Here is the Story of a Wife Whose Husband Has Three Wives

I am grateful to be alive and I thank God. It’s just so easy for us to take the breath of life that we possess for granted, but with a heart of gratitude I thank God for mine, and that of  my family and for the lives that are been touched by this blog.

Today I want to share a story about a wife whose husband has two other wives and we are still counting. This strong young man does not look like he is ready to stop his wife acquisition activities. I was introduced to the first wife of this man just when her husband took the second wife and she was in a state of depression. And she was asked to speak with me and that I might probably counsel her in order to help her marriage get better.

But one problem that I had with this wife which is synonymous with many other wives was that she wasn’t ready to bend. She wasn’t ready to work through the situation she was in and make it better. She was very hurt which is very understandable and she felt really betrayed which also is expected. But to counsel a person who seemed to have made up her mind to sit on her hurt and fan the emotions of betrayal, is quite difficult. It's easy to help someone who wants to be helped than to force help on someone who isn't really looking for it but just wants your sympathy. 

Till I write this piece to you, this lady is yet to get her marriage back; as a matter of fact the husband has taken the third wife and only God knows if that would be the last or we are still counting.

Naturally this has affected these two people negatively in no small measure. The husband who is just a salary earner with limited income cannot afford to cater for the needs of three wives and six children and himself inclusive. He is heavily in debt and his life is messed up literally. Because of his dysfunctional home, he is unstable on his job and he is just still employed due to the mercy of his boss who is aware of his predicament of self-orchestrated destruction.

But the wife is not spared too. She is just a teacher and we know that teachers don’t earn much in Nigeria but just a few of them. She has three children to take care of with her constrained income and there are unending bills to pay; children’s school fees, house rent, feeding, transport, just to mention a few, with the husband contributing close to nothing to the upkeep of this wife and her children. Whenever he has money, he settles the need of the second and third wife and leaves his first wife to fend for herself and her children. He has tagged her a witch and claimed she is the reason his life is messed up. How convenient!

There are many stories like this, in fact too many of them like this one. And so many of them just never recover. The wife is so bruised she never wants to have anything to do with the man anymore, and till the husband goes to his grave he will resolve in his heart that his wife is the one behind his troubled life because that is the convenient conclusion for him to arrive at. He would not want to own up to his errors or convict himself of any wrong doing in the matter. The man is never wrong.

This situation like many others like it appears to defy solution. But God said two are better than one; success in life is closely related to success in marriage. And believe me, a messed up marriage will surely reflect in other areas of the lives of individual spouses in the marriage.

I will address the wife in this post, and when I mean the wife, I am referring to the first wife, the wife of the man’s youth.  Not because she is guilty of any wrong doing but because she failed to do everything within her power to safe her marriage. True she is not responsible for her husband’s sins and wrong doings but she is responsible for her reactions to her husband’s action. She is not accountable for the challenges she is faced with in her marriage, but she is responsible for the way she reacted to the challenges. Now whether she will be victorious over that challenge or she will be swept over by the challenge all depends on how she reacts to the challenge. I have often mentioned on this blog that it is not advisable to make decisions on marriage issues, trials and challenges based on emotions but on divine wisdom. When you allow emotions to rule over wisdom in your marriage, the outcome of your reaction may not be desirable.

To the wife of this man in the story above and to many other wives who might be going through similar issues in their marriage; her mistake is that she failed to win her husband over basically because she allowed her emotions control her decision making. She allowed the emotions of hurt and hate arising from betrayal and abuse of trust from her husband to overshadow her need to apply wisdom and fight for her marriage. It is okay to feel hurt, but more okay to work past the hurt, heal and do the needful.

The responsibility to build the home rest solely on the wife as we read in Proverbs 14:1. The success of any home and marriage primarily rest on the wife because the Lord knows that based on the ability He built in her she can pull things through with His help and succeed. The home is not built on emotional sentiment, it is not built on the feelings of the wife or on the reactions of her husband towards her. But a successful home is built on wisdom, knowledge and understanding as found in Proverbs 24:3-4. A woman who would build a successful home will move beyond emotion and face the task with divine wisdom and prayer.

