Instead of Hastily Leaving My Cheating Husband, I Bent Down to His Wishes
Beggars can’t be choosers.
Stepping into the doom
Days turned to nights. Nights turned to days. The bed that I once looked forward to as a modicum of pleasure, a haven for peace, stared back at me unfurled.
The sheets that felt warm just with the cozy thought of him waiting there for me, froze me black and blue. Our bedroom, a place I looked forward to drowning the humdrum of my day in his silent arms, had now started haunting me.
There was a time when we needed no words and now we struggle to find them to have a minute-long conversation. It has been happening a long time, but I have a knack for forgiving him and forgetting what I do not want to remember. I often asked my mother and my sisters how they could talk so long with their spouses. What kept them going, even after all these years.
We have been together 5 years, but they seem like a 10. After the first two, two kids filled our lives one after the other. I became lost fulfilling the responsibilities of a mother. I forgot I was a lover and a wife first. He should have helped me cope with those responsibilities, but he drowned himself at work and started staying away late at night. He had started taking his passion for women even more seriously.
The demands of being a parent coupled with a demanding motherly wife were too much for him. We had no sex. I wanted it, but he was always too tired. Days turned to nights, nights to months, months to years. We had not rubbed ourselves against each other. When we did, one of the kids inserted themselves in the middle.
We had tried to move the kids to another floor, then to another room, but their crying woke me up. Their sniffles gave me bad dreams in the night. I imagined thoughts that perhaps they never were having. I imagined dreams they never were dreaming. As their mother, my job was to make them feel secure, and they needed mama’s warmth to remove all fear.
And so they moved close to their mother. Two cribs filled our room. All four co-sleeping together and me happy combining maternal business with pleasure. I did not know when maternal responsibility took overall romance. Without even a word my romantic haven transformed into a cold cave, where I have stuck alone with two innocent souls. Together but all alone, with hands full but still empty-handed, I carried on the maternal load while he dwindled into another place in time.
To save myself from burning I jumped into the fire.
Days turned to nights. Nights turned to days. I woke up earlier than I had expected. He had long moved from the master bedroom to the sofa. I was so involved with the kids, I did not realize. This morning I caught him entering tip-toe at 6 am. My questioning eyes met his perplexed gaze. “I in got late at the office party. I had to drop Saskia home. She was too drunk to be left alone.”
I was too tired to digest the fact that he was away all night while I was awake most of the time amid two crying babies. As I turned back silently to go back to bed he casually added, “Babe, if Saskia’s mother calls you to enquire what I was doing in their apartment early morning, just say that you told me to ensure she reached home safe. She will not understand. But you will.”
And so I understood. A little more than I should have, and a little late than required. We were torn two worlds apart, pushed into a point of no return. I did not throw him out of the room, he volunteered to leave it as it suited him better.
He did not tell me to give my all to the children, I volunteered to make them my priority while unknowingly losing all I had — the man I gave my heart and all my life to when I was only 18. The man for whom I had left my whole world with the hope that my love alone would be enough to turn him from a flirt to a lover, had continued to experiment with women’s bodies. He was not to blame, I was. He hadn’t gone astray, I had expected too much by asking him to change.
I was uselessly spinning like a top in the wrong drawing-room. I was pretending to play host to the wrong guests. I was trying to fit into the shoes of a homemaker, a mother, a cook, and a bartender to cater to his affinity for having official parties at home. He wanted me to dress up and play waitress without notice. I dolled up the best I could, changing shoes and changing roles, until one day, the night ended too soon.
The next day too, I woke up sooner than expected. My body ached from last night. My brain was tired trying to still recall the events. My eyes wanted to screw shut looking at the chaos. There were strangers perhaps still sleeping in vomit in some corner. This was his way of chilling after having to work so hard for us. I could not let my OCD self snatch the little ‘life’ he had left.
Once again I wanted to go back to bed. I wanted to avoid his quizzical gaze, but his eyes rested on mine, and somehow, I could not withdraw to my room this time. I automatically followed my way to the sofa next to him. We had not been so close in months. We had been holding hands in front of people while dying to let them go when we were alone.
A chilly air filled the room. I heard one kid sigh in his sleep but before I could run off and attend to those duties, he held my hand desperately. A tremor followed down my spine and I felt a little bit of that physical pain go away. I put another hand on his thigh and my head on his shoulder before he shrugged it away and turned to look into my eyes.
“Thank you for all the arrangements for the party. Neil, my boss told me that I am very lucky to have you.”
Before I could smirk and take in the fact that he was indirectly praising me, he added, “ And I hope it stays that way, after what I am about to tell you.”.
My heart started racing, but I wasn’t sure which of those intense feelings caused it. Was it because of the news he was going to break to me, the irresistible feeling of his soft breath on my face, or his tantalizing touch on my hand?
