Dear Pastor,

I am 44 years old and my husband is 48. We have been together for 20 years, but we do not have children. When I realised that I couldn't have children, I told my husband that he can go out and get one. It took him two years before he got involved with a woman. She is a Pentecostal woman, and when she got pregnant, she tried her best to take him away from me. My husband used to go to her house and come home very late. I told him that was not the bargain we made.

One night I was waiting for him to come home and I didn't see him, so I took a taxi and went to her house. I called out my husband and she answered and said he was not there. After she said that, my husband peeped out and told me he was there. I told him to come out of the house and go home with me. He came out without his shirt. When I asked him why he didn't have on his shirt, he told me that was all right.

When the child was born, she refused to register him in his name, but we know that the child belongs to my husband and she knows that too. She does not curse me or anything like that. And although the child is not registered in his name, he supports him.

My husband stopped going there at nights because, every time he goes there, she does not want him to leave. People say that she is an obeah worker. When she just got pregnant, she told my husband that if he does not leave me, she is going to tie him to her. So he does not eat anything from her.

This woman has lost her job and she cannot pay her mortgage and is asking my husband to pay it for her. I am against him doing so. But he says that, for the sake of the child, he is willing to pay it for six months and he hopes that during that time she will get a job.

He says that he is not having sex with her, but I have to watch him closely because sometimes when he is on the phone and I ask him who he is talking to, he says that he is talking to her and he is smiling. She calls him the big man and she told the big man that she is going to add his name on the child's birth certificate.

Pastor, do you think that he should pay her mortgage?

S.I.

Dear S.I.,

Have you considered what you have got yourself into? It is you who encouraged your husband to seek a woman out of marriage and to try and get her pregnant. He did so and now you are uneasy about the type of relationship he is having with the woman.

It is not all men who would 'hit and run'. Even when they hit and score, they want to hit again because they were applauded for scoring. Your husband scored. He got this woman pregnant and she was quite willing, and perhaps still is, to hang on to him for as long as she can.

You are very fortunate that she has not been abusing you. I hope your husband would be wise enough not to continue to be intimate with her.

Now, concerning the paying of the mortgage, she has asked your husband to assist her until she gets another job. If he is in a position to do so, he should for the sake of the child. And you should bear in mind that she is the mother of his only child. And if he did not have this child with her, he would have been free from such obligation. But, he has a responsibility to give his child food and shelter. And it is not going to be forever, so allow your husband to assist her in paying the mortgage. You know that that would not cause him to become a pauper.

Pastor