If you would ask me if I blame the wife for what her husband has done, I will answer a big No. But despite the careless lust of her husband and his total disregard of the sanctity of his marriage, the wife should not tow the same line of action; two wrongs never make a right.

When God looks at this erring man, the wife He recognizes with him is the wife of his youth; his first wife (Malachi 2:13-15). As the first wife to this adulterous man, you are his suitable helper from God. You are the favor career in the life of his man, and so you are not just any woman in his life neither are you just any wife to him, but by God’s standard, you are his suitable helper from God on assignment in his life to help him be better than he was when you met him and better than he is now in his adulterous state, and the Lord is willing to help you succeed in this assignment. The success of this assignment is not subject to your husband’s actions, love towards you or lack of love for you. This assignment is a God given one and the assessment is done by God and the reward is received from God and not your husband. Wisdom and prayers are the major keys to success in this assignment.

After all the hurt (which is acceptable and understandable), it’s important to let go of the emotions, apply wisdom and fight for your marriage. That may sound tough, but the end reward is a sweet marriage that people around you would be envious of.

When I talk about fighting for your marriage, I do not mean that you start to pick fights with your husband and his other wives, but that you pray over your marriage and pray for your husband. You need to pray God into his life until he becomes a totally changed and repentant man. Then you support your prayer with actions. The actions that are required of you is such that you will positively occupy your husband’s life to the point that he forgets that he was ever married to other women but you.

Ensure that your sex life with your husband is fantastic, satisfy your husband sexually and in that regard do not give him room to have any complain. Also ensure that you keep your home clean and welcoming, make sure you give your husband good food. Ensure you remember the special dates in your marriage and celebrate them with time. Send him daily prayerful text messages, let him know you are praying for him. If you can afford it get him gifts on his birthdays and on other special days of your marriage, please do so. All these are actions that will help you win back your husband and then rebuild your marriage. Those who stole him from you did just that, beat them to their game. 

If he does not respond initially, please don't stop. Continue to sow the seed because in due season they will germinate and produce fruits for you. With consistency and perseverance you will get the desired outcome. 

Given the fact that in the story above the wife appears to be the victim, yet she is the savior of her marriage. A lot of people might think it’s foolish to fight for her marriage in the manner that I have proposed, but that foolishness is the wisdom that has saved a lot of marriages from total collapse including mine. And a lot of happy homes that we see and envy today were birth from the foolishness that has yielded sweet results.

If you then ask me what happens to the other wives the adulterous man has foolishly married, I will ask you what happened to Hagar in the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar that we find in the Bible. The other wives are not the focus here, the wife of his youth is the one that owns the marriage and she needs to fight for her marriage.  

Marriage is a very beautiful thing though with many soar stories about it and with the advent of social media, it’s fast becoming an undesirable institution.

A lot of people have entered into marriage completely unprepared and in truth love does not sustain marriage, otherwise we won’t have high divorce rate and violence in marriage as we do today. And I dare to tell you that even our parents don't know exactly what it means to be married.

While they are still struggling with their own marriage and merely managing to keep it together, they have little or no idea on how to help you keeps yours. It’s a race you need to run on your own and find your own balance and haven in marriage.

With the exposure in the world today, wives of this generation cannot endure what their mothers endured in marriage, and husbands have become less men than their fathers were. This has in no small measure affected the marriage institution.

Now get a glimpse of it:

“Marriage is you swearing to God before all men present that you are willing and ready to pour out all of yourself in making your spouse a better person, all the days of your life so help you God.” This is not subject to how good or bad your spouse is, it’s a venture that only the grace of God is all your need to see you through. And it’s God who assess and rewards your performance.

Now how do you intend to pull this through? How would you accomplish that which you have sworn to do before God and man?

When you understand the basics of marriage and you have the willingness and temperament for it, you will make a success of it. “The Marriage Handbook” is very handy to help you through it.

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