Don't fool around with another man's wife

Don't fool around with another man's wife


23 Aug 2025 • 6:00 PM MYT


TheRealNehruism
Writer. Seeker. Teacher

Image credit: The Vibes


Marrying a woman is a decision a man makes because he wants to make his life worthwhile.


It is not a decision he makes because he seeks pleasure – although there are pleasures in a marriage, a man can get these pleasures outside of marriage too – but what he cannot get outside of marriage, for most men at least, is a way to make his life worthwhile.


How does marriage allow a man to make his life worthwhile?


It does so by allowing the man to give himself – his time, energy, resources and attention – to something more than himself.


What is this something more?


It is his family – which includes his wife and children.


In this world, there is nothing more valuable to us than ourselves. When we say ourselves, what we mean is our energy, time, attention and resources.


When a man gives his energy, time, attention and resources to his family, he is literally sacrificing himself for them.


Now, when a man is sacrificing himself – the most valuable thing he has in existence – for his family, he is not doing it without expectations.


He is doing it because he hopes that his life will not be lived in vain – that it did not go to waste – that it means something. One day, when he is about to die, he hopes to look back at his life, see that he has a good family, and be content with the knowledge that he has spent his life to provide for and raise such a good family. If he has that knowledge, he may die in peace and without regrets.


For a man to be able to fulfil such an expectation, he must strive to achieve things – he must take care of his family, feed them, provide them with shelter, protect them and see to it that they are happy and have a future. As proof that he has succeeded in these strivings, he will expect appreciation, obedience and loyalty from his family.


If a family man has strived to achieve what is proper for a husband and father to achieve, but he doesn’t get what is rightfully his – like loyalty from his spouse – he has a right to take offense.


If another man doesn’t respect what a family man is striving for and has achieved for his family – by doing such things as having an affair with his wife – that man has done the family man a grievous wrong, and the family man has a right to take offense at such disrespect.


Recently, Zulazren Zakariah, 31, who works as a cook, was formally charged with causing the death of another man by stabbing him in the chest during an incident on 11 August.


Negeri Sembilan police chief Datuk Ahmad Dzaffir Mohd Yussof stated that the accused allegedly attacked the victim after discovering a suspected romantic involvement between the latter and his wife.


According to the accused’s older brother, Zulazren, who is the youngest of 15 siblings, is a responsible family man who is devoted to his wife and two young children, and who worked 3 jobs to take care of his family.


“In the mornings, he worked as a cook, then did food delivery in the afternoons, and at night helped his wife prepare pastries to sell the next morning,” he said. “He prioritised his family and has always been a good brother.”


I understand that our country has its laws, and you can’t go around stabbing people just because you have a dispute with them.


But I would also like to ask our lawmakers and authorities: what recourse does a family man have, when his wife is betraying him with another man and thereatening to break up his family, which he has sacrificed his life to maintain, build and provide for?


If you go to the police station and say: “Dear police, my wife has betrayed me with another man, although I have done my part as a husband and father diligently,” what will the police and the law tell you, other than perhaps that you should divorce her?


But what happens if you divorce your wife? Will you get back all the time, energy, resources and attention you have spent on them? Will it save your family ? Will you even get to keep your children?


If a woman divorces a man because he cheated on her, she can expect to keep the children and even be paid alimony by the man.


If a man is cheated on by a woman instead, other than suffering from the betrayal, he also risks losing his wife, his children and his entire family, without being compensated for his loss – despite the fact that he is the victim.


When all a family man can expect after suffering betrayal is further loss, can he really be fully blamed if he is so driven by a sense of injustice and unfairness that he resorts to madness and insanity?


As men, whatever our passions may be, we must draw the line when it comes to playing the fool with another man’s wife.


We must understand that a wife has a husband who is probably toiling for hours day in and day out – sometimes by doing two or three jobs – in order to do right by her and their children.


When you fool around with his wife, you are ruining his family, which he built by sacrificing himself.


The law has its own considerations, but in the esteem of men, if you end up suffering because you fooled around with another man’s wife, you have no one to blame but yourself.


If you harm a family man for the sake of your passion, you are to be blamed. But if you are harmed by the family man because of your passion, the family man is not fully blameable.


This might not be the way that they law sees it, for the law has its own considerations, but in the view of worthy men, this is how the judgment will be.


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Matey Nehru has been getting more and more philosophical but on this article of his, I agree with his advice but want to put it more bluntly - buddy, don't frigg around with another man's wife (or even girlfriend) - you would likely be hurt badly if not killed. In medieval China the village punishment for an erring wife was to be put in a pig's cage with a heavy stone,

... and the whole contraption dumped into a river or deep pool. Asians (especially of yonder days) take marriage (and its vows) as a very serious partnership bound by oath. The penalty for infidelity was usually death. In South Korea, until recent years, adultery was a legislated punishable crime. Maybe the South Koreans feel that was restricting their freedom of choice hence the present abandonment of that piece of legislation - wonder why they chose marriage if 'freedom' was what they wanted?

In my village I personally know of a few village idiots who seemed to particularly lust after other men's wives, perhaps because the 'forbidden fruits' taste so much juicer. One was even killed together with the erring wife (of another man). And the saddest story I want to narrate is about a friend in Penang who lusted after others' wives and went about seducing them. Karma was such a bitch that he eventually found out his own wife went around gallivanting as well. Such affairs always ended up badly.