What Happens When Your Children Catch You Having Sex with a Stranger?
Circumstances may have forced me to cheat on my husband, but my kids will not pay the price.
My husband has two wives.
If you are familiar with polygamous relationships, there is a primary partner and a secondary partner. The primary partner has more say in the relationship, for example, she may share her bed with her man alone, or they may have kids together, which creates a separate bond.
I am the primary wife in the relationship. My rival and my husband’s second wife, Saskia, is reserved for all his sexual and sensual experiments. I am proud to say that there is no jealousy between Saskia and me. Our children have two mothers. Our husband loves both his wives equally. Obviously, I have worked very hard toward having a stress-free environment in our home, despite the type of relationship we have with each other.
“It isn’t being perfect but, learning to enjoy each other’s differences that make a successful marriage.”
Ishaan, our husband, has always been a very handsome man. He can attract people, both men and women, through his charm. He is perfect in everything he does. If you disagree with his person or decision, wait ten minutes, and you will be convinced that he is right.
Compared to Ishaan’s good looks, I am just an ugly duckling. I was simple and determined, but not as outspoken as I could have been. The environment I grew up in, also a polygamous one, taught me to keep shut and obey my man’s command. At that time, Ishaan, the heartthrob of our college, proposed to me. We were family friends and his parents found me to be a loyal partner who would overlook my husband’s promiscuous nature.
Dating and marrying a casanova made me a confident women
Dating Ishaan and roaming around with this casanova hand in hand boosted my confidence. Having a protective man who other women lusted for made me important in their eyes. Though negative, I was not used to getting noticed and enjoyed any publicity and attention in the small town where I lived in conservative Pakistan.
At that time, I did not understand why dating a handsome man became more important to me than being with a simple Muslim man who would just stick to one wife and not look at anyone else. Psychologists have revealed that women are attracted to men who play hard to get. If Ishaan wanted another woman’s number he would mention he needs to leave shortly, so she gave it to him then or never.
Ishaan was always busy and seldom available. Being the person who shared a house and a bed with him made me lucky to have him readily available. This meant the world to me, for as long as it lasted.
Accepting my husband’s second wife made me a tigress
Marrying the heartthrob of college had made me open my mouth in public. I started paying more attention to maintaining my figure and my beauty at least for the times Ishaan went out with me. I always worked extra hard to make the night we would have sex together special, which was always a Friday.
Just when I had convinced myself that Ishaan was the only mine, and I had everything to make Ishaan forget his love of other women, reality hit hard. He told me that a common friend was pregnant with his child and he wanted to marry her. The look in his eyes told me that this is what he wanted to do, and trying to reject his want would not do any good.
So I accepted meek Saskia and used her naive self to take out my frustration. Ishaan respected me for my sacrifice. Nothing could change the fact that I was the mother of his kids and the caretaker of his ailing mother, and the household. Saskia was perhaps only perfect in bed. Her imperfection in everything else extolled me to be Ishaan’s queen.
It was then that I realized the reason I preferred Ishaan over other Muslim men who would stay loyal to their lives and not roll their eyes hither and thither. Other Muslim men did not converse with their wives. They just brought the moolah home and were free to live as they did. If they wished to cheat they could without their wives ever finding out.
Ishaan was not a devout Muslim. Sure, he had his needs and while I was supposed to understand them, he understood mine. One of the many needs he accepted was for me to attend dance lessons even after marriage and having kids, which is a big deal in Islam where music is considered a taboo attracting evil.
Cheating on my husband made me a happier woman
I do not know if music and dance attracted me to this man, or it was just the lack of happiness in my relationship. The woman in me who wished to be Ishaan’s first choice in everything was not content with only this much. I longed for what Ishaan and Saskia had together, but not with my husband. I tried to put up a brave face and raised the children alone while cupping my ears at the pleasurable moans of my husband fucking his second wife.
To my horror, I started imagining them have sex even when they were just sleeping in each other's arms. I wanted to consult a therapist to help me accept this difficult situation, but then read a lot and did what I could do, without the need for one. In the neighborhood and country I was in therapists are not readily available. And even if there were, news of my consulting one would spread like wildfire.
Ron had been lustfully staring at my modestly covered mature figure in dance classes. I could feel his attraction through my thin clothing. I too had a desire to reciprocate but let social customs and other taboos come in between. It was not until I gave in to my own desires that I found the solution to all my problems.
Since I had a partner to share my sex life with, I could accept my husband having sex with his second wife in the next room. Not only that, I learned to enjoy watching my husband get a type of sexual pleasure that only Saskia could give to him.
I had finally attained compersion or what they call Mudita in Buddhism where I learned that when your partner is involved with someone else that makes them happy, you too have the potential to join in their joy. Being more content and less jealous made me a better wife and mother until the latter role was threatened.
When caught red handed, my unfaithful mother lied
I am the daughter of a woman who cheated on her husband. Yes, my father had two wives and hid this fact from my mother initially, until the second wife demanded he tells us the truth for her own security. When the fact leaked out, my father was forced to bring my second mother home.
Choti Ammi, my father’s second wife, quickly adapted to our family, all thanks to my mother’s acceptance. My mother always told us two things,
“You cannot control a man’s desire but only withold it until he finds a way to fulfil it behind your back.”
and
“A woman can be another woman’s worst enemy, but it is her who also has the potential to be her best friend.”
