The first hate mail I ever got from writing in this space was nine-odd years ago. The headline of that article read, ‘Gentlemen, believe it or not, your wife gets hit on by other men.’ The sassy headline was like a bold, scared - but - doing - it anyway- little girl holding a placard challenging the Njuri Ncheke elders. “Married or not, heck, even when hugely pregnant, a girl will step out of her house and is game,” I said.
The response was overwhelming as women shared about how they were constantly barraged by guys, despite their married status. The husbands mentioned that it was great that men noticed their wives. “She is beautiful. That is how I noticed her in the first place. It affirms my good taste. Plus, I trust her.”
But one reader was so upset that he straight went and wrote me a three-page email for a response. The line that most incensed him was when I said, “I don’t think our husbands realise that we still get hit on by other men, subtly or directly, every day.” I do not know what it triggered in him, but he quite misunderstood what ‘hit on’ meant. He mentioned that he was decades older than I was, and the next three pages were loaded with berating in the range of, what kind of manners are these? Who is your mother?
Nothing has changed. We are heading towards the fifties, and we still get hit on, by both younger and older gentlemen, and we smile, smoothen a wrinkle, and are happy to be women.
Men go neanderthal when they imagine that their wives could be involved with another man. It becomes a freeze, fight, or flee issue. I did not know how much so until I posed a question to my comrades. “What would you tell your wife’s lover if you could?” The silence was deafening. See, I had tried to search online for open letters to a wife’s lover. The most I could get was a fictional letter written by a dead husband, to his wife’s new husband. But I got hundreds of open letters written by wives to their husband’s mistresses, and others written by mistresses to their lovers' wives.
“He will be dead.” Kithu James wrote back in response to my query, twenty-five minutes later.
“If he’s not dead, then I will seek revenge in other ways, or keep quiet and seek solace in thousands and thousands of women. It would be a lie to say this is healable.” Bernard Mutie gave a response that is not publishable, but the anger spilled through. He concluded with, “I cannot respond to her lover. Real men do other things.”
John Master said, “I will just relax as I plot for the sister, cousin, aunt, heck, even the mother.”
It is unfathomable to a man that his wife can have an adulterous liaison with another man. Never mind that the same man could win the Philanderers’ Award. It is no secret that many wives have illicit affairs, but the very thought of it makes a man’s blood boil. The irony is that the betrayal of adultery has the same pain for both genders. Why do men expect their wives to take that pain like a wounded soldier – we often do - while they cannot stomach even the thought of it on themselves? It is such an alien space for a man that society does not even know that the male version of a mistress is called a paramour.
The pain of adultery demands to be felt. It hurts the same, whether you are a man or a woman. A wife will take it stoically, but she will never be the same. Some men kill, others go dangerously quiet, but it changes them, forever. “What one name describes your wife’s lover?” I asked. I got unprintable names, and Alex posed the same to me. “I call my husband’s mistress, Death,” I replied. “She is Death because he vowed to desert all others until Death do us part.”
Couples can navigate conflicts and adversities, but when a third party checks in, Death indeed visits their union. They might remain legally married and put up facades for the public, but their relationship dies. Do not be the Death in a couple’s marriage. Let them do all that by themselves.
