The profits and pitfalls of dating older, married men

Betty Muthieni* first met what she thought was her knight-in-shining-armour in a rather unconventional setting. The year was 2017, an election year, and the setting was a small political gathering. One of the attendees tried to cause disorder at the gathering when the man stood up and boldly quelled the disturbance. Betty was impressed by his bravery, but she thought of him as just another man in the crowd.

“That’s when I first noticed him, although he didn’t really pique my interest. As I was leaving the meeting, he followed me to the parking lot, and we exchanged numbers. After a few calls, we agreed to meet for drinks. It was merely a social meeting,” recalls Betty.

A few such meetings afterwards, the pair began to bond and their relationship moved beyond the platonic stage. And even though Betty knew that this man — Patrick — was married, she was drawn to him and they began dating.

“The way we started dating was very funny,” says Betty. “When we met, I was doing business, supplying various products to government institutions, but I and other suppliers weren’t getting paid. I was broke and seriously considering going back into employment. I even activated my contacts abroad and asked them to try finding a suitable job for me.”

Betty had just secured a Dubai visa and was preparing to move there to work when Patrick told her he did not want her to go abroad. He promised to give her a stipend of Sh100,000 every month until she was back on her feet. 

“I stayed because he promised to ensure I was comfortable,” says Betty. “But, the money never came. Not even once. Luckily, I was able to get a job through his circles.” At that time. Betty was aged 34 and a divorced, single mother of two. Patrick, on the other hand, had two kids with his wife.

Four years on and what had started out as a rosy affair began showing signs of strife. Even though she was known to most of his friends and relatives, Betty says she realised that Patrick wasn’t keen on building her as a businesswoman.Now 38, she looks back at the years spent with Patrick, who is now 51, and gets mad at the time she wasted nurturing a relationship that was “dead on arrival”.

“The signs that he wasn’t really serious were there from very early on. To begin with, he never gave me the Sh100,000 stipend as promised. He came to my house often but was reluctant to help me settle even the small bills. I found it odd that every time we needed to spend time alone, we did it at my house,” says Betty, who continues to wonder why she hung on to the affair for so long.

“He was a businessman like me but would never allow me to come with him when he went to close business deals. Even when going out of town, he wanted me to view myself not as a business partner who could lay claim to the deals he was making, but as someone to keep him company when he was done with his meetings” she says. “That is when I realised he didn’t have my best interests at heart.” 

The affair came to a screeching halt when she discovered that Patrick had multiple affairs. “Before me, he had sired a child with another woman. The child had cancer and needed specialised treatment, which was expensive. I learnt that although Patrick’s friends had raised funds for the child, he had not given the sick child’s mother any of it, yet he was able to fly his two other children to holidays abroad. That information shocked me into sobriety.” 

According to psychologist Benjamin Zulu, women who date married men are merely encouraging the men to be immoral and continue in their crooked ways, yet nothing solid can come out of such relationships.

“These are men who are committed elsewhere, but want loose women who don’t mind staying with a serial philanderer as long as they get financial benefits,” suggests Zulu. “From these women, the men are looking for convenience, comfort and idealistic freedom. The men are highly unlikely to leave their wives for the mistress. Even if he says otherwise, such a man’s wife and children remain his first priority. 

“All such affairs do is to perpetuate an ongoing crisis of children who walk around carrying intergenerational hurt. Children fathered by indisciplined men who have been allowed by careless women to sleep around in the name of the nyumba ndogo craze that seems to have gripped our young women,” he says, “Yet we know that these are men who are either merely looking to let off steam when things are too hot back home or looking to release sexual tension.”

Repulsed by the smell of breast milk
Marybeth’s story seems to fit right into Zulu’s portrayal of affairs between married men and younger women.

When she met Ken in 2017, his wife had just given birth to their second baby. “He saw me in a club. I was dancing and apparently he was impressed with my dancing. He bought me drinks all night, through the waiter, and never once walked over to speak to me. Later, he sent the waiter with a note bearing his phone number, and asked me to write mine down. Then he called me the following morning. After the usual chitchat, he told me expressly that he was married but couldn’t stand the way his wife smelt of breast milk. I found that very weird.”