Choti Ammi, even though she came into the lives of us four girls when we were 6, 4, 3, and 2, became as precious as our own mother. The four girls and my father’s primary partner made her life complete. Choti Ammi became my mother’s sister and confidante. Together, they were stronger than my patriarchal father.
Though my father and my husband had two wives, they had nothing in common. My father was indifferent to the needs of all the women in his life, which included his own mother. He was selfish and did not learn to live any other way. He did not contribute anything except financial support to his daughters and wives.
This wasn‘t enough for my mother and so, she wandered away when she had a chance. She needed a partner to converse with and not just a financial hand. In Pakistan, this combination of a husband is hard to find. So my mother invented one.
She started having an affair behind my father’s back and when news about this leaked out, she hid the fact from us. She did not tell us to lie, but we understood what would happen if we did not hide this fact from my father. He was a very hot-tempered man, and all the women of the house were scared of him.
What happens when you lie about your extra-marital affair to your children
As a child who saw my mother cheat on her husband, I can tell you that children suffer when their parents engage in extramarital affairs and expend emotional energy outside the family. Subtle changes in an adulterous parent’s behavior can unsettle children, regardless of whether the truth leaks out.
Even if they are too young to understand what is happening, they start to sense rejection and become anxious and frightened. Such children either become bold and are prone to having affairs when they grow up, or they become meek and will accept all the shit someone gives.
My four sisters have experienced this feeling, first with our father who discreetly had a second wife in another town he frequented for business trips. Since the role of a man in Pakistani society is to a minimum with kids, especially girls, we did not sense any change in his attitude. But if my father had contributed to our growth, we would have grown up to be women who never would want to trust men.
When the primary parent, my mother was swept by her new lover, she became incapable of focusing on the potential effect on the children. It was then that Choti Ammi came to our rescue by playing mom when our birth mother was too busy having conversations behind closed doors.
Choti Ammi was there when the younger girls wet their bed, sucked their thumbs, and threw temper tantrums. When I acted out in anger exhibiting fear that our family was going to be wiped out, Choti Ammi explained to me my mother’s needs and my father’s lack of love and responsibility. My second mother saved the girls from completely breaking when both their parents were involved in finding happiness elsewhere.
Had my mother explained to me truthfully what Choti Ammi did, perhaps I would have refrained from making cheating a patterned response. I did not, and almost twenty years later, I faced the same situation when my daughter questioned me about my current lover.
I owned up to my daughter
Though it was clear through our frequent meetings at pick-up and drop-off times that I liked Ron, my 10-year-old caught us almost in the act when she came back earlier from school one day.
The teacher had dropped her off early as she was having nausea. She entered when I was sitting with my legs sprit up on Ron. I was wearing a colored burqa with just a g-string underneath. Thankfully I was not naked bottoms up.
There was no point lying to her about what was going on. She was old enough to understand what we were trying to do. If at that time I had white lied to her as my mother did, I would have
- encouraged her to lie and cover-up in a similar event
- made her even more confused about what she saw and perhaps even attracted depressive thoughts
- made her imagination run wild and forced her to keep an incest full secret which she later could use against me
- threatened to lose her trust in me as her friend for life
Instead of covering up and telling her to keep this awful secret, I told her that such things should not happen, but if they do, there is a way out. I talked to my daughter vulnerably and apologized for what I had put her through.
One may argue that since my husband was already having sex with a second partner in our house, our children were used to seeing both parents involved with other partners. Children only learn what they are taught, but it is also true that living in a monogamous society is the norm.
Other children had just one father and one mother who were not as involved as our weird family in their needs. Because they deligated most tasks that we did to servants, their children had minimum interaction with them and did not get to see them with other strangers at different times.
Though my children grew to learn that they had two mothers who cared for their welfare, they also knew that any third person with their father and either of the mothers was a crowd.
At this time, teaching them to deal with parent infidelity openly would make them stronger and more confident citizens. My daughter knows that her mother made a mistake by cheating on her father and will not resort to this as an appropriate solution to a marital problem.
Do not teach children anything that they’re going to have to unlearn later
The strongest of children are not those who have been kept away from the realities and mishaps of life, but those who are taught to face them bravely. Avoid infidelity at all costs, but if you resort to it anyway, and are caught, dare to speak the truth.
Just as I had learned to accept Ishaan’s happiness touching other bodies, I had also learned to concentrate on the welfare of my children, keeping my image at stake. I used their curiosity to encourage them to ask follow-up questions to develop a strong bond for the future, even if they momentarily, lost all respect for me.
Talk to your children about sex. Approach it as a fact of life to prevent future risky behavior. Children raised this way know sex is a responsibility and postpone first sexual experiences until they are mature enough to handle it.
Talk to your children about what is awkward when they are young to earn dividends when they are awkward teens. Children who learn to accept and think about what is hidden in society make more cautious, deliberate, and thoughtful decisions in life.
In a country like Pakistan, where hypocrisy is the way to live and everything inappropriate is shoved behind the curtain, I think our children have got the best upbringing in our open, caring, polygamous household.
