Each night after shuperu, (yes, sex is shuperu today too because the day is still young. Kids are roaming free.) my wife would get up and go into the bathroom. It’s always been my notion that women love the washroom so I didn’t care how many times she went there and how many minutes or hours she spent there. I will rather sleep than worry about what a woman does with her life when she’s in the bathroom. One night, I went to bed late. She was already sleeping when I walked in. I started dishing out clues that I was in the mood for a game. She got it and paved way for us to get jiggy. Minutes later, we were done. My hand was on her when she got up and went into the bathroom. I slept for a while but I woke up suddenly and realized she wasn’t around.  I turned around and continued sleeping. 

Then my conscience kicked in, “What if something had happened to her in the bathroom?” So I got up and shuffled to the front door of the bathroom. I heard a sound that didn’t sound right in my ears so I stayed for a while and listened. I thought she was on the phone with someone. I was very attentive. “No this doesn’t sound like she’s talking to someone on the phone.” I opened the door suddenly and found her on the bathroom floor with her legs spread out wide and literally taking things into her own hands. “What’s going on here Pat? And why are you on the floor?” 

She quickly closed up and got up from the floor. I was standing by the bathroom door when she walked past me and went into the bedroom. I said, “I asked you a question. Is what I think I saw really what I saw? What were you doing on the floor?” She answered lousily, “Whatever you saw was whatever you saw. Please let me sleep. I’m not ready to talk at this moment.” That rubbed me the wrong way so I held her shoulder and pulled her up. “You’ll talk about it and you’ll talk about it now! What was happening there?” She said, “I was giving myself pleasure. I’ve answered you. Can I sleep now?”

I said, “No you can’t sleep. Since when have you been doing that? Should I take it as anytime you go inside the bath after shuperu, that’s what you go there to do?” She answered, “Ahuh…you always leave me hanging so what do you expect me to do? Lie here as if I don’t care about my own ‘salvation?’ I take things into my own hands. I don’t want to bother you especially when I know that you’ve done all you could do.”

For a minute, I thought I’ve lost the game of being a man. This is a woman I had married for over a year. This is a woman I dated for four years before we both said “I do” to each other. How come I didn’t know she was doing something of that nature?” I asked her calmly, “So for how long have you been doing that?” She said, “I just want to sleep. Would you allow me?”

From there she didn’t answer any questions from me. She was snoring while I was lying there asking myself questions. I felt very little. Like a deflated balloon. The conclusion I drew that night before sleeping was that my wife had been cheating on me. If all these years I’ve not been able to satisfy her then she had been seeking gratification from someone else—probably from a jobless guy who drinks all the aphrodisiac in this world just to prove to my wife that he’s worth more than a thousand of my kind. Men don’t handle such thoughts easily. They do better when their balls get trapped in the zipper than thinking about the possibility of their wives cheating. 

In the morning we picked it right from where we left the previous night;

“So why haven’t you talked about it all this while?”

“I’m not complaining, am I? Or there’s something else you can do apart from what you do all the time?”

“I’m your husband. I need to know what doesn’t go well so we can work on it. If I were you, I would have communicated so I expect you to do the same.

“Great to hear that. I’ve stopped so do better.”

We started talking while doing shuperu. I would be like, “Am I doing it right? It’s there a better place to hit than where I’m hitting? Am I hitting the church bell correctly? You think it’s good enough for the worshipers to hear and gather around in worship?” She would be like, “Just keep quiet and keep going. You’re breaking my concentration. Ok…ok…ok, don’t change it. Yeah. Go the same way.” After everything, I would ask, “How did I do?” She will respond, “It’s not an audition. All is well so set your mind free.”

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This continued for a while—the communication thing. The good thing was, I didn’t see her visit the bathroom each time we finished. I thought I was doing well until one night, I felt her convulse in bed. Her elbow hit my waist so I got up to see what she was busy doing—she was working out her own salvation. Again. “Pat, I thought you stopped?” I realized she was embarrassed so she turned away and said nothing at all. When I pushed her to explain the next morning she said, “I haven’t done it since we talked about it. Last night was the first time since the discussion. I didn’t believe her. We argued about it all morning. I told her how it makes me feel and how it brings trust issues in the marriage. She told me, “You’re the one taking it the wrong way. There are some married couples who do it in the presence of each other because they accept their limitations and allow themselves to explore. There’s no man involved here so why should you care?”

Again, she promised not to do it again and for a very long time, I haven’t had a hint that she might be doing something of that nature. That also brings a different kind of fear into my mind. “Who knows, she might be doing it in the washroom when she goes to work,” I thought to myself. “Or she’s into women, who knows?”  I’ve been monitoring her and she knows it. When she goes to the bathroom and comes out, she looks at my face to see if I’m judging her. At night, she goes to the washroom and doesn’t close the door just to let me know that nothing is going on there. She’s doing her best but I can’t seem to fall for her effort. I’m scared there’s more lurking in the shadows.

I have two questions. Is it normal for a married woman to engage in such acts even when her husband is around? Am I right to feel unmoored and insufficient as a man? A true man should satisfy his wife to the extent that she doesn’t look at anything else but him. Here’s the situation where my wife would rather fall under the spell of her fingers than to shuperu with me. I’m worried. I fear very soon this same act will drive us to the edge. Please advise.

–Asante

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