My wife and I have been married for almost eight years. We have been trying to have children for all these years. Our frustration and desperation has led us to many places to seek for help. We started with hospitals, we went for church consultations, we tried herbalists and even spiritualists. After going to several places for all these years, a good friend of ours suggested a clinic that specializes in fertility issues. I didn’t want to go because I was tired of getting my hopes high only for it to be dashed. But my wife’s constant tears and depression pushed me to agree that we should go. So we went.
The doctor and staff of the clinic were very professional, and in the next couple of weeks we were going there for different tests. In the end, I was told that I was completely okay. There was no problem with my reproductive system but my wife had an issue, and she will not be able to have babies. I don’t really understand the technicalities of these things. But the news devastated her. We didn’t understand why we had gone to several hospitals where they assured her that she had no issues. In the weeks that followed her diagnosis, she lost weight. A lot of weight. My wife is not a slim woman. She was heavy and thick. She lost all of that body and she stopped going to work altogether and she lost her job as a teacher in a private school. She stopped cooking or doing any house chores.
My family made matters worse. I am their only child and they want grandchildren. I was in great confusion throughout all of this. But this was a woman I love and I was not going to leave her. I suggested we adopt children. She didn’t agree. I would leave in the morning for work and come back to meet her lying in the same position. I knew I had to do something because I was losing her. I was losing the vibrant and fun-loving woman I married all because of the fact that she couldn’t give me children.
One evening, after I had cooked rice and forced her to eat a little, she dropped the bombshell. She said she loved me. She knew how much I wanted children of my own. She wanted me to impregnate another woman and have children with her. She said men do it all the time. I saw the pain in her eyes as she said these words. But she was serious. It was something she had thought through on her own. It seemed it was a solution she had arrived at. It wasn’t something I was expecting so I said nothing. I just left the room. But that wasn’t the end of the conversation. My wife has been taunting me with this. Even to the extent of calling my parents to tell them that she had agreed for me to impregnate another woman to have my children.
I am no saint. In fact, I don’t consider myself as a very spiritual person, but there are some things I just don’t want to do. I committed myself to this marriage and to my wife. Marriage is work and I am willing to go this journey with her despite the uncertainties. Yes, I want kids but I don’t want to go to this extent to have them. I am feeling the pressure from everyone to just cheat on her since she has agreed for me to do it. I have started considering the possibility of doing what she wants. But if I ever do it, sleep with another woman and have kids through that, will she love the kids like her own? How about the baby mama, how will we sought her out, what will the agreement be? I asked her all of these questions and more and she says that when we get to the bridge we will cross it. I am not happy with this arrangement, but it looks like my only option now.