Of Choices Made

It was not her plan to become anyone's mistress

No woman grows up aspiring to be that

As a young lady, she found herself always attracting married men

Right from her secondary school days

Her age mates avoided her like a plague

The single men ignored her

Her first lover was the first single man she was with in her life

She met him when she was twenty-four

He was working with a computer engineering firm and she felt she had a future with him

Three months after they started dating, he told her he wanted to break up with her

She asked him why and he said his ex-girlfriend had mounted a comeback and since they had been together for several years and his parents and her parents were all invested in the relationship, he had no option but to take her back

She was devastated

He apologised and all but her world spun recklessly

Three weeks after his wedding, he called to say hello

She picked up his call and they ended up together in a hotel

He was her first married man

After years of avoiding the trend, she found herself succumbing to it

Her desire then was to use him to cure her heartache

She knew she couldn't have him but she could as well use him to wean herself off him

It worked

The more they saw, the more she felt disgusted with herself

Eventually, she stopped picking up his calls and walked away from him

It was the first of a long line of sexual relationships with married men

It was as if the devil used a backdoor to open the door to the shark-infested waters of dating unfaithful men and pushed her right into it

She found herself dating a second one

The son of a well-known musician

She couldn't really tell why she dated him

Maybe she liked him or she was lonely and bored

From that point, she gave herself only two conditions

It won't be for money and it won't be for love

If she liked the man enough, she would give it to him

Weeks after making this decision, she met him

He was in an eatery with a friend

She was in the same eatery with a friend

She and her friend were having a conversation

He interrupted the conversation with a witty quip

She and her friend turned to see whose voice they heard

He greeted them and asked if he and his friend could join their table

They turned the table into a table for four

They had a long stimulating argument about something she couldn't really remember

When they were done, he took her phone number

Then he drove her home when he learned she didn't drive

After that, he called and chatted with her a bit

He began to send her call credit

She would sleep and wake up and see her phone credit topped up with credit worth thousands

She did not know what to do about it at first

Then he would call and just wish her well

Eventually, he started sending her money

Random good money now and again

Eventually, he called one day and asked if they could see

She met him and it was one of the best nights of her life

Dinner and a thrilling atmosphere with her best musician performing live

He encouraged her to be herself

She danced and danced

She was just giddy with joy

When the night was over, she was more than willing to marry him

She asked him where he was staying

He told her he was sleeping at a hotel very close to the venue of the event

She told him she needed to use the restroom and would prefer not to use a public restroom

He drove her to his hotel

She ended up spending the night

She ended up spending the weekend

He told her he was married

He didn't say his marriage was evil or his wife a witch or anything like that

He did not even mention his wife at all

She suspected and didn't say a word

They began to meet each other every other weekend

Eventually, he rented an apartment for her and bought her a car

She became his kept woman

The excuse for the apartment was to cut down the hotel expenses

The excuse for the car was her birthday

He told her she was free to date anyone she desired

He would never stand in the way of her getting married but they both have a synergy, a relationship a third party cannot break that easily

She had fallen deeply in love with him

At first, she felt she would wean him off his wife and family

But he was an expert in separating the two worlds

She saw no weakness, nothing!

His family was a no-go area

She on the other hand couldn't help but let her family know about him

She introduced him to her father as her mentor and benefactor from her office

Her mother saw him just once and knew she was sleeping with him

Her mother would say, "If you keep sleeping with another woman's husband while praying for your own, how do you expect God to take you seriously?"

She developed a plan after she turned 30

The plan was to get pregnant for him and become a single parent

He had both the means and the conscience not to abandon her and the baby

But he was too smart for that

He was never careless with his seed

A year turned to eleven years in a matter of seconds

She started starring at 40

She took stock of her life and realized she needed to get married if she intended to have children and a home

Her relationship with him was taking her nowhere

By then the sex had reduced drastically

He was already in his fifties and had slowed down a bit

She began to cast her net into the sea with seriousness once again hoping to catch a fish but she also wanted to keep him in her life

She felt he owed her for all the time she spent with him

He was generous with her financially but she was never in it for the money

The love she felt for him had turned into respect and friendship

He still had his family intact and she gave him joy

She felt hollow, and empty, as if she had been used

The void couldn't be filled by just anybody

She tried a variety of options but nothing worked

Eleven years had conditioned her to his way of thinking

She would have done everything to marry him if he was inclined to polygamy

No other guy even measured in any way close to him

When she turned 40 still there was no way forward in her plan to settle down

She decided to sever ties with him

Enough was enough!

It was painful and hurtful but it was necessary

After breaking up with him she turned to God

She needed to settle down

She was driving to the office one day when she accidentally hit the car right in front of her at an intersection

She alighted from the car to see the extent of the damage

The driver of the car was a military man

A major in the Army

He looked at her, smiled, and gave her his card

He took her phone number too and said, "I am in a hurry, call me"

As he drove off, she didn't know what to think

Later that day, she called him and they agreed to meet for lunch

They met and she realized he liked her

He was a widower, a father of two boys, and a good Christian

She had been worried about her eggs and issues relating to having children

She had told herself a widower or divorcee who already had children wouldn't be a bad idea so that she would not be under pressure to deliver babies

He was the perfect fit for her

He was also from her tribe, they speak the same dialect

He had been in the North and East majorly for his postings and had only been posted to Lagos two weeks before they met

So, he didn't know anyone in her circle or world

God had deemed it fit to answer her prayer after many years of waiting

They became fast friends and awesome lovers

He was talking about marriage within three months of their meeting

He had been widowed for three years

She introduced him to her parents

Lists and all the things they needed for the traditional marriage were sent to him

Then he took her home to his family

She knew there was trouble she saw two branded cars among the vehicles parked in front of his family house when they arrived

When they got into the mansion, she saw him

Her ex-married lover, his wife and children

His wife was the only sibling of her fiance

She never knew he married from the east or had ties with the east

As soon as his wife saw her, she knew there would be no wedding

Her heart pounded and her head began to ache

She realized that his wife knew her even though she knew nothing about his wife

She could see it in the expressions on her face and body language

Her fiance went off to talk to the elders of the family

The meeting took quite a long time

When he eventually surfaced, he told her he was sorry

But there will be no wedding

She didn't bother to ask why

She booked a ride to the airport and returned to Lagos as soon as she could

Three days later, he called her

Not her fiancee, but her ex-lover

He asked her how she was doing

She just wept on and on inconsolably

He drove over to her house to comfort her

They warmed the bed over and over again

He told her he still loved her and would like them to continue from where they stopped

She felt his wife deserved to be punished for meddling in her

relationship long after she had left her husband alone willingly

She felt she had only fought fate for nothing

She made up her mind to make the best of where she had found herself

She became his mistress officially and intentionally.

PS: Life is all about choices

I have seen ladies who were told they were destined

to be second wives who became believers and turned

such prophesies to a joke

I have met folks who were told they would never get married

or have children who changed their lot by discovering

their true destiny in Christ

A few curved balls that may come our way do not change the fact that everything is working together for our good

No matter how far gone we are in our erroneous ways

outside of Jesus

It is not too late to turn and take up our divinely preordained destinies in him

-GSW-