Thread by @nwaoma007

Midlife Crisis Continued

(Part 4)

1./ WUNMI

The latest development in the saga of my affair with Dotun which culminated in my addition to a group chat by Dotun’s wife left me paralysed. My thoughts turned inwards and I forcibly reconnected to some basic truths.

2./ Regardless of how much married people may gripe about their marriages and chafe at some of the restrictions being married places on them, many people are happy to remain in their marriages and have no intention of doing anything which will rock that boat.

3./ My beloved Deji of blessed memory and I had a good marriage but I still griped and chafed occasionally yet I wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardise our marriage.

It’s possible he cheated on me. Many men do at some time or the other. But I never found evidence of it.

4./ I certainly didn‘t cheat on him. Knowing what I do about marriages and married people, I recognise that as happy as Dotun is with me, his default reaction now is probably to douse the fires of his wife’s rage and stabilise the rocky boat of his marriage.

5./ This means that I will likely soon be a sacrificial lamb.

I looked again at the group chat Dotun’s wife had just added me to. It now had a name. #JudgementDay.

I was numb and I was scared. 

What did she want? 

If she was going to blackmail me,

6./ I wished she would name her price quickly and not draw it out. This was torture. Knowing that she had my nudes was petrifying. My nerves were raw and I couldn’t stand this. It was worse because I was too frightened to reach Dotun just in case she was listening in.

7./ Another message dropped:

“You are a very foolish woman. I cannot imagine what  Dotun sees in you because if you were even a little bit intelligent, you wouldn’t be sending disgusting pictures of your naked self to a married man. Shameless slut.”

8./ Her words made me shrink in fear. What did this woman want?

An apology?

For me to leave her husband?

To denounce me publicly?

Whatever she wanted, she should demand it quickly and set me free. I couldn’t survive much more of this.

I put my phone down.

9./ Bent my head and rested it on the steering wheel. I had to cancel the appointment I was headed for earlier on. I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere in this frame of mind. God help me.

Lying in the cool darkness of my room with the drapes drawn shut a few minutes later,

10./ I opened my email and saw a message from Dotun. He rarely sent me emails. This meant that this was his only reasonably secure means of communication for the moment. In his email, he begged me to respond to the message sent by his wife to the group chat.

11./ He was appealing with me to apologise to her in the group chat and tell her I made a terrible mistake and that I am really sorry.

I laughed derisively. That didn’t take long after all. I was already laid on the altar as the sacrificial lamb.

12./ All that remained was for the fire to be lit.

Hmmm. . . My lips turned downwards and I felt so low. Memories of all his sweet words rushed over me. He couldn’t have meant those words if his idea of damage control was to throw me under the bus.

13./ To tell me to apologise to the wife who in his own words, treated him with disrespect and disdain. Men would disgrace you was all I could think. I hadn’t thought anything could be worse than my current predicament of feeling like a fly caught in a spider’s web

14./ as Dotun’s wife continued her Machiavellian games and tightened the noose. But when I realised that my lover hadn’t asked how I was holding up, wasn’t trying to protect me or comfort me, rather was focused on damage control and assuaging his wife’s hurt pride,

15./my feelings of pain & shame intensified. True enough, I didn’t want Dotun for keeps. Yet, my emotions, nay, my heart was engaged and what I saw as his betrayal hurt.

A huge lump formed in my throat as tears filled my eyes. Dotun’s wife was right. I wasn’t very intelligent.

16./ I was a very foolish woman. With shaking hands and through my tears, and now runny nose, I began to compose an apology. If that was what it took to exit this nightmare and get my life back, I would do it. What choice did I have? If someone has your nude photos

17./and you vaguely think there’s something you can do to stop them from publishing those photos & shaming you, chances are that you would do it. 

Our society is not a forgiving one and even though everyone probably has skeletons in their closets, that’s exactly what they were.

18./ Skeletons in the closet. No one wanted their most private persona or secrets to be aired out in the open for strangers to toss about like a blouse at a bargain-basement sale. As my son was fond of saying, “Everybody dey steal but na who dem catch be thief.”

19./ How would my son feel to know that his mother was now the mythical “who dem catch” now wearing the thief label? Imagine someone telling him to log onto a particular gossip blog because his mother’s nudes were plastered there!

Aaaarrgh! God forbid.

20./ My shaky hands sped up in composing the apology.

“You are correct Madam. I agree unequivocally with you. I was; no. I am a foolish woman and I am probably not very intelligent. Sending my nude pictures to your husband was very wrong. I’m very ashamed of myself.

21./ I apologise unreservedly. Please forgive my foolishness. I am very sorry.”

