A Duty of Truth

I discovered that a lot of folks in unpleasant marriages who are afraid of going through the process of separation and divorce have taken to travelling abroad as a third option.

Overnight, I was taking stock of couples I know whose marriage is no longer really a marriage as a result of either the husband or the wife taking this option, and I was a bit alarmed

The number is staggering and more are joining the ranks daily.

The problem, then, is staying true to this decision once the disgruntled partner travels.

Typically, the partner that travelled should then call the one he or she left behind and say, "Sir or ma, I was unhappy and unsettled in the marriage, and I have tried as much as possible to adjust, but I have come to the hard realisation that I can't. This journey is a sort of separation that I engineered to spare myself the embarrassment of explaining to you and our families and church members that I can no longer cope with the marriage or endure the marriage.

I am not filing for you or sending for you or hoping you will come around with the children,  I know you will take this badly at first but please, realise that i am doing this for the good of both of us and in order to give the best I can to the children.

Children are the worst victims of a bitter marriage, and I don't want us to raise children in the toxic atmosphere that has engulfed our marriage. So, I have stepped aside for you.

I hope you will let me talk to the children as often as I desire to and that you will understand that this is the best solution I see for us not to turn into permanent enemies simply because we are married. I am sorry if I have hurt you in any way. I have forgiven you, and I am trying to heal every day.

Yours,

So and So"

This would be the honourable and realistic thing to do

But no, most people won't do that

After they have travelled, they begin this delusion or grand scheme of deceit, which I find to be very damning

They tell their spouse they are working on bringing them over to the country they have travelled to, but in reality, they just want the children.

They don't want that spouse anymore or they assume that if they bring that spouse abroad, they will be able to clip the wings of that spouse and make him (This mostly happens to the husbands) more compliant and malleable.

It then becomes a game of trying to outwit each other to get the children or bring the husband into an environment where he can be controlled or threatened into submission.

This ends in a calamity for everybody.

I have read and had to seal many cases in which the partner abroad laid plans to deal with the one in Nigeria due to their history, and that one ended up in a trap in the name of travelling abroad.

The children saw these things, and the parent that did it wouldn't understand the damage such behaviour does to children as they grow up.

It is better to sit down as adults and sort out the unpleasant situation as amicably as possible rather than go to that extent in the name of engineering a divorce or separation outside the reach of friends and family members.

Just sit down and tell each other the truth

Fight and cry over it

Try your best as a couple to make amends and tell each other the truth if the arrangement is not working out for you.

Be truthful to the children without laying blame on each other and being all unpleasant about it.

Part ways with a solid arrangement between the both of you of giving the children the best and then travel out if that is what you want to do.

Learn to do things without plotting and scheming like the devil.

A man married a woman in Lagos, Nigeria.

He was a banker, and she was a marketer for one of the Korean companies

The lady began to do exceptionally well at her job that other Korean companies began to offer her twice her income to market their products

Soon, she became the head of the West African Region in her company

All the while, the husband had found the banking job tedious and unproductive, so he resigned and started a small business using some of his savings for FOREX trading

Things were good between them until his family members came visiting and discovered the wife was the one making the megabucks

Suddenly, prophesies started coming from his family's end that the wife was using his glory

(This use of the glory line is a religious lie that many pastors, prophets, and so-called spiritual leaders in Nigeria tell their members as a substitute for the truth. Since glory is an abstract concept, it really cannot be stolen, but deliverance ministers come up with stories that prove if someone took your shirt or undies or something from your body, the person can then take your destiny and change it with their own.

There is nothing true about this when both parties are born-again Christians. The glory of the believer was given to him or her by Jesus in John 17: 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.)

How can anybody steal the glory of Jesus?

Ignorance and desperation, however, make us believe all sorts of lies

When pastors and prophets told this man these lies, he didn't call his wife to tell her the truth

The truth was that he was unhappy with her success and envious of her role as the breadwinner of the family

The truth about his ego or pride being bruised and his desire to be separated from his wife or even get a divorce so that he will not be a clog in her wheel of progress

Spouses don't often do this

They never do the practical thing because it will make them look bad

So they find a solution to direct problem by becoming cunning and disingenuous

The husband told the wife he will like the family to travel abroad for vacation

Wife gave him the money to sort out passport and visa issues

He did, but only for him and the children

He went as far as to publish an obituary of the wife to present at the embassy to back up the claim that the wife had died.

He got the visa for himself and the children, and one day, when the wife was at work, he took the children and moved everything in the house.

The wife came back from the office to meet an empty house, and the children were gone too.

She lost her mind.

He didn't even leave a note, so she had no clue what happened to the family.

She tried reaching members of his family, but they had all blocked her on social media, and they refused to pick up her calls

She was sick for weeks until one of the man's cousins sent her a picture of her husband and children arriving in Canada.

At this point, you would expect her to report at the police station, petition the embassy and go all out for war until this man and the children are deported back to Nigeria.

She also fell for the religious thing.

"They are in a better place; maybe I can talk to him and reason with him so that he can make room for me over there to go and be with him and my children."

Wow!

He eventually spoke to her after three years.

He told her she must go for deliverance so that he would be sure she was free of witchcraft before he would allow her to talk to her children on the phone.

Meanwhile, he had moved on with another woman he met in Canada

When I was told the story, we turned it around in the place of prayer and by taking practical steps through three NGOs.

Her children were returned to her, and the husband was deported

Many Christians still saw the move as her being wicked and unforgiving till today.

The sister who brought the case to my attention a few years later did the same thing to escape from her unpleasant marriage.

She didn't accuse her deadbeat husband of anything; she told him an opportunity opened for her to study in Germany, and she left.

Then, she arranged for her son to join her.

It's been five years; the husband is in Nigeria fruitlessly applying for a Visa without any means to bankroll his journey while the wife kept telling him she had sent the necessary documents to the embassy and that he should be patient, etc.

Why not just tell him the truth and let him go?

She says she was trying to teach him a lesson on how to be responsible

Has he not been paying rent since I left? Has he not been feeding himself? but he refused to do these things when we were living under the same roof; he was chasing skirts while I was labouring hard to put food on the table; he caused all these, and I am just teaching him how to be a responsible adult."

It is not right

Don't drag each other off the course of destiny based on emotion or vendetta.

He won't change abroad, and neither will she.

If you must travel abroad as a couple, be sure it is what the two of you want and that God is in it

If either of you want to travel as an escape, just be truthful about it

I am writing this also directly to a sister whose husband has been shooting blanks on the marital bed

This sister wants to have a baby

She and her husband had tried IVF several times to no avail

It has been established that her husband is the one with the issues with his sperm

She didn't want to file for divorce because it would make her look somehow

So now she has decided to escape from the marriage by travelling abroad to study and allowing the marriage to die a natural death.

Just tell him the truth.

You owe each other a duty of truth as a couple.

-GSW-