Having Extra Marital Affairs Is Not A Taboo To Some Ghanaian Women In London; Shameful Though

In the Ghanaian culture as we grew up to become familiar with, a husband can be polygamous. This is acceptable until today even though the Europeanization, Americanization, Westernization or the overly but hypocritical infatuation with “Born again” of the Ghanaian has been littering the culture with “too known and over-copying of the Whiteman’s culture” to seemingly render our own culture uncivilized. However, as the African men are culturally permissibly polyamorous, it is a taboo for their married women to practice polyandry. The women are not to be polyandrous.

Polyamory is defined as “the practice of having sexual or romantic relationships with two or more people at the same time”. While the men are by established custom accepted for practising polygamy (the fact or custom of being married to more than one person at the same time), their married women are strictly consigned to observing monogamy (the factor custom of having a sexual relationship or marriage with only one other person at a time). Polyandry is the practice of having more than one husband or permanent male sexual partner at the same time.

In London however, some Ghanaian married women are known to engage in extra marital affairs for all stupid reasons, I repeat, for all stupid reasons. Some of them as I have witnessed, allow some Turkish or North African-origin butchers at places like Tottenham or Dalston market to have sexual intercourse with them just for the fact of getting free meat from them. This is nonsense to me!

One day when I went to the Dalston market in Hackney, I saw one of these Turkish butchers chatting romantically with a Ghanaian lady wearing a wedding ring. I waited patiently for my turn to be served while intermittently eyeing the butcher eerily. No sooner had they concluded their opportune romantic conversation with the woman start to walk a few metres away than he winked at me and said, “She is my girlfriend”. Yes, he is taking an advantage of the absence of the woman’s husband; her ignorance coupled with her desire for free meat or her own shortcoming bordering on promiscuity to have an extra marital relationship with her. This attitudinal nonsense is a common occurrence among some Ghanaian women in London and understandably, in Canada and the US.

Today, I am more concerned about a woman in London that I know very well who although is still married and wearing her wedding ring, she is head over heels in love with another man. She has been doing almost all the things (signs) established to confirm or are indicative of a woman having an extra marital affair. I had to rebuke her father for being supportive of the shameful attitude of her daughter when her disgusting behaviour was made known to him.

Instead of him advising the daughter to cease such behaviours if they were true, he rather angrily retorted, “leave my daughter alone to enjoy her life; she is young. If … (husband’s name withheld) cannot marry her, he should leave her. It is not for his bottle of schnapps brought to me to beg her hands in marriage that he is coming to control her”. I could not stomach this but to harshly raise my voice on him. A father or parent should under no circumstance be seen to support such a disgraceful attitude by their married daughters. Such attitudes have the potential to irredeemably tarnish the reputation of the parents if they became public knowledge. Remember the saying, like father like son or like mother like daughter, to wit, “Se waanse oni a 3se ose”

The woman is still going out with the second man while still married to her husband. The husband is too well aware of the situation and tried as he had to get the wife quit her disgusting polyandrous behaviour, he has not succeeded.

The most painful aspect of it all is the woman giving most of her monthly wages and her children’s child benefit and Child credit (money giving to children under 20 years by the British government) to her newly secret but open boyfriend.

Whenever the new man threatens to do away with her, I understand she gives him more money. The man from reliable sources is using the money given to him by the woman to put up a house in Kumasi for himself.

I should not dwell on her stupid nonsense for long but to tell how it all came about to subsequently advise Ghanaian men accordingly.

They were three supposedly “Ashtown ladies” and close friends of course. The guy in question first befriended one of them. He then moved on to befriend the next one with whom he has had a child that he denies it is his because the child does not resemble him. The second one was married but he was able to snatch her from her husband. He left the second woman. The third woman who is the topic of this write-up always visited the other that had given birth most part of the day under the pretext of going to bath the child. All this while, she had started secret sexual relationship with the guy. In sum, the guy has had relationship with the trio. Should we call them three “Ashawo musketeers?” I don’t know.

