How Cheating Destroys Lives

How Cheating Destroys Lives

Cheating in relationships is as old as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and many people have lost their lives, because of cheating. Jealous lovers and couples have shot and killed their cheating partners and others have left their lovers maimed and scarred for life. Countless narrative tragedies on the consequences and repercussions of cheating have been produced in drama played on stage and shown in movies and published in stories. But these horrifying and terrifying incidents and tragic narratives have not stopped lovers and couples from cheating on themselves. Some cheaters must have been born or cursed to cheat, because they cannot stop cheating in every relationship.

See Most Evil on Wikipedia.
Most Evil is an American forensics television program on Investigation Discovery presented by forensic psychiatrist Michael Stone of Columbia University. On the show, Stone rates murderers on a scale of evil that he has developed. The show features profiles on various murderers, serial killers, mass murderers and psychopaths.

I have seen how cheating has caused irreparable damages to marriages, families and friends and I actually lost a cousin who was very close to me in unfortunate circumstances caused by cheating.

My uncle rejected my cousin when he was born, because his wife had him from sleeping with my uncle’s cousin whilst she was visiting our village. My uncle ended his marriage with his adulterous wife and married another woman. But by our native tradition, he had to still keep my cousin who was innocent of the unfortunate circumstances of his adulterous birth. And it was kept as a secret from him as he grew up as one of the four sons of my uncle and his adulterous wife who remained as one of my closest aunts till her passing in 1998. But before she died, my cousin quarreled with his wife and in the hot exchange of derogatory insults, she dropped the bombshell that was the best kept secret in our village. He had accused his wife of cheating and she retorted that he was a product of his cheating mother!
“You should better go back to your real father in the village,” she said aloud and clear. Then she told him the circumstances of his adulterous birth.
My cousin froze in shock.
He confronted his mother who had already suffered decades of stigma and trauma as an adulterous wife and was in fact having stroke. It was like opening an old wound that she thought had already healed. She was shattered. My cousin asked his older brothers if they knew what his wife just divulged.
“So, she knows your real father? Let her go and show you who he is,” they all replied in anger and they would have lynched his wife, but she had fled to escape from their wrath.
My cousin was heart broken. His life was no longer the same. He now recalled many incidents of how his brothers did not really bond with him and could now remember how others looked at him in a queer way whenever he was in our village. He had grown up living as one of the privileged sons of my rich uncle, but now he knew the bitter truth, that he was in fact the son of that poor uncle in our village. In his state of depression in this agony of the irony of life, he left Nigeria to start a new life in a foreign country and he cut off from almost every relation, including myself, because I was guilty of keeping the secret of his adulterous birth from him. He was so shattered that he no longer cared much about his future again and was later implicated in a criminal liaison, got arrested and tortured in police detention and was only released before he would die in police cell. It was a miserable way to die.

Another sad incident was how cheating broke the heart of a girlfriend, destroyed a marriage and left the unfortunate victims with stigma and trauma.
A girlfriend was engaged to a randy boyfriend who was employed as a driver in Nigeria’s LNG company and in the daily routines of his job, he met the weak wife of one of his bosses whilst he was chauffeuring her to the clinic for medical appointments and later seeing her whilst her husband was at work and their illicit sexual relationship began. His girlfriend found out and queried him, and he admitted it. She warned him to stop and he beat her up for not keeping her mouth shut. My friend took back the spare key she had given him to her flat and ended their engagement. The management was informed of the scandalous affair, but said it was the private problem of the workers involved and did not do anything to discipline the driver since his private affairs did not disrupt his work. The husband of the adulterous woman had a nervous breakdown and had to be transferred to another station. My friend relocated to the UK. But the shameless driver still continued his work at the LNG Company on Bonny Island.

Knocks from the Past

Another incident was the case of another person I know very well who is often haunted by the ghost from the past. The nightmare of her unhappy birth, because of the dispute over her paternity. She was rejected by her father at birth, because he accused her mother of adultery. So, my friend was treated as an outcast for over five years before she was welcomed into the home of her “father”, but her other brothers and sisters knew the truth. One of the sons of the other wife of her “father” took advantage of her in her early teens and she lost her virginity. She felt guilty and thought it was an incestuous affair, but he knew that it not so, but could not tell her the secret of her controversial birth. Her mother did not tell her the truth, because of the fear of the stigma and trauma it would cause her. But she was not the only one, because rumours of adulterous affairs in her polygamous were the juiciest topics on the grapevine of the village gossips and she overheard them as they were spread from ear to ear. They pointed out her peculiar features that did not resemble those of her “father”. They said she obviously looked more like a northerner than a south-southerner in physiognomy. And she had felt the claws of fate around her whenever others also pointed out the same observations whenever they saw her pictures or met her among the northern neighbours of her mother.
“Is this why my mom is so comfortable living here in the north and even feels more at home here than in Ikot Abassi?”
“Is that why Yakubu Mohammad even wants to marry me?
“Could this be the reason Peters treated me with scorn after having his own turn on me?”
These inquiring and intriguing questions raised my issues and increased her doubts over present state of origin.

The last case in this article of true life cases of the evils of cheating happened in Surulere where I reside presently.

A husband nearly had a heart attack when he found out that the beautiful 18 year old daughter he had been a father to and spent millions of naira on her upbringing was the product of his wife who cheated on him before they got married and lied to him that he was responsible for her pregnancy. She gave birth to a bouncing baby girl he adored and raised her until he got the shock of his life when he found out the truth. He did not tell the innocent daughter the truth until after he in revenge induced her into sleeping with him and impregnated her. Then he told her the truth and she was shattered. She was so infuriated that she would have killed her wicked mother, but he restrained her and both of them abandoned their home and left town. The man is now the father of a baby from his “daughter”.

The unfortunate victims of cheating, adultery and other acts of infidelity and unfaithfulness in relationships are legions. And they are scarred for life with many still unable to recover from the Post-infidelity Stress Disorder (PISD).
That is why cheating is one of the worst evils destroying lives in the world. And that is why we must not condone it.

For help and healing, I recommend the following books you can order by clicking on the titles and the images at the end of the article.

Not "Just Friends": Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity.

Warning Signs: How to Know if Your Partner Is Cheating-and What to Do About It.

After the Affair, Updated Second Edition: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful.

Transcending Post-infidelity Stress Disorder (PISD): The Six Stages of Healing.


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima










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