GLENDA was only 21 when she met the man of her dreams and they got married.
One particular day, barely a few months after their marriage, Glenda decided to go and visit her friend who lived in another township.
Upon arrival, she was shocked when she saw her husband’s car parked at her friend’s house when he was supposed to be at work.
Sensing that something was not right, Glenda parked her car outside the gate and ran towards the entrance checking in all the rooms until she found her husband nicely tucked in bed cuddling with her friend.
He told her to stop imagining things and go back home.
Elsewhere, another unsuspecting wife who had been married for seven years was shocked at her husband’s infidelity.
She says “It was not until New Years’ day this year that I mistakenly (yes mistakenly) read a short Messaging System (SMS) on his phone which said “honey the kids’ jumping castle is not yet here”.
In disbelief she confronted her husband who later admitted that he had a 4 year old child with another woman, who by the tone of her message, was still his girlfriend!
Welcome to the world of cheating husbands. These husbands tell the most outrageous lies, they have one concubine or girlfriend after another and what is most puzzling is that, they usually get away with it.
Last time, we looked at the issue of cheating wives. Today we will consider the issue ofthese  cheating husbands and the impact that behaviour has on their wives, the children and their marriages.
Many men continue to be womanisers and this has destroyed their families. Their wives are always at loggerheads with them and their children grow up insecure.
Over the years,it has become normal for a husband to cheat on his wife. Actually in our African set up, it is believed that if a man does not cheat on his wife, then there is something wrong with him.
This is despite the high HIV/Aids rates that have ravaged Africa.
Men are increasingly being known for the lying, cheating, and double lives, secret families abandoning/denying their children.
Some men go to the extent of fathering children in their friends’ homes and letting another man think it was his children.
Some women have gone out of their way to accept and allow their husbands to have other wives and other kids.
Actually, in recent years, when you were counseled upon entering a marriage, the counsellors called marriage a “shipikisha” club, meaning as a wife, marriage would cause you a lot of pain which you were expected to endure.
One woman caused laughter when she was asked which country had men who cheated the most to which she responded, “The guys from Earth cheat the most”.
Everywhere you go, a man who is fed up with his wife will cheat and some of the reasons men give for cheating on their wives are lack of respect, nagging, indifferent moods and lack of support, submissiveness, intimacy and common social interests.
This ‘serial cheating’ by men cuts across race, tribe or religion as even pastors have been said to cheat on their wives.
Relationship expert and Playwright Peadar de Burca, 36, spent five years interviewing 250 adulterous men and gave the report to the Mail Online.
“What I discovered was much more shocking. After meeting hundreds of adulterers, I’m convinced they cheat because they can get away with it.
I talked to more than 250 men from all walks of life – doctors, dentists, lawyers, bankers, footballers, teachers and the odd millionaire.
All of them had cheated on their wives but, incredibly, only 40 of them had been found out. The others got away scot free and are still doing it,” he said.
Mr Burca says he is ashamed by the dirty tricks his fellow men use but he is more horrified by the way women let them get away with this cheating.
These men even boast about the cheating and about their sexual prowess which knows no boundaries.
The men interviewed were aged between 25 and 65 and most of them were successful.
Mr Burca established that extra marital affairs do not make these men happy. He established that beneath the boasting and sexual prowess bravado, he was shocked to find out how insecure these cheating men were.
Most of these men admitted they were not even driven to cheat by sex but just wanted something to fill their empty lives.
One man confessed to Mr Burca when the lady he was with went to the ladies.
Mr Burca says “The man passed me his mobile phone to show me photos of his children. ‘I love my family. I know I’m ruining everything, but I can’t help myself,” he cried.
It is devastating for a woman to know that her husband has been unfaithful.
The wife of a serial cheat told Mr Bursa that“You see yourself for the first time through this unforgiving mirror. Suddenly every little fault and imperfection is exaggerated.
‘I used to feel good about myself because I thought I had a husband who loved me and was faithful. Now that is all gone. Even though I know he is to blame, I will never feel as good about myself again,” she said.
Some cheating husbands do not even feel guilty as they seem to find it impossible to understand the damage they have caused.
They always seem far more interested in their next affair and when they were caught, they often turned the tables and blamed it on their wives.
One man boasted to Mr Burca saying that “When my wife discovered my affair, I managed to make her feel guilty. I told her it was because she had been ignoring me and had gone off sex. In the end, she was the one apologising,”.
One of the saddest stories I heard was from a woman whose husband had cheated on her when their youngest child was seriously ill in hospital.
Desperately worried, this poor woman had started calling all women in her husband’s phonebook asking if he was with them.
These men are usually not prepared to end their marriages and marry their mistresses. If their wife forgives them, they believe they have got permission to carry on.
MrBurca warns women against tolerating cheating by their husbands.
“Having spent years trailing serial philanderers, I have seen that these men had fantastically attractive women at home who were prepared to be treated like dirt. And that’s the problem. If men think they can get away with cheating, they will,” he said.
Cheating has led to so many problems in homes including Gender Based Violence (GBV) in which some people have lost their lives. Some spouses have developed mental illness and one that comes to my mind is the woman who found a love letter in her husband’s trousers. She got it and went to stand by the road side explaining to passersby what she had just discovered.
Some other relationship experts have attributed cheating in homes to lack of morals. It takes a person of upright character to withstand the temptations of society.
Most of the people who cheat normally have had a history of frequent change of partners.
Some men have no morals and admire other women even in the presence of their wives causing so much pain to their spouses.
A wife’s heart has been described by experts as tender in many places, no matter how independent or strong a man thinksshe is.
One man actually says “When we love other women, we invalidate every desire we have to be our wives’ defenders.
The truth is that as men, we can never allow other men to treat our wives the way we treat them,” he said.
Some men accuse wives of not knowing how to take care of them inside and outside the bedrooms hence their move to cheat. It is worth noting that some women enter marriage in their innocence and husbands have an obligation to teach them what they expect from them other than cheating on them.
The truth is that being unfaithful has got nothing to do with who you are married to but who you are as a person. It is just that most men try to justify their cheating by finding faults in their wives.
Intimacy in the home is about how you express yourself to your spouse. Husbands and wives can spice up their marriage lives together to avoid cheating which can lead to GBV in the home.
Married men need to understand that the amount of time they spend with their concubines, away from home, gives their wives the opportunity to seek solace in other men, including garden boys.
The Zambian courts are choking with such cases and most of these wives blame their actions on their husbands being too busy with girlfriends. This is sad because most of these husbands are now looking after children who are not biologically theirs.
One man refused to be called a cheating husband but a ‘starved husband’.
“We prefer being called starved spouses because that is what we are.
Wives are failing to give us what is duly ours in our own homes so we are certainly looking elsewhere. We are simply tired of begging,” he said
At the end of the day, cheating harms both the husband and the wife. The continuous ‘sorry’ becomes an empty word for the horrible pain caused on one’s wife and the children.
A hearty congratulation however goes to the few faithful men out there who have proved to have morals and strength of character to over-come the cheating temptation.
These are the few men who do not lie or cheat.
They are more interested in being the sort of husband and father their wife and children can look up to respectively, than their own selfish pleasure.
This is good, not just for their wives’ sake, but for theirs as well. This is because most of the adulterous husbands are the most miserable men on earth.
Comments: moongacharity10@gmail.com