You need to move on by forgiving that affair

By Bunmi Sofola Someone once dubbed Lagos the adultery capital of the world. A bit unfair judging by the frantic global bed-hoppingsthat go on all over the place. But it does not mean that adultery is no longer the shocker it used to be. So can you forgive a straying partner? Joy, a top executive in the marketing department of a manufacturing company, said she’d invested so much into her relationship over eight years to let a little thing like adultery destroy it.

“Call it the seven-year itch”, said Joy, “but we’d been living together for that long when Afe, my partner’s affection, began sliding. “It was the little things that stopped first, like his afternoon phone calls saying he was thinking of me. He started going out more with his male friends, but as they were mine too, I trusted them to keep him in line.

Then he started going out to work functions but when I asked why, we’d end up arguing and he would charge out of the house, then, this fateful day, I’d been away for an advert shooting for my company for a couple of day and when I returned home, the photographs of us that sat on top of the television had gone. “Afe said he thought I’d taken it with me, but it turned up two days later back on the television set.

Afe said he’d forgotten he’d taken it to the office to show someone. But I know most of his work colleagues, so why bother to take in a picture of us? A few weeks later, he forgot his cheque book at home and I was concerned at the amount of money he’d been withdrawing. I went to his office to confront him. It was a few weeks to Christmas and I read the cards on his desk while waiting for him.

One read: “Darling, sorry we won’t be spending Christmas together but you’ll be in my thoughts all day. Wish you could be here with me. All my love, you cuddly teddy bear”. When I threw the card in Afe’s face, he had the grace to look shame-faced. The girl in question turned out to be a colleague, but it had been going on for months He said on the few occasions I’d gone out of town on advert shoots, he’d felt neglected and this girl had offered a shoulder to cry on.

Without letting him know, I met up with this girl and she confessed she’d been to the flat. She also said Afe had made it clear she was only a fling and she was having none of that. “My self confidence really took a nose-dive and I even thought of calling off the whole thing. But I loved Afe – we had lasted seven years – longer than many marriages and I wasn’t prepared to throw it all away.

Another Christmas is around the corner, there are days when I wonder what he gets up to at work and the women he socializes with, but I know he wouldn’t jeopardise my love. Come Christmas, I’m expecting him to make up for the heartache he caused me last year …” Florence’s partner cheated on her with an ex-girlfriend. “I knew Bobson saw his girlfriend from time to time”, said Florence.

“They had been together for some five years and had mutual friends before they decided to go their separate ways. But it never worried me because he always joked about her behind her back, so I assumed there was just a lot of ill feelings between them. Bobson was two years younger than me, but I tended to attract younger men, when we were introduced through mutual friends at a dinner party, we clicked right away.

“We didn’t actually live together, but we stayed with each other five nights a week and I believed he didn’t need anyone else. He was always generous and affectionate and we had a healthy sex life. He was fairly successful car dealer, so I know how charming he could be and that other women found him attractive, but never had reason to doubt him. So I’ll never forget the shock of the discovery that he was cheating.

We had a lot of drink after a lovely meal at his flat and were having a cuddle when he whispered, I have that liquor you liked so much in the bedroom. We could have that upstairs if you like – like the last time. Reality hit me, whoever he’d enjoyed the liquor with, it certainly hadn’t been with me. He tried to bluff his way out of it but when I had a go at hi, he admitted he had been seeing his ex-girlfriend for months now.

The jokes had used to crack about her had been a cover-up. He said he still loved her and he never had the strength to turn her away. I realized how conceited and weak he was. I was convinced I didn’t do anything to push him into having an affair. But it didn’t matter how great our relationship was – one woman was never going to keep him happy. He begged me for another chance and I tried to make a go of it, but the trust had gone.

I knew I had to start all over again with someone else. I would only have myself to blame if I married him knowing he was a cheat. Immaculate Conception (Humour) A mother took her daughter to the doctor’s. “She’s been having strtange symptoms”, said the mother. The doctor examined the daughter carefully. Then he announced. “Madam, I believe your daughter’s pregnant”.

“That’s impossible”, the mother gasped. “Why