Background Information: I am a graduate of Chemistry, and a retiring teacher and inspector of education after 31yrs of meritorious service in altogether five stations with the Federal Ministry of Education. I am also a freelance writer having publications in certain Nigerian print media. in May 2005 I and my wife shall clock 30yrs as a married couple. my wife also is a civil servant. together we have two grown up sons. We have all managed to keep afloat and weather the storms of the tempestuous seas just as many families, in spite of all odds, have done.
Attitude to published works of other writers and authors.
I am an old boy of Old Government College where the old custom is subsumed in the doctrine: ” it is good, if you want to criticise the published works of other writers and authors, do it amicably and justly and not sarcastically, where necessary and applicable. It is better, obviously to write and publish your own observation from your own angle and point of view on the same subject instead of criticising the published works of fellow writers and authors. in reviewing a book, let your views be based more on the book’s merit than on its demerits”.
And so in this response write up, instead of placing undue emphasis on the apportioning of blame, efforts are made to identify the causes and profer lasting possible solutions to the problem created by the indulgence in extra-marital affairs.
Real life experience or no real life experience basis.
There are many schools of thoughts on the current subject of discussion: extra-marital affairs: are women really to blame?
Actually, I have no opportunity to read the main article written by Rotimi Oyekanmi of the Guardian Group of Newspapers and so it is hard for me to accurately estimate what degree it was based on real life experience solicited by you from respondents. There is a parallelism between real life experience and true confessions stories characteristic of the sleek magazines. I hope Oyekanmi’s main article was not a true confession.
If every human angle story were to be based on true life experience, then it would be absolutely necessary for only those who have achieved sainthood and gained the rewarding positions in the kingdom of God in heaven to write creditably books on HOW TO BECOME SAINTS or HOW TO GO TO HEAVEN, instead of prophecies for their followers, apostles, disciples on earth aspiring to sainthood to read and implement in their life-styles.
who is qualified to write and comment on marital subjects?
There is the school of thought based on the Lizz and Dick affairs, which speculates thus: “can Elizabeth Taylor, world famous actress twice married and twice divorced by Richard Burton, equally world famous actor, write a book on successful marriage?” the answer is “Yes, if she knows her onions well and can identify the mistakes of broken marriages and can point out lasting possible solutions to rectify those mistakes, or better if she can identify ways of preventing such mistakes which result in broken marriages from occurring, since it is true that prevention is better than cure.”
The person who can firstly estimate or measure accurately the distance of a race before actually embarking on running, it can so often better assess what the race will be like than the person who firstly runs the race before estimating or measuring its distance. however, not all races are the same.
My observation
On the subject of discussion, my observation is based purely on nobody’s true life experience but on the absolute ideal truth tenable and contestable everywhere in the world. It is unsurprising that indulgence in extra-marital affairs also known as adultery is condemned in the Christian scripture. In the lighter mood in the Old Testament books, the female subjects were considered the concubines of their male admirers and protectors, chivalrous cavaliers. certain extra-marital affairs resulted in highly sensational, scandalous and negative consequences until the Divinely Anointed King of Glory, Jesus Christ, came into the world in His human form and preached not only the permanence of the marital union: “Let no man put asunder what God has joined together”, but also that “No man can give his wife a write of divorce except for adultery”.
These bits of knowledge are well known to every student of Holy Bible. Those who do not want to gamble and dangle with their lives for survival make efforts to avoid the indulgence in fornication and adultery. It is because of the highly sensational, scandalous and negative consequences of the indulgence in extra-marital relationships that many scholarly and scholarstic foreign statesmen and women insist strongly on mutual fidelity and so desist as much as possible from fueling the furnace and fanning the embers of discord between spouses.So they consider that menopause and senility are in suggestible, inexorable and insufficient excuses for the indulgence in secret , clandestine extra-marital relationships which can stain records of service, family’s good name, honour, respect, erudition, ambition, tradition, socio-economic status, reputation, integrity, prestige, character, charisma, history, sweet reasonableness, peace and decorum, unity and stability inter alia.
Factors which motivate extra-marital affairs
Naturally, everywhere in the world, the population of the female is denser than that of males. However, by every intellectual guess, common and stretch of imagination, it is unfair to the other gender group for one to say that women only or men only are really to blame in extra-marital affairs which take two to tango.
The indulgence in extra-marital affairs is traceable to multi-faceted factors, viz ; socio-economic factors, geo-political factors, genetic factors, satanic attack and personal factors.
Socio-economic factor
Societal attitudes, do’s and don’ts, norms and forms, values, customs, cultures, traditions, beliefs, regulations and rules of law and order often provide the adequate or inadequate enabling environment for good behavior or misdemeanour, as one chooses.
This is more so where the hard distinct to follow the Joneses and the peer group pressure to respond to every peer group impulse, urge, whim, caprice, fancy, fantasy, and the youthful persuasion to belong to the peer group impact heavily on the person who is apparently unequipped or inadequately equipped to resist and overcome the uncosmetic influence of the bad and the ugly, and to embrace, harbour, welcome, receive, accommodate, imbibe the cosmetic influence of the good and the beautiful of God’s creatures. Every circle of the society has its own trays of eggs including those bad eggs which constitute bad company which corrupts manners. Those bad people in the society are often like mind-benders who, seeing innocent people who do not indulge in extra-marital relationships have their own ways of inducing and convincing them to indulge in same: “Eh, every one does it oh.
