To every person who is in love and in a monogamous relationship, finding out that their partner is cheating and even has a baby from that affair is gut-wrenching.
It takes insurmountable strength to accept that your partner has a child out of wedlock and to be willing to raise the child as your own.
*Erick Marivati accepted that his ex-wife cheated on him and fell pregnant outside of their marriage, but he chose to raise the boy she left him with following a divorce.
The 66-year-old demure and soft-spoken man from Hamanskraal, spoke to IOL about his regret and the poor decision of tolerating a cheating a partner.
“I’m a very patient and calm person, I’m slow to anger and I can’t shout even when I’m angry. I just withdraw and keep to myself. I think that my ex-wife saw that as my weakness and preyed on it.,” Marivati said.
The father of three explained that when he met his ex-wife in 2010, he had been single for over 13 years after losing his first wife.
“My first wife died while giving birth to our last born, after her death, I stayed single and raised our children. They were still young, I think the first born was around 12 or 13 and the second one was around six or seven, I forgot, its been a long time since she left us in 1996,” he said.
“I didn’t want to find them a stepmother, I didn’t want them to deal with the pain of losing a loving mother and then deal with someone horrible, It would have damaged them,” he explained.
He said when he noticed that his children were grown and independent, he decided to get back to the dating scene and find a partner.
“When I’m in a relationship I commit immediately, that’s also another weakness and this time, because I had been single for long, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking,” Marivati said.
“So when I met my ex-wife, I made a mistake and married her just after a year of dating. I only saw her true colours when we were living together.”
He said he started hearing rumours that his ex-wife was cheating on him with a policeman. The rumours were eventually confirmed by his first-born son when he saw them together.
“There were also some nights where she would not sleep at home when I’m on night shift and she thought my last-born probably didn’t notice.’’
He said when he confronted his ex-wife about the policeman, a huge fight erupted and