The evil called spousal deceit

Spouses, as the Bible clearly enjoins, ought to be fully transparent to each other with nothing hidden between them. When spouses relate to each other in a deceitful manner, such conduct negates the core purpose of God in instituting marriage. At one end of the spectrum, you find a man who hides from his wife fundamental problems that affect his ability to reproduce. On the other end is the equally terrible case of a woman concealing problems related to her vital reproductive organs, which developed from her days of frolicking and gallivanting as a young woman.
Take the example of Jide and Ronke, who met as young students during a vacation spent at the staff quarters of a government corporation in one of the western states. Jide secretly admired Ronke, who out of naivety and young age did not take notice. With the end of the holidays, they lost touch and continued   their pursuits of different endeavours.
Many years later, their paths crossed again in the parish of the Anglican Church, where they both became members of the choir. In the course of their interaction, Jide recalled knowing her somewhere, and asked if she had ever spent her vacation with a couple at the staff quarters of the water corporation, to which Ronke responded in the affirmative. With that, they reconnected and soon fell in love. By this time, both of them had good jobs with different blue chip companies. Their romantic relationship gave them reason to smile from chin to chin. Both families welcomed the blossoming relationship.
Jide and Ronke travelled outside the country on vacations together, and spent quality time with each other as they had lunch in upscale restaurants. Buoyed by the strong support of the two families and members of the church, they turned full circle and wedded.
Unfortunately, six years after exchanging marital vows, the union was not blessed with a child. Jide as it turned out was quite good in the ‘other room’ while he consulted his personal doctor to find out what was hindering him from fathering a child. Meanwhile, members of the extended families had started to drop heavy hints that their patience was growing thin. Jide and Ronke continued to confess faith in God as they fasted and prayed for the fruit of the womb.
As time elapsed, they began to discuss the problem with more focused attention. They met with doctors and underwent detailed investigative tests. It was in the course of this that doctors discovered that Ronke’s womb had been destroyed by the several abortions she had in her younger years. Prior to their wedding, and despite being a born-again Christian, Ronke concealed this aspect of her past from Jide, who loved her in blissful ignorance of this shocking fact. Each time Ronke remembered her predicament, and how her past contributed to it, her heart skipped a beat. Yet, she stubbornly refused the entreaties of her conscience, to open up and tell Jide the plain truth about her situation.
Now, the volcano had erupted and the lava flow ultimately consumed the marriage. Jide was beside himself with rage. He took a walk and relocated to Canada without informing her.
Now zoom to Uche and Peggy, another lovey-dovey couple. In their case, the reverse was the case. Uche and Peggy were in relationship for years. In fact, theirs was a fantastically romantic love affair eventually led to marriage. Peggy came into the union with Uche with innocence, deep affection and simple love.  Nothing could have made her suspect that there was a major and fundamental reproductive defect in her Adonis. For starters, she had never complained about her hubby’s performance in the other room. Rather, she was proud of it and had occasionally confided in a friend about this. But sadly, the fantastic efforts had simply not yielded the desired result, signified by a pregnancy.
Uche was fully aware that he could not impregnate a woman as doctors had categorically told him that he had azoospermia. Simply he was firing blank bullets. Yes, he ejaculated during intercourse, but the semen had no sperm. Somewhat, Uche callously kept the information to himself; he and Peggy could not discuss the problem, to find a way out of the psychological agony caused by the situation. Advancements in assisted conception would have enabled them have their own babies. But Uche kept sealed lips on his problem. The truth came out after Peggy ran into a close friend, who knew about her husband’s predicament and revealed the reason for their childlessness.
Shocked to the marrow, she muttered, “So, my hunk is not a man. He cannot give me children. No wonder he showers me with love and expensive gifts.” Yes, some men in this situation spoil their women with gifts, to distract and keep them quiet instead of opening up, so that they can solve the problem together.
Peggy spent time on Google, searching for solutions. It was while doing this that she stumbled on the Facebook page of a former boyfriend and reconnected with him. Within months, the online contact translated into physical meetings that rekindled the romantic flame that once burned between them and Peggy became pregnant.
Seeing that the fling had produced pregnancy, Peggy swore that she would not abort the baby, and resolved to accept any consequence that would result from the new lease of life. “I am ready to move out of the house at least to have my own child,” she thought to herself.
But wisely, Uche handled the situation; he did not divorce Peggy; instead he celebrated the pregnancy and the birth of the baby. He praised her for ‘covering’ up his inadequacy quietly and chose to be a happy man. This way, he and Peggy were able to have three children fathered by another man.
Beyond these two cases, there is a legion of men who battle with erectile dysfunction, but pretend and cunningly cover up. Other ‘evils’ in marital relationships is seen more often in family financial matters.
You find situations where husbands take loans from their offices without the knowledge of their wives. Such loans are often mismanaged and spent on things that ultimately do not benefit the family. A particular man learnt the dangers of not confiding in his wife, the hard way. He hid the loan documents in an old briefcase. The wife stumbled on the documents while searching for other papers in the briefcase. When the husband came back from work, she was very nice and served him his meal. Later that night as the hubby tried to get romantic with his wife, she quietly brought out the loan documents and showed to him. Shock of the exposure of the loan shenanigan, perished any ‘exploratory’ intentions he had for that night.
More troubling is the case whereby some have children from extra-marital affairs and keep their legal wives in the dark. There was drama at the burial of one of such men. The funeral ceremony was at its peak when the dead man’s second wife and children walked into the compound. Voices rose among relations. The official widow stood up from where she sat and began to lay curses on the corpse of the late husband. Then she abandoned the funeral in anger and left with her children, screaming at the top of her voice: “I asked him several times if he had another child outside our matrimonial home. He denied until he gave up the ghost. I always suspected that he had a love-child, but never imagined that he had a complete family like he had with me.”
Women are no saints either, because they also deal deceitfully with their husbands. When men and women invest in property without informing their spouses, that is a pure case of spousal deceit. When death happens, such investments may be lost as the surviving spouse was put in the picture.
Dear spouses, stop hiding whatever that would embarrass you and yours, if found out later. The damage would be much worse then. Come clean and tell your spouse everything. At worst, he/she would get angry, storm out and then come back after the rush of anger passes. There is no marital problem that the common sense powered by the God factor cannot resolve. Get real. Get wise. Trust your spouse. Marital 419 is evil.