I reread what I had written. I sounded apologetic and humble enough. Would it satisfy her? Only God knows. 

I clicked send.

DOTUN 

Jade has set up a group chat and joined Wunmi and I to the chat.

22./ Her first message gives me an inkling to her frame of mind. I’ve sent an email to Wunmi begging her to respond and apologise. I hate to put her in such an invidious position. I hate that my feelings for Wunmi and our relationship makes me so vulnerable.

23./ I would do anything to protect her from this embarrassment, but I know Jadesola. She has “madness” in her. “Werey ni Jade” and if I don’t placate her, she may do something all of us might regret.

24./ I’m torn between sternly telling her to back- off and trying to douse the situation by making Wunmi kow-tow to her demands.  

The past few days have been terribly difficult. I’ve spent much time in introspection and self-examination.

25./ As much as I try to justify my actions and there are enough reasons to do this, I’m also honest enough to admit that I was wrong to cheat on my wife. Perhaps it was the coward’s way out. Yet, I don’t think I cheated because of cowardice.

26./ It merely seemed a way of not depriving anyone of everything they hold dear. Yet now, I find that I may be forced to choose which I want more. The false peace of living the double life of a happily married man while actually finding happiness outside,

27./ or open admission that my marriage is a sham and my happiness comes from the stolen hours I spend in the company of another woman.

My second biggest restraint in pulling the trigger and going for the Samson option in this instance is my kids. I love them.

28./I wouldn’t like to pull the rug from under them by divorcing their mother. Yet they are not babies. They have left home and are in the university. It might jar them and hurt if their parents aren’t together, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

29./ Surely, we can all be adults about this? . . . Sigh. 

If only it would be that easy. I know it won’t. My daughter is the quintessential Daddy’s girl. She loves me and looks up to me and always says she measures all men by her daddy.

30./Is this a good example of what she can expect from a man? That he’ll cheat on her? That she can expect him to divorce her when he gets to the pinnacle of his career after she’s spent her youth with him? That marriage is no guarantee of companionship in one’s twilight years?

31./Yet I know my daughter is a better woman than her mother. God forgive me for this line of thought, but it’s the truth.

Temilade is 100 times the woman her mother is. She is kind, loving and compassionate. Qualities that Jade has in short supply.

32./ Why did I never notice these shortcomings when I was wooing her?

Why did I pretend they didn’t matter and that I could live with them after we were married and the shortcomings became glaring? 

Yet, the fact remains that Jade has Wunmi’s nudes and

33./ therefore is in a position of strength. If the nudes were not a factor, I would have more bargaining power. Unfortunately, they are a factor and I have to do all I can within my power to save Wunmi from any avoidable embarrassment.

34./ WUNMI

I sent the apology to the chat. Yet I can’t stop kicking myself.

I cocked up.

Royally.

Everyone knows that the first rule of sharing nudes is not to have your face and body show.

Your face and your nakedness must NEVER occur together. If your face shows,

35./ your body is covered. If your nakedness is on display, then your face MUST be hidden or cut out. At best, people may conjecture that it’s you, but you have some protection. I was carried away and I laid it all bare.  I broke the cardinal rule.

36./ Now my fate is in the hands of another person.

An irate wife whose greatest joy at the moment will come from seeing me brought to my knees. 

JADE

Dotun? Slipping out of my hands? No way. No way. Ah! NEVER!

Pacing back and forth the bedroom she shared with Dotun.

37./ The very room in which she discovered the existence of her husband’s mistress, Jade’s thoughts turned to the nude photos of Dotun’s mistress. 

“She’s not as beautiful as I am. What is he looking for? These men can never change.” These were her thoughts.

38./ But some vestige of honesty in her forced Jade to dispassionately admit something. Although the woman was not as conventionally beautiful as Jade herself, her full breasts and heavy ass would appeal to the Yoruba man in her husband.

39./ Back in the day when Dotun still used to bestir himself to joke with her before he backed off after she responded with with irritation or brush-offs, he often alluded to his love for plumpness in a woman. He would say things like; “Mo fẹran ara rirọ”
(I like a soft body).

40./She hadn’t bought into that nonsense. Indeed she’d been more on the plump side when they began dating, but despite his repeated allusions to his preferences, she preferred a sleeker more svelte silhouette and worked hard with diets an exercise to maintain a girlish figure.

41./ Many people admired her and said she looked more like Temilade and Seyi’s elder sister.
Obviously, Dotun with his base tastes couldn’t appreciate what he had. Tough luck to him. By the time she was done with him and his mistress,

42./ they wouldn’t ever speak to themselves nor would he try this infidelity nonsense again. Mtscheeew!

The End