Anyway, Marybeth, then 18 and fresh from high school, was over the moon when Ken told her that he would rent a house for her in Kasarani so that she could move out of her mother’s apartment.

“After a month of seeing each other, he rented a house for me and furnished it, and I moved out of my mum’s. He would spend most nights at ‘my house’ and in fact, I had to sometimes push him to go see his family,” she recounts. “We were always out having fun and on weekends, we would go on road trips out of the city.”

All this changed when she gave birth to their first child.

“It was an accident. It’s not something we had spoken about or planned for. And, considering the condescending things he had said about his wife, I was unwilling to go through with the pregnancy and I told him of my plans to have an abortion, but he convinced me to give birth. “What I did not know was that this was what would send him back into his wife’s arms,” she adds. “All the fun and games stopped after I delivered. Our relationship suddenly got tepid and with time, things got complicated. He once told me that he had heard from one of his friends that the baby wasn’t his. He stopped coming over as often as he did before stopping altogether. I thank God because he still supports me financially. He pays the house rent, does shopping and sends me Sh700 every day.”

Currently a stay-at-home mum, Marybeth, says she regrets having given herself to the man too easily and so wholeheartedly, knowing too well he was married. However, she feels lucky that she is receiving financial support from the man. She is saving part of the stipend, which she plans to use as capital for her business once the baby, who is now aged one-and-a-half years old, turns three.

According to relationship, marriage and family therapist Prof Catherine Gachutha, such problems often stem from a lack of proper orientation for young men and women during marriage preparations.

“We have a crop of women who find that they have attained marriageable age, and are looking for a man to marry them, but there are either no suitable suitors in their age group, or the ones that tickle their fancy are all married. For this, they opt for the married men who seem appealing and readily available,” says Prof Gachutha.

“Others are not even intent on getting married. They just want rich, polished men who can give them a luxurious life,” she adds. “Conversely, we have married men who are out to have their cake and eat it. They want to spend their money on the young women and have fun with them, but they don’t want to commit to a solid relationship, yet they are sleeping with the women. In such instances, when the union ends, the women often feel used.”

She adds that in the event that a woman who had been in such an arrangement for the financial gain is not given the promised finances, they will feel cheated.

“By the time she realises that the relationship is going nowhere, the woman will have wasted precious time. This is a very mean man who is only concerned with his family, but not interested in her. We are seeing so many such young women suffering low self-esteem and coming in to seek help with depression,” said the counsellor.

Prof Gachutha says that those interested in marriage are in for a huge disappointment. “Most of these men are too selfish. They don’t want to marry a second wife, they just want to enjoy such a lady, meaning that she is wasting her time. Unless the woman gets involved with a man who is truly done with his first wife and now wants to shift that energy into a new relationship that can eventually lead to marriage.”

She describes such relationships as “very confusing and nebulous enterprises” as it is difficult for a person to be committed to the wife and also truly committed to the mpango wa kando.

Generally, Prof Gachutha categorises such relationships as dangerous, as they can push one into mental ill health or cause the couple to harm each other as a result of jealousy. She advises those getting into such relationships to reflect on the consequences.

“People are killing each other because of such flimsy relationships. Children are being born out of wedlock and getting abandoned by their fathers, and this leaves the children feeling unwanted. Many of them fall into depression at a very young age.”

But, she admits that a few of these rebellious relationships do end up going the whole nine yards. She advises those hoping to get married as second wives to look for signs of commitment, consistency and respect before committing, and to check whether the man is making deliberate efforts to help them in their journey of personal growth.

“Ask yourself, is the man making futuristic and tangible development goals with you? Are you publicly introduced to his family and anyone else who is significant to this person, or are you being hidden in the shadows so that you're not seen? Is he proud of showing you off?”

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of interviewees.

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