My husband hated me. I loved him. He was so brutally handsome with excruciatingly handsome features. He married me out of ‘family pressure’ and due to his need of satisfying himself.
I wasn’t good-looking and he had wanted to marry a really beautiful woman who ‘matched’ his figure. Instead he was married to me.
One day at the dinner table he dropped the bombshell. He said he was marrying another woman-a woman who could meet his standards and ‘stand with him in society’.
I was dumbfounded as he told me of what he was about to do. I slipped into my bedroom, locked the door so he could not come in and I burst out crying. I wept for hours before I called my aapi#1 for moral support(my parents had passed away in Pakistan). I told her about my husband and what he was about to do. Aapi was a tafseer lecturer in our town. My aapi admonished me and told me that my husband has a right to marry another woman as long as he treats us fairly. I said O wanted a divorce. Aapi told me that I should fear Allah, if this was written in my fate by Allah then I would have no choice but to follow and by going against Allah’s will I was committing kufr. She said by divorcing him I would lose my husband completely to the other woman so I should concentrate on what was left of my marriage.
Anyways when my husband was sleeping I went over to him, took his phone out, looked through the history and dialled the number that was named ‘Rukhsana’. I called her and pleaded with her to leave my husband alone. Rukhsana simply chided me and told me that at least I wouldn’t have to ‘f*** so hard’ ( these were her words).
Next morning my behnoi and aapi#1 came over and told my husband there was nothing wrong if he married a second as long as I was fair. My aapi also tried explaining this to me.My husband was outraged that I had told my family. But this did force him to reconsider abandoning me totally for that second woman.
I still could not bring myself to accept the situation. I was in tears, pain and utter agony all the time. The night of his wedding when he was away was the most painful. I left on that night to go to my aapi#2’s house.
Aapi#2 was shocked when I told him about my husband’s second marriage. I had always spoken so lovingly and positively about my husband to my family, they did not know he never loved me. She was disgusted. But my behnoi did not let me stay and I returned the next morning back home. My husband was angry that I had ‘disappeared’ and suspected that I was having illicit relations behind his back and that was where I had disappeared.
Anyways, I tried doing as Aapi#1 had advised. I took care of my appearance to attract my husband’s attention when he was with me. I did everything that an obedient and pious wife does. I cooked elaborate dishes for him, gave him intense massages and ironed and washed his clothes with my own hands lovingly. I showered him with more love and attention as I had never done before and I took care of every minute detail in the house for him and never gave him a chance to complain.
He began to regret that he had taken a second wife when he saw what a good wife I was trying to be. He told me his second wife never did what I did for him. He began to love me more than he ever did before.
He said he loved me more than her now but he couldn’t leave his second wife now because he had no reason to divorce her and it would just cost him more sins to divorce her for no reason. He says he is stuck in between two walls, one is his regret of how he hurt me and the other is that he can’t divorce her.
But ever his second wife has been pregnant she has been pestering my husband to leave me because she doesn’t want her child to think that its mum ‘stole’ another woman’s happiness.
And just a week ago, my chota bhai in Cardiff found out when my aapi#2 told him of what my husband did and he was outraged. He called me and asked how I was living with an incredibly ‘selfish’ man? He said my husband did not deserve me and I shouldn’t live with ‘that’ man a minute longer who prioritised his lust over my feelings. He said I should leave my husband and that he(my bhai) will support me. My bhai says I have no self-respect to live with such a person, and in tears he said he can’t understand why any husband would do what he did to me.
I really don’t know what to do. After all the pain I have been through I feel so numb and it seems to me my fate doesn’t matter each way. But these accusations by my brother that I have no self-respect and that I deserve more than a man like my husband have really touched me. Bari aapa still thinks that by divorcing my hubby I am the on.y one losing as I am losing all my husband to his other wife. I really do not know what to do.
Should I or should I not leave my husband?
