By Ralia Maijama’a
The second wife, Like I said, is about you and how you could retain your sanity and sense of self-worth in a polygamous home while also sustaining your marriage.
So, here is a question you need to ask yourself: are you marrying him for him, or are you marrying him for you?
That is, when you think about the two of you, do you go “I can make him happy”; or do you go “He can make me happy”? Perhaps he seems miserable with his wife, he looks unhappy, you feel sorry for him.
From what he or others tell you, you know you’re better than his wife and can make him happier than she makes him. Because you love him, you want to give him the gift of yourself as a source for his happiness.
This is all good, as long as you are also aware of all the ways in which he will make you happy – his personality, attitude toward life, work ethic, family values, manners, how attentive he is to you, etc.
If you find that your focus is only and constantly on his happiness alone, don’t marry him. You will end up making the both of you miserable because no one can sustain being a sacrificial lamb forever.
At some point, inevitably, you will want him to focus on your happiness too; and, if he does not, you will begin to withdraw your affections, thereby ruining the relationship.
Keep in mind also that you will be sharing him with another woman. Even if you are the mother of all saints, you will feel jealous of the attention he gives her and would want more or some for yourself – we’re all human.
At this point, if he does not deliver (and he cannot deliver because he owes some of his affection to her too – she’s his wife after all!) you begin to resent him. This is because you have conditioned yourself to live only for his happiness alone, which eventually leads you to feel he should do the same for you.
Sorry dear, it won’t happen. If it would, he would have divorced his wife before marrying you. Now, one problem that you may not see while you’re preoccupied with your great self-sacrifice is this that the more you neglect yourself to serve him, the more attached to him you get; and the more attached, the more possessive; the more possessive, the less tolerant you are of sharing him.
Every time he turns his attention to his other wife, you resolve, sometimes unconsciously, to do even more to make him love you. If you’re not careful he soon becomes your obsession. You become inordinately jealous whenever he so much as mentions his wife’s name.
You start to feel that only you deserve him since, after all, you are the one who gives him the most love and care. Soon you begin to wonder why he can’t see this and divorce his other wife for you; especially if you can see that his marriage to her is fraught with problems.
You start eavesdropping on his phone conversations to hear whom he’s talking to; you begin to sneak into his phone and laptop. When this happens, understand this: you have taken your first steps towards depression and mental illness. There is a myth here that I want to attack.
It is this: that men marry because their wives do not take good care of them. Women so believe this nonsense that you see some of the more stupid ones amongst us on tiktok and other social media saying things along the lines of “if you can’t take care of your husband please leave him for us” or “women don’t know how to take care of their man that is why men go after side chicks etc.” and then proceed to give a lecture on all the ways of caring for a man. But here’s the thing.
I don’t believe that polygamy happens because there are two types of women: good wives and bad wives; I believe polygamy happens because there are two types of men: monogamous men and polygamous men. I say this because there are hundreds, if not thousands of men living with nightmare wives but who have not taken another wife; and there are thousands as well who are married to good, kind women but who have married more wives. Unless women stop telling ourselves that we are somehow responsible for our men’s decision to add more wives we will never forgive each other when we share the same man.
This is because, we see the other woman as representing our “failure”; and this happens to second wives too, because if you fail to get him to reject his first wife, you begin to see yourself as something of a failure.
Also, because we believe that myth, the “culprit” in all this, the man, goes scot free. We don’t blame him. The second wife believes it’s not his fault he married her – it is because he has such a bad wife.
The first wife believes it is not his fault he married another woman – it is because the second wife somehow “compelled” him to do so either through seduction or magic. So we turn on each other to “save” our man from the evils of the other woman.
And, since the other woman represents our “failure”, it is only natural that we would hate her or want to get rid of her. So how do we save ourselves from this toxic situation? It is this.
When you marry a man who already has a wife, you must go into the relationship with a level head. In your own interest you must reserve a part of yourself for yourself alone.
It is understandable that you love this man very much. But you must always, always remember that he is not yours alone. You must teach yourself to “unlove” him so that it will be easier for you emotionally and psychologically to “let him go”.
By this I do not mean you should stop loving your husband, but that you should learn to like your husband more than you love him because love is fickle. Love is greedy and demanding and possessive. If you go all in, hook, line and sinker, you’re very likely setting yourself up for heartbreak.
You can make this easier for yourself by reminding yourself that he, too, does not love you with his whole heart – for how could he, when he divides himself amongst you two or three, etc.?
This means that his heart is divided into compartments – one for you, one for her. Is it wrong then if you also compartmentalize your heart – one for him and one for you? Remember, while you’re pining away for him, missing him, you are probably the last thing on his mind since he’s currently occupied with his other woman, The Trumpet gathered.
This is a tough pill to swallow, but honestly, going into a polygamous marriage with the determination that you are there to “win” will only lead to problems for you down the road. By the way, what are you “winning” anyway?
Why is the man always regarded as the prize when it is he that pays the bride price? Shouldn’t that mean you are the prize?
Or is it that you married him with an ulterior motive? (More on your later on). Once you have schooled yourself to deal with your “part ownership” you will find it easier to focus on other things such as your work, hobby, friends, business, etc.
Indeed, you will have such a healthy mind that you will sometimes begin to be eager for the man to visit his other wife so that you could get on with other interests.
In such a scenario, you will discover that you harbor no resentment towards the man or his other wife and this will make you a more pleasant person to be around.
And that will be your strongest weapon, your pleasant company; because if there is anything a man hates, it is a nagging, resentful, sour faced woman who persistently harangues him about his other wife.
A healthy perspective on polygamy will also prevent you from wanting to hog the husband all the time and will make it easier for you to encourage him to be fair and just.
This will be good for you in the long run. You see, when a man takes on a new woman, his sense of fairness is not always reliable. You are the new darling and he will want to do all sorts of special things with you but not with his other wife. This is when you need a level head the most.
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You must remind yourself that this “darling” phase is just that – a phase. It will pass and you will both eventually settle into the mundaneness of domestic life.
It is at this point that his sense of fairness will return, sometimes with a vengeance, and unfortunately for you, it will be tinged with the guilt that he feels for breaking his wife’s heart.
So this is the point at which you begin to reap what you have sown. If you always encouraged fairness towards her, he will remember and will continue to hold you dear; if you always pushed him to be unkind to her, he will also remember and see you as a divisive figure.
And this will be made worse if you also have a history of fighting or quarrelling constantly with her. This is the point at which your position is most vulnerable because it is at this point that your husband will remove his “rose-tinted glasses” and take a really good hard look at you and at the kind of person that you are.
So you see, if you’ve been kind, tolerant and considerate, he too will be kind and considerate toward you; and this will mark the beginning of friendship between you and your spouse.
That is why I said earlier that you must try to like your husband more than you love him, because in life in general, we can live with a person we don’t love, but we can’t live with a person we don’t like.
So far, the discussion has focused more on the problematic first wife, but not all first wives are troublesome. So, how do you succeed as a second wife when his wife welcomes you with open arms?
This may seem like the best case scenario, but there is often more danger lurking here than meets the eye.
