My husband is living with his girlfriend

Dear Pastor, I come from a family of people who are loyal and true to each other no matter what. No distance or years can surpass their loyalty.

As long as one knows where she/he stands, they support and listen to each other. Virgin marriages are highly valued and preferable, and sex and marriages are considered sacred.

I barely had known any stepchildren, stepparents, or children born out of fornication or adultery. There was no confusion.

The children knew 100 per cent who their father or mother was. They felt that they all belonged and there wasn’t any discord due to resentments of what someone did that caused family dispersal.

I was not familiar with men and women going together or living together so freely, playing husbands and wives so comfortably.

In fact, it shocked me hearing a woman say “my boyfriend” when she’s pregnant. I don’t mean to be judgmental, but I am just frank with my feelings and experience.

It’s a terrible and disgusting feeling to be married to a man who lives with a girlfriend. My husband and the girl are both cosy in their own place with their own excuses.

The girlfriend is a drugaddicted prostitute and is in and out of prison.

They have two children that bear his name (but they are not necessarily his biologically). All these years I have struggled silently within.

When I listen to my son talking about his friends’ families, I understand that he, too, is struggling to cope.

It breaks my heart when Dear S.D., Why did you have to write such a long letter just to say that your husband has other women, and it is affecting your family life?

It has been going on for a long time and you have stayed in the relationship. May I suggest that both of you seek the help of I look upon his face, or see him sticking his head through the window or sitting by the porch to see whether his dad is coming.

I could not think of any alternatives to get away from such an environment but to run away when my baby was only four years old.

My husband’s phone was forever ringing, particularly from some women who were very similar to his present girlfriends.

I am finding it disgustingly sick to be still married to a husband who has been living with a girlfriend for nine years.

What should we honestly do? Perhaps in my own heart I do have the answer. Every day is like standing in the middle of a crossroad.

Five years ago when we first learnt of it, he said that he was sorry and that he wanted to rebuild his first family. Almighty God, plus the help of a counsellor/ psychologist?

You must see some good in this man why you continue to live with him. Therefore, I say to you, hang in there, so to speak, and don’t give up.

Pastor.

He is irresponsible and has a very bad smoking habit. I felt the ongoing excuses right from the very beginning, but I let them go by.

Are cohabitating parents considered as husbands and wives? If so, then where do we stand?

S.D.