Help! Widows in my neighbourhood fight over my husband

Alexander was good looking and comical, always ready to engage friends with his juicy stories. Though he may not be classified as very affluent or had much money to throw around, he had enough to entertain his friends and also provide for his family. He was raised that way, he saw his father made provisions for his family.

Thus, he learned from his father that one way which a man could retain his respect and integrity was to make provision for his family. When he met Victoria, a lady he later married, she fell head over heels in love with her.

“Alexander my husband had known how to take care of me right from his family. Nobody taught him that. He followed the footsteps of his father who according to the story he told me felt it was an insult to eat a meal prepared by a woman without giving her money for it. He grew up knowing and practising it so much that when we were courting he would visit me and after eating, would never leave my house without giving me some money, no matter how little.

“He would say that his father taught him that integrity was everything; and that every man should strive to keep his. One of his ways of maintaining his integrity was that according to him, ‘you don’t eat a delicious meal in a woman’s house without offering something. If you can’t give it to her, give to her children. It’s a good way of showing appreciation’. He was always quoting his father copiously in so many things and, indeed, I loved that.

His father too was known for having so many women longing to have him. I heard this from people who knew him. But that never bothered me; that was Alexander mother’s problem. All I knew was that Alexander took care of me. He occupied a very special place in my heart, he would make me laugh because he was good in cracking jokes, he would take me out, made me happy, was always there with me when I was down,” Victoria said.

After 11 months of courtship, “he proposed marriage to me and I accepted wholeheartedly because I loved him and I still do. We wedded and that made me his wife. I moved into his house and life. I was able to give him three children within a space of six years. Now that I clocked 12 years in marriage and I still love my husband. Alexander was not a man you get tired of. There was no dull moment about him. When he was not home, home would be dull, even our children were aware of this. But when he’s around, we would all feel his love. He was playful with his children and played football and lawn tennis with our children. It got to the extent that my children started telling me that ‘daddy is playful and jovial while mummy would spend so much time and money trying to look beautiful. She wouldn’t mind spending the whole day in the hair salon doing her hair not caring if the entire family is starving’. I knew they were right and I tried to make up somehow. I was aware that they loved their father,” she recalled. But one fault Alexander had was sleeping around with women.

“Yes, sleeping with widows in particular! I noticed this at first and cautioned him, he promised to stop. But he warned me not to be too pushy about it so that what happened to those women would not happen to me. That statement scared me and I softened. He said he tried to help them that most of them were going through hard times and needed help desperately.

I agreed but must it be young widows in their 30s and mid-30s that deserved his help? That was the question he was reluctant to answer because he used to warm their beds. The two widows in my neighborhood did something that baffled me recently,” Victoria said.

• To be continued