Why do you want to waste your life away like that as if you were a sacred cow? No be me oh.” See my list of my conquests in my diary. Na bottom power be that, or so dem de call am. Money for hand, back for ground no be better.” In a rapidly advancing, civilized society where each of the cost of living and the standard of living but not the cost of living allowance is rising by leaps and bounds day by day, it is easy for a married man or a married woman to be tempted to indulge in extra-marital affair with a supposedly buoyant sugar mummy or sugar daddy as the case may be just to make socio-economic ends meet.
sometimes greed, selfishness, not scarcity, is the motivating factor. Sometimes those who happened to have been led by the nose to have sexual intercourse with married adults when they were still virgins turn around as if to revenge by seducing virgins of the opposite sex to do same with them. then it becomes like what St. Thomas Aquinas in his well known book titled SUMMA THEOLOGICAL theorised as the chain of reaction in which one hand moves a staff which moves yet another staff, which moves yet another staff and that continues in an endless progression.
GEO-POLITICAL FACTORS: Battles and wars, more than natural disasters, constitute the worst culprit for the gross imbalance in the female: male population everywhere in the world. they also constitute the worst culprits through battles and wars to indulge in adultery. sometimes it is because of the gross imbalance in the female: male population of certain geo-political units that one may find that in certain geo-political units, the indulgence in extra-marital affairs is considered unpardonable taboo, abomination before God and man, whereas in certain other where there is no such gross imbalance in the female: male population or where there exists such population imbalance the indulgence in extra-marital affair is considered fun, nothing evil, unpunishable culture, custom, tradition, is surely more likely to indulge in it even when that spouse’s partner comes of a geo-political unit where such is considered a taboo punishable by penalty.
GENETIC FACTOR: Genetic factors runs parallel with geo-political factors. and so the spouse who comes from a family where the indulgence in extra-marital affairs runs through the lineage and so is considered a pastime, fun, unpunishable event, often tends to indulge in it even where and when the other spouse comes of a different family and genetic back ground which on the contrary considers such indulgence an abhorrable abomination before God and man.
other genetic factors are complete bareness and unisexual births in the family. the occurrence of bareness lasting several years can engender frustrations, boat-rocking episodes, accusations and counter-accusations. the consequence may be that one or each spouse may look for an escape route to indulge in extra-marital affair so as to validate his innocence of potence or her innocence of fertility because it is well known that impotence and infertility constitute two of the main causes of bareness. to tell the truth, the elephant’s route never closes unless it has no offsprings.
Concerning unisexual births, when a couple’s biological children are either all boys or all girls, depending on the spouses’ personal psychological balance, one or each of them can be tempted to indulge in extra-marital affair so as to have a baby of the opposite sex from that of their biological children except each of the spouses is strong-willed enough to resist and overcome the temptation, instead of sitting back later to await the results. the motivation is not the fun and enjoyment of extra-marital sex but just to have a daughter where the biological children were all boys , or to have a son where all the biological children were girls.
SATANIC ATTACK: Cupid the God of love teaches that when a well has stayed too long under the eaves of a house, Satan dips hand into it. In the same token, the idle mind is Satan’s workshop. idleness of the mind is known to result in anti-social acts such as juvenile delinquence, sexual harassment or sex abuse, crime etc., but not so often in satanic attack.
Satanic or demonic attack can harass, embarrass and drive the sufferer into indulge in extra-marital affairs simply because the sufferer considers those members of the opposite sex he or she interacts with as not only eligible sex partners but also as eligible spouses. In Igbo language, the common term for satanic attack of the adulterous type is di uwa. the sufferer is sane quite alright but yet possessed by Satan just like a mad person, lunatic, until he or she is ransomed by a genuine divine healer from Satan.
where the sufferer is completely ransomed from Satan, every desire to indulge in extra-marital affair is cured completely also. whereas where the sufferer is incompletely ransomed from Satan, relapse can occur; the unclean spirit continues to instigate the bad habits of reckless adultery, sexual permissivity, seduction, promiscuity, harlotry, prostitution.
PERSONAL FACTORS: People are aware that the indulgence in extra-marital affairs breaks marriages like cassava sticks and that were such indulgence as popular as even the game of football. those couples who cherish and recognise the sanctity of marriage would still hate to play it. yet still, because so many people find it hard to control and overcome their personal limitations, short-comings, they indulge in extra-marital affairs. the spouse who prior to marriage suffered from the unclean and bad habits of lizards or had anti-social antecedents or was sexually hypersensitive and hyperactive like pigeons, and has not renounced nor jettisoned those bad habits at marriage can more likely indulge in extra-marital relationships with former, pre-marital sex partners than the spouse who had no such pre-marital antecedents. as soon as the spouse begins to flirt and the other spouse discerns it and begins also to flirt, there is a time when the man returns home and finding his wife absent from home, he begins to raise dust and enquire: “Where is my wife for God’s sake?”.
The rest of the personal factors include the spouse’s inability to resist and overcome the temptation to lust and flirt and indulge in adultery arising from unnecessary distractions brought about by physical attraction, sex appeal, beauty, sexy manner of dressing, psychedelism, brand and size of the opposite sex, eye-service, signs and mannerisms and pass-words dropped by members of the opposite sex supposedly expressing passionate appeal, desire for intimate relationship with the spouse concerned.
Head or tail, standing or kneeling, the tempter wins where the tempted spouse succumbs to the temptation. Another personal factor motivating spouses into indulging in extra-marital affairs is sexual incompatibility. sexual incompatibility between spouses is evidenced by unsatisfied sexual intercourse where there is no orgasm, climax, ecstacy achieved by each of the spouses or by one of them only .the sexually unsatisfied spouse may resolve to seek sexual fulfillment in extra-marital relationship with an external partner, in spite of whether the couple already have biological children or have none.
The factors which bring about sexual incompatibility and its consequent indulgence in extra-marital affairs include infidelity resulting in the unfaithful spouse who after cheating is no more in the mood for another round of sex and so is temporarily dysfunctional, groggy and unready to have sex with own spouse; certain psychological barriers resulting in one spouse’s aversion for sex generally or specifically with own partner even when the woman is not menstruating; one spouse’s outward or pretended chastity toward own spouse:” I an fasting, don’t disturb me”.
Other factors which cause sexual incompatibility between spouses include the inability of the man to achieve and sustain erection and penetration and subsequently orgasm, climax, ecstacy; the woman’s frigidity which is one main reason against girl-child circumcision also known as female genital mutilation. sometimes proper dieting coupled with pre-sex romance and mutual stimulation and encouragement help a lot to reverse the state of affairs, and enhance sexual arousal and readiness. it is important to know o commence and when to terminate coitus.
Other personal factors inducing spouses to indulge in extra-marital affairs are the urge to escape from masturbation also known as accidental discharge; the application of drugs such as performance enhancement pills and concoctions which enhances the spouses’ hypersensitivity and sexual hyperactivity; the use of contraceptive devices and pills which apparently neutralise fears for unwanted pregnancies but not for sexually transmissible diseases which to some sufferers do not obey the physical law discovered by Sir Isaac Newton: “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
LOVE AND FIDELITY: THE SOLUTION AND WAY FORWARD; Love is the greatest commandment of God and the greatest tool of every religion. love is also the all-important binding energy of every tru marriage, love is the answer, elixir, panacea, true and lasting solution to every marital problem. the absence of true love in the family makes the heart fonder. the outcome can be to search the research for an excuse, escape route, an opportunity to indulge in extra-marital relationship until one finds it.
Where every well-meaning, honest-to-each-other couple of good character and learning have love in focus and always remember that in this geo-political and socio-economic unit seeking to become equally democratic as the ret of the world’s best democracies. nothing and no one should put asunder what God has joined together in marriage so that the perplexing idea of extra-marital affairs will be put to rest finally or to flight from every couple who therefore can be once married, always married.
it is well-known truth that the Canadians geese and genders are known for their fidelity and loyalty to one sex partner. this sounds incredible and utopian in the human ear. but what binds the Canadian goose and gender together is love and mutual respect and the feeling of being the others keeper. if human beings can become like the Canadian geese and genders through religion, culture, custom, tradition, and so eradicate the factors militating against marital unity, stability, fidelity and love, each spouse would stick to his or her own marital partner and on one else would come between the couples. where everyone behaves himself well as his brother’s and his sister’s keeper, the domestic rodent can no more be led by the nose to the exact bearing and location of the crayfish in the home and so it can no more run to nitify and lead the bush rodent to the crayfish especially in times like this when people have expanded their horizons of knowledge to the level of awareness that by foreign estimate foreign crayfish earns more foreign exchange than local aiya.
When each concerned spouse, by way of self-analysis which is intuitive, psychological, psychotherapeutic, deductive, and so practicable identifies his or her problem as the uncontrollable indulgence in extra-marital affairs, and recognises the paramount fact that the Great Master Jesus Christ did not condone adultery but yet He did not allow any one of the Jews who wanted to stone Mary Magdalene to death for indulging in adultery to cast a stone on her, the that spouse’s problem is near to solution point. more efforts will be crowned with success.
CONCLUSION: By every intellectual guess, common sense and stretch of the imagination, it is unfair to the other gender group for one to pass the judgement unilaterally, arbitrarily and emphatically that either women really are to blame or that men really are to blame in extra-marital affairs. to say so is like to say that one gender group enjoys the sexual act better and more than the other.
Such unilateral, arbitrary and emphatic judgement is unbalanced. judgement akin to make a preference of either the cosmetic sweet fragrance of a banana and plantain republic or the equally cosmetic sweet fragrance of a pineapple republic just because there is a choice, an option. Supposing everyone were a man or everyone were a woman, who then would be blamed for adultery and fornication?
