Spouse rekindles old flame to ruin 25-year-old marriage

Spouse rekindles old flame to ruin 25-year-old marriage

It is quite normal for a man or woman to have a relationship with the opposite sex as a prelude to marriage. Some relationships come naturally. Others are match-made. But not all lead to marriage. Many end up with broken hearts.

A young man and a girl from highly connected backgrounds were match-made in 20th century Nigeria. The man was living in the United Kingdom where he had studied, while the girl was in Nigeria. They hardly got to know each other before the marriage but they trusted their parents’ judgment as they strongly believed that the duo would make a perfect couple and an epitome of an ideal marriage. The marriage was solemnized after which the girl jetted out to London in company of her strange hubby.

Theirs was a relationship built in a reverse order. It was like shooting first and aiming afterwards or courtship after marriage. They were both condemned to love each other. The duo soon began to produce offspring. In no time, they had two boys and a girl.

After a few years, the couple felt they had had enough of “oyinbo” land and decided to return to their home country. They chose Abuja as their final destination. The wife secured a plum job with an oil company, while the man opted for the business world. Both of them got on well initially. But about two or so years after their return, the couple began to pull apart with the man devoting more time to his thriving business. He was spending less time at home. He had no weekends. Being a Moslem, Sundays never saw him out of office.


The wife appeared not to miss her man. Rather, she too devoted her time to her job besides caring for their four kids, having added one upon returning to Nigeria. She combined all that with managing the home front. And unless you were close to the family, you would pray to have their kind of marriage… a rich workaholic couple blessed with lovely kids.


As time went on, it became clear to them that their workaholism was just a perfect alibi to spend less time with each other at home. This was because the relationship was not rooted in love at the very beginning. Not even in love at first sight!


Then the schism began to widen but the kids became the lubricant for the marriage. However, the wife felt the artificial chemistry between her and her man was not fluid. And she started to remember the man she was pulling with before she was match-made and bundled to London. Such a man is referred to as old flame in love parlance.

Incidentally, the old flame resides in Abuja and is married to two women. With her kids all grown up and living in the United Kingdom, she began to have a strange feeling of being with her first love that she was intimately attached to despite the fact that she is running to her late 40s. What further worsened the situation was that the match-making parents of the couple had passed on. The lacuna must have fueled her resolve to rekindle the old flame, and the twosome agreed to continue from where they left off a quarter of a century ago. The woman thus abandoned her marriage and four kids.

Surprisingly, she inherited the only bungalow the man owned in Abuja. This is because he built the house in her name apparently to show his commitment to her and the marriage. The man had to move out of the house on the orders of the woman after a formal divorce without taking a pin along. Presently, the woman is listed as the third wife of the old flame who treats her as a sex symbol. He has scheduled her for intimate visitation only at the weekends in the very bungalow she commandeered from her first husband.

The distraught fellow has moved on with his life, shunting between Abuja and London where he spends time with his kids who are equally pissed off by their mum’s decision to ruin the family bond.