case of the curiosity that kills the cat. From a simple, harmless chat, they ventured
further, wanting to know the stuff that a lady is made of.
The meat you’re sure you don’t
want to eat, the Yorubas ask in a well-known proverb, what sense is there in
examining and toying with it? Gradually,
the thought of a variety of exciting possibilities begin to take root. And
whatever you want, of course you will get, eventually.
Once you have crossed the
line, and if whatever is left of your conscience does not demand and enforce
immediate reverse, you may have led yourself into a cul-de-sac brother, much
like a drowning man that sinks deeper and deeper at every ‘ just this one last shot’!
Some of us have them as
friends and family. Crossing the morality line can make a man do things that
are truly appalling and make him to hate himself. He no longer feels any sense
of shame or compunction at his escapades which may become indiscriminatory with
time; he becomes increasingly innovative in this venture, even as just about anything
in skirt excites him notwithstanding her age, colour or class. At one point you
think slim girls are his weakness, only to see his total discomfiture at
beholding the extra-sixed. While you are yet done marvelling at his proclivity towards
girls far younger than him, at other times your revulsion increases when he
refuses to take his eyes off far older women.
So disgusting can things get
for some men, that their partners would rather die under the weight of chores in
the home, than hire a nanny or a maid, however dire the need, due to the issue
of distrust of the men involved regarding
the opposite sex.
The Role of Greed
and Indiscipline
At the root of this misbehaviour
is greed. And indiscipline. When a man is discontented with the woman he has
chosen for himself and by himself, whatever may be the reasons behind his
sudden distaste, there is no stopping his descend into the cesspool of degradation.
How deep is this problem?
It is so deep it can be described as calamitous. A man
who has this problem is no better than one who is permanently hooked on drugs or
such self-destructive habit.
Indiscriminate sexual appetite that drives a man to
seek gratification outside his significant half is an illness, pure and simple.
Until the sufferer sees it as a sickness that is as terminal in nature as any
form of cancer, his approach to seeking solution will lack the needed urgency
and desperation.
Solution? Just keep
the consequences in view.
If men would take a moment to
consider the costs, such introspection may indeed help to dissuade many of us
from venturing into what would most likely end disastrously.
Make no mistake about it:
there is a price you pay for infidelity, and you never stop paying. The following
are common probable outcomes:
·
Firstly, there’s
the issue of personal contrition. You are troubled emotionally by a constant
wave of regret especially where your partner has done nothing to deserve your
unfaithfulness.
·
Secondly, an
affair, not to talk about multiple, can be a serious drain on your time and
resources, a distraction that takes a man’s mind off his mission, thus causing
a serious derailment in his career or business.
·
Thirdly, you
never stop paying, even long after you’ve said your goodbyes; you line keeps
ringing to a tearful entreaty for “ýou’re our last hope” intervention on
matters as varied as children’s school fees, mother’s death, house rent and so
on.
·
Fourthly, you are
steadily turned into a master in the art of lying, saving names in your handset
with phony titles (even where there is no amorous connection) and never at ease
in answering calls in the presence of your partner.
·
Fifthly, the risk
of contracting all manner of diseases is real, from the minor to the deadly. The
thought that you’re the only fly in that lady’s ointment may be totally
misleading after all
·
Sixthly, your shiftiness
and the build-up of excuses for your absences from home at critical, observable
moments would begin to create a crack and ultimately a divide in the
relationship with your partner.
·
In addition, unwanted
pregnancies may result from your liaisons. Don’t imagine you can’t be set up,
or that every lady that genuinely finds herself with unplanned pregnancy would
agree to an abortion, however persuasive or threatening you are.
·
Even without
pregnancy, whatever you’re doing in the secret can sooner or later burst into
the open, creating scandals that may tarnish your image irreparably and drag your
family into public ridicule.
·
Divorces and
separations have resulted from infidelity.
It’s real,
·
While it is true
that here in Nigeria, majority of women who caught their husbands in serial unfaithfulness
don’t quit the marriages for reasons ranging from cultural pressure of “what
would people say?”, to lack of financial independence, being mindful of the negative effect of
separation on the children, etc, you still end up with a disgruntled woman who
would wait to take her pound of flesh, however long it takes.
I know of a 65-year-old woman who
packed out of the home when the children were done with their university
education and immediately the last daughter got wedded. And it was into her own house which she had been
assisted to build and furnish. Now at 72 and totally dependent on his wife’s valued
companionship, the man was left devastated, yet he received hardly any compassion
from the children who were witnesses to the indignity their mother had endured
for the most part of their growing up.
LAST LINE
Opportunism is not always a
positive word. Taking advantage of any girl or woman, whatever the situation, is
at best predatory in nature. A particular circumstance may place her at your
beck and call, but a sense of discipline and gentlemanly decorum should always
remind a man of this fact: that while a particular
undertaking may truly be pleasurable, convenient, cheap and a ready source of succour,
yet it can still be potently poisonous.
Our search for the worst of man’s vices just began!