By Felly Oyuga

I had the misfortune of reading a Facebook post by a not so bright man, who said that infidelity would stop if women stopped being their own enemies and said no to men. Many women liked and shared the post.

It seems that we live in a world where it is easier to blame the women than to hold the men as accountable.

I have just read another article on the ‘evil mistress’. An article whose sole purpose is to use fear and shame tactics to stop this ‘wicked’ woman. Before you get your undies in a knot, I am not for mistresses. I am also not against them. I am for seeing the world for what it is.

I wish my mother had warned me that anything involving a man and a woman is not black and white. I still love you, my mother, see you on the other side, and when my time comes this is one of the topics we shall discuss during our ancestral duty breaks.

I grew up with the same school of thought. You married, you tried everything possible to stay married but usually, there are these ‘evil’ women who come after your man. You must pray ‘dangerous’ prayers so that they die or better still, become ugly to your man and every time he has sex with her, he must feel like someone rubbed hot pepper on his private parts. Now you know this is rubbish, right? At least I know because I tried.

A friend of mine, a man, once said to me. ”Felly, at one point (or more) in a woman’s life, she will be the other woman, knowingly or unknowingly!” I was so upset with him, mostly because this statement made me think of the ‘evil’ woman in my life. Maybe the woman had no clue. Maybe my then husband was not bewitched by her devilish witchcraft from the ocean. Maybe, alas! Maybe he wanted to be with her. Maybe he had done this many times. I had just uncovered this particular infidelity. This realization brought with it a lot of questions that I will one day tell you about but for now, let us stick with the ‘evil’ mistresses who ‘steal’ husbands.

Since it has always been easy to blame the woman, shame has always been used to persuade her against this lifestyle. As if it is something she does by herself. And it is us, the women, who perpetuate this shaming disguised as sermons and posts. Sharing them all over the place hoping our husband’s ‘snatcher’, the evil woman, would read or hear and stop immediately! Why would she not? After all, she is a woman, and women are good, not evil. I think for me what irritates me is the lack of depth in the reasons she should stop. A man must have come up with these reasons, playing on what society expects a woman to be.

• ‘He will never marry you!’ Sadly, not everyone thinks marriage is an achievement. They are not defined by who they are married to. You can see how this argument means nothing to most. These days the other woman is sometimes even married!
• ‘You cannot do couple things together in public!’ What are these ‘couple things’? PDA? Would this really make her not want your husband? Holding hands in public? Also, let us face it, these days they are introduced as the ‘young wife’ or even girlfriend.
• ‘You will feel shame!’ Really? They are two adults who have usually come up with a ‘terms of engagement’, but it is the woman who should feel shame. Not the man. Really? I think Jesus spoke on this. Let he without sin….
• ‘You can’t speak to him when you want!’ Neither can you.
• ‘You are not the first neither will you be the last!’ Ok, this one is interesting. On one hand, why do you want to stay with a man you know will never be faithful to you (if that is what you want) just so that you can point this out? Also, this point is interesting because it gave me freedom. When I found out about our ‘evil mistress’ I was broken. I had married the love of my life. When he got with her and they seemed to have managed to stay together for some time, I thought I must have been the problem. Until by mistake, I found out about all the women after her. I laughed so loudly. An evil laugh but I was happy. I was free!
• ‘You are missing out on good men!’ Could you please share the map to these ‘good’ men? I am asking for myself, not the ‘evil mistress’.

As I said before, I am not for or against. I am here for living happily. The only way you can do that is love and live without attachment.

Nobody can steal your spouse. Believe it, or not. They have a part to play too. If he can be stolen, my sister, you do not have a man, you have a chicken. Even cats cannot be stolen.