When Women accept their Husbands' extramarital Affairs

When I was in Germany, some friends told stories of their friends. One of them made me think of the situation a lot of women are in here in India and I wondered whether it is not such a big difference after all: in relationships, some women decide to simply accept their husbands’ affairs. For comfort or out of fear.

A friend told me that a woman whom she had known for more than twenty years, had been living in a very unusual setting with her husband for a long time already: her husband only comes to visit her about once a week. For the rest of the time he lives with his girlfriend. Whenever he comes home, everything is as though they were normally married: he brings home his laundry which she washes, she cooks for one more person at meals and he is simply back home.

They don’t sleep in one bed however – and that was the point of the story where I just had to ask: what came first, sleeping in separate beds or the girlfriend? It was sleeping in separate beds! The woman had once told her husband that she didn’t feel like having a sexual relation with him anymore. She didn’t want to sleep with him anymore and gave him the option to go wherever he wanted to go to in order to satisfy his needs.

They didn’t get separate for several reasons, mainly because it is so much simpler: they keep tax and accounts as one, she can live as she has always been living and he has his freedom as well. They are on good terms, everything is alright.

I had to think of the families that Ramona goes to visit, the parents of our school children where women often pretend they are living in a normal, happy relationship while their husbands are actually sexually very active outside their marriage. It is even clearly visible from outside that the woman is more alone than together with her husband – but they keep up the image of a marriage. The pretense of a life together as a couple, because it is easier than separation and for them better than being seen as divorced in a society that frowns upon that.

I see similarities, I feel it is pretty much the same. It is more comfortable to do it this way. At the same time I don’t want to judge whether it is right or wrong or maybe right in the context of one country and wrong in the situation of another one! It was simply a similarity I saw and wanted to point out – maybe you find it interesting, too.