I recently met with a friend and we got talking on a wide range of issues. In the course of our conversation, she told me that in the preceding week, she had recently met with the wife of someone we both know, a big oga, in a rather unusual place.
According to this friend, she met the big man’s wife in a church where she had gone to be a part of their deliverance service. Madam’s mission in the church, as she later gathered from their discussion, was to pray for her husband to be delivered from the stronghold of a husband snatcher who the husband had moved in with, leaving her and their children.
I allowed her to finish telling her story and raining invectives on the alleged husband snatcher. When she was done, I calmly told her that I do not believe in that term “husband snatcher” because I do not agree that a man or anyone for that matter can be snatched.
She was surprised and tried to explain, thinking I didn’t understand her earlier point but I stuck to my guns.
Let’s look at it critically.
When you say a man was snatched, you are excusing him and making him a victim but this isn’t the case. The man is no victim.
In fact, any man who has any iota of dignity should be ashamed when they say he was snatched. It doesn’t even make sense.
The way I see it, nobody snatches a man. A man goes exactly where he wants to be and does precisely what he wants at any given time.
A man sees a lady he likes, woos her and begins to have an affair with her, courts her maybe and then marries her or keeps her as his mistress. Some may move in with the lady, marry and bring her home or keep her somewhere secret.
How can you then say such a man was snatched as if he was a toy in the hands of a 5-year-old?
Some will use the excuse that they were seduced by the women they eventually got involved with.
Agreeing without conceding that a man was seduced by a woman, is it not his responsibility to stay faithful to his spouse at all times, no matter what happens?
A person who has made up their mind to be faithful to their spouse creates boundaries. In their interactions with members of the opposite gender, they do not leave room for assumptions or situations that can lead them to break their vows of fidelity.
Cheating is a decision and men, in particular do it knowing full well that their wives would rather remain with a cheating husband than bear the shame of being called a divorcee.
For many women in these parts, cheating is not a deal breaker and they have been conditioned to remain with a cheating man as long as he isn’t being violent, not starving them of food and sex and taking care of the children.
Moreover, our society is not fair to divorcees. They’re profiled, judged and shamed, especially women. No one wants to be a divorcee, no one wants to be the father, mother, brother or sister of a divorcee, lest it is said that they’re irresponsible or divorce runs in the family.
Even friends, especially those still married, stay away from a divorced woman; they do not want to be bitten by the divorce bug. Their husbands warn them to stay away from the irresponsible woman that was divorced by her spouse.
So when a man decides to sow his wild oats, he does it without any qualms whatsoever. He knows there is a woman at home who will make excuses for him and go from prophet to prophet seeking to deliver him from the spell of a “strange woman” rather than confront the elephant in the room.
When a man decides to be unfaithful, he knows that if anything happens, his wife will rather fight the other woman than confront him, he knows that if she tries to leave him, she will be asked to stay back for the sake of her children.
If he is wealthy, he knows that she will prefer to cry in a mansion than go back to her father’s wretched home in the village. Members of her family who are the beneficiaries of his wealth will be the first to ask her to stay put in the marriage, lest the money stops coming.
Fidelity is not the absence of temptation; it is the ability to resist temptation when it comes.
Admitted, there are ladies who profile a man and go all out to “get him” but how do they get him if they do not come close enough. A man who wants to remain faithful to his spouse will set boundaries and be strict about it.
There’s an age long adage that you can only be poisoned by those you eat from.
If men will stay on their own and remain faithful, wives will not have to run from one prophet to another seeking to untie their husbands from the bondages of strange women.
Unless you are being silly or just want to accept the narration as an excuse for your irresponsibility, any decent man should find it embarrassing if he is said to have been snatched.
Women already have a lot to deal with and jumping from one prayer house to another shouldn’t be added to their routine.
It’s about time women also stopped making excuses for men and or blaming and fighting the other woman who does not owe them fidelity, unlike their husbands.