“I would like to get married, a second time. Saskia is expecting our baby.”
I should have put two and two together. I should have taken cues from our lack of touch. I should have not buried our lack of compatibility under the weight of parenting. I should have faced the music and not run away to my safe, cold cavern.
As soon as reality was going to slap me in the face I took on the role of a responsible mother. Protecting my little beings perhaps restored confidence in me. Having two innocent ones to advise I did not feel alone, until now.
And for their sake, I had to keep quiet. Where would I go, if not be here with him? How will I find a supporter overnight? How could I leave for my parent’s house and dump the responsibilities of our kids onto them? Besides, they will advise me to accept Ishaan, with all his faults. That is what the role of a wife in Pakistan is — to accept her husband, love him and his family, give her all for the children and look at only the positives.
Given the number of opportunities and exposure we as girls got here in this conservative land, this was practical advice. Either I bear with my husband and submit to his desires, or I fear losing all I have with a barren promise of surviving the journey alone. I say barren because neither our environment nor women in our family were competitive enough to live independently.
So I did what my mother taught me to do. She told me that every woman, strong or not was blessed with emotions that are bound to flow in another woman’s favor triggered by the correct feelings. And I trusted her advice when I accepted Saskia into our home. She also taught me that beggars can’t be choosers. I was literally a beggar with two innocent mouths to feed with no solid ground beneath my
Fighting and arguing at this time would do me as well as the children more harm. So Instead of dropping Ishaan’s worth in my heart, I extolled him only for being the provider for our family.
My mother had always told me to see the positive in the man I loved, and I realized the courage it took for him to admit his mistake and his wish to me. There were two ways to look at my situation. Either I tell myself that he was only taking advantage of my weakness and knew I had no choice but to accept his second wife. Or, he really did make a mistake and did not want either of us to suffer. He loved us and regretted what he did and wanted to fulfill both his future and older responsibilities amicably.
I chose to pay heed to the latter, for the sanity of my mind and heart. In the place we were living, I had no option to consult a therapist or a psychologist. So I read up the internet to find the most acceptable reason that would allow me to carry on my responsibilities as a wife and a mother as before.
Buddhism taught me the concept of compersion — an attribute that would enable me to find happiness in my lover’s actions. Ishaan had always been a flirt. He loved and cared for me in the long run, but also could momentarily love another woman the same way. He had so much love to give, that he could not help it.
So far, my closed mind and morals had led me to eliminate such thoughts. When I moved away from religion and society and concentrated on the problem that lay in front of me, I had no option but to happily love my husband no matter what. To respect him for being honest and standing up for the responsibilities of not one but two women. For not leaving me, but requesting me to help him cope with his dreadful mistake. I could see in his eyes, that my affirmation meant the world to him. His happiness helped me swallow my pain.
Two’s a couple, but three is not a crowd!
Would I have acted any differently? Yes. If I had the money to support myself with the children. If I could still maintain the same lifestyle we were used to even after having no man in my life. If I could convince myself that two kids aged 8 and 6 needed no father in their lives and I could compensate emotionally and financially for the love of both.
Instead of teaching me and most women in the third world to bend down to the wishes of their men, they should have taught us to stand on our two feet. Instead of teaching us to find one positive excuse to not break up a marriage, they should have taught us to earn our own money before spending it first. Instead of brainwashing us to prepare ourselves for marriage, kids, and housekeeping, they should have prepared ourselves to be independent so at an inopportune time, we had the choice to leave our men.
Not making the girl child study and teaching her to be ambitious will not reduce the worth of her man in her eyes. If her partner really was that shallow, he did not deserve a woman by his side.
Luck did play its role. The sacrifice I had made for Ishaan bore fruit. Today my husband respects and adores me for having accepted his desire for a second wife. His second wife looks up to me and treats my children as her own.
If I had not accepted her support, I would be stuck alone in these four walls of stone. Alone with two innocent kids to hold. Alone with a man I called my husband, who has now become my best friend, BEFORE acting like the stranger I had never known.
Never did I dream that in order to get back that infatuation. To turn his house into a home. To anticipate those cozy sheets with him, I would need to share my bed with his new woman.
And since I did that, I opened up my mind, not only to his needs but also to mine. The light could now penetrate through the solid wall separating our old selves from the new. A cascade of memories made in our new polygamous household has helped mellow down the initial pain. A flurry of exciting times has helped erase those innumerable lonely nights. Color has finally returned to our picture in black and white after adding one more person in the frame.
Days turned to nights and nights turned to days, days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months. Months turned to years and it has now been two years since my kids were blessed with two mothers, and their mother blessed with two soul mates of both genders.