I have recently been approached by a close friend of the couple (the original husband and the dishonest wife) to advise the husband to move on without wasting any further time on the wife as she has reached a point of no return in her new but abominable polyandrous relationship. According to him, it is completely an eyesore how she is seen hanging around publicly with bad company and her new lover, wearing short and revealing dresses unbefitting of a married woman.

How can I tell him? He should be able to advise himself although it is not easy since it is a love matter where love is said to be blind. Nonetheless, I shall advise him and all those men finding themselves in the same situation as follow;

1. Do not continue to spend all your money on the errant wife in the hope of enticing her to quit her promiscuous behaviour. The more you spend your money and time on her pleading tearfully for her to come back, the more she feels empowered to pull away from you thinking without her you will die. And of course she wants you to die to get you completely out of her way so as to have a peaceful mind to concentrate on her newfound love without you buzzing her ears – out of sight out of mind.

1. Difficult as it is to leave her to the other man because of the love you have for her and a concern about the welfare of your children if you have any by her, try your hardest to leave her. Once you are able to leave her, give her a maximum of ten years and her stealthy relationship with her new lover will hit the rocks. This has always been the end result from an extensive research made into such affairs where especially, Ghanaians are involved.

2. Concentrate on your work and save your money rather than getting distracted and spending all your money on the unfaithful wife. Once you have saved enough money, you can get a more beautiful, younger and a well educated woman to marry to shame your “ashawo” (promiscuous) wife. It is by this that your “ashawo” wife will regret her actions and would want to come back but it may be “wo aye late” (it is too late for you to come back) for her as said by the Ghanaian famous artist Kwame A Plus in one of his hit songs.

3. Do not take to drinking alcohol. Do not take to famishing yourself in the hope that your unfaithful wife will pity your plight when you are seen to be on the brink of death to come back. Don’t take to such things to court her compassion, they won’t work. No, she will rather have you dead and out of her way whenever they become intensely involved in such extra marital affairs with the thoughts of their new lover occupying their mind all the time. It is only when you are able to muster courage to do away with her and turn your life positively around that they will regret their silly promiscuity.

Why should I continue advancing reasons why you should quit your unfaithful wife when your initial persistent efforts to woo her back when first detected to be involved in extra marital affairs fail? Is it not said, it does not take long for the good ear to hear?

It has always been unfortunate that when these women engage in their disgraceful acts, their parents, especially their mothers, do often support them. My investigations have proved that they threaten to commit suicide should their parents side with the husband by pleading on their behalf for the daughters to return to their legally married husband. Who wants to lose their daughter even when they are behaving in the irresponsible manner as just told above? Regardless of what the daughter will do, put your foot down as a father or mother and chastise them.

Today, I have not named the wife and her lover for some good reason but in future I shall, regardless of what may happen. It is about time we named and shamed these Ghanaian women abroad behaving so promiscuously shamelessly.

Once, a woman I knew and helped to join her husband in Toronto (Canada) in around 1990 did the same stupid thing to him. Having not divorced her husband, she got herself inextricably entangled in extra marital affairs with another man for their same stupid excuses. My husband is short. I don’t want to have pygmy children in my family; but luckily, the two children he had had by her before her secret but serious involvement in the extra marital affairs became public knowledge are both over six foot tall.

The man who snatched her from him died through a road accident when he went to Ghana on holiday about five years ago. The man moved out to the US and back to Canada with her and they lived together for over twenty years until his untimely death.

The woman at some points had wanted to poison her original husband when she was overwhelmed by the intense love for her new lover. Any time the idea occurred to her and she held the poison in hand, she felt guilty by intuitive voice telling her, but your husband has done you no wrong. It was the fact that the husband had done her no wrong but just that her own libido for another man was tearing their marriage asunder that prevented her from ending the life of her husband prematurely.

Bad company corrupts good character. Do not allow your wife to hang around with bad people or bad friends. If your wife persistently tells you about how bad her friends or the people she associates herself with are, be on your guard for the worse. She is already doing exactly as those she reports to you about.

I am done.
Rockson Adofo