You may get emotionally and sexually involved with another person and finally lose the marriage.
Should spouses accept being left home and alone for months on end because their partners got jobs in South Sudan, Uganda, Sierra Leone, or even Afghanistan? That is the question that crossed my mind as Jane sat in front of me, writhing in labour pain and explaining her case.
“The last time my husband was here was seven months ago,” she explained. “Just tell him the labour is premature.”
“But the pregnancy is nine months and is fully grown from my assessment!” I exclaimed. “I will be telling a lie and that is wrong.”
She stared into the air, shook her head, frowned, and then looked me in the face. The unease was obvious and the discussion was getting difficult.
“It is not my mistake, I am human, and I have feelings. I leave the decision to you to either save my marriage or let it go to the dogs!” she blurted out.
The lady, Jane, had walked into the consultation room with her husband. She, however, requested that the man stay out as I examined her. The bone of contention was that what her husband believed to be the age of pregnancy was very different from the actual. She was nine months pregnant, and according to the man, the conception happened only seven months earlier.
“That day I just knew we had made a baby,” the man had explained, rubbing Jane’s shoulder.
“I should say it is exactly seven months and two days today.” According to him, Jane was having food poisoning. It could not be labour. There were seven more weeks left before labour could come.
A mother of two and now in labour to deliver her third born, Jane lived in Kenya while her husband worked in a foreign country, visiting only twice a year and each time staying for two weeks. The family coped well on the social fronts, with Jane looking after their two children single-handedly while John, her husband, was away.
“But I must say I sometimes get tempted, I am young and have feelings, and as much as I love him, sometimes I have had to find a way of meeting my bodily needs,” she explained. “And this time around, things worked against me and I conceived. If John gets to know the truth, our marriage will be one story, you are the only one who can save me from this situation.”
And so here we were, in the middle of a crisis that could make or break a family. Medically, it was impossible to postpone the labour. I wondered if John himself stayed faithful while on a mission. Men are lucky because they can do so much damage to themselves and their wives but walk out unscathed. But here was this poor lady in labour, living the consequences of an affair that she so ably justified. She blamed it all on long-distance relationships.
Let’s be clear here: Not every man or woman who is in a long-distance relationship ends up being unfaithful. Extramarital affairs do not just happen because of long-distance relationships, sometimes there are compounding factors in the relationship. That said, married people do have sexual feelings, and when the spouse is away for too long, temptations can happen. It requires real strength to fight those feelings and remain faithful. Men and women in long-distance relationships should therefore congratulate each other if they manage to remain faithful.
The ideal situation is to ensure that you do not subject your spouse to temptations. Even the strongest of persons fall prey to their human weaknesses at some point. If you are the tempted partner, be frank before things go wrong and let your spouse know that you cannot bear it anymore. He or she has to come home, or you have to join them wherever they are and live together.
Take it this way, you may get emotionally and sexually involved with another person and finally lose the marriage. You have to decide whether this is what you want. It is sometimes a situation of choosing between money and marriage!
And so for Jane, the hens had come home to roost. We were staring at a crisis right in the face. Her husband peeped at the door, asking if we were done with the examination. He was getting impatient. I requested for five more minutes.
“So then here is the deal,” I explained in a hurry. “I am not going to lie, I will not talk to your husband on your behalf, I will leave it to you to explain it the way you want, and I will not talk so that I do not contradict you.”
She had wanted me to say that she had food poisoning that had interfered with the pregnancy and so she was having premature labour.
The following day I met John in the corridor of the ward. I shuddered, fearing what he would tell me.
“Thanks for all the help, it is a bouncing baby boy, 3.5 kilos. The weight would have gone to 4kg if Jane had not developed premature labour!” He said excitedly. His wife had convinced him that had the baby reached nine months, normal delivery would not have been possible and that the premature labour was a blessing in disguise.
As I waved bye at him, I was convinced that neither John nor Jane was to blame for this awkward situation. I was just disappointed by long-distance relationships. It was the cause of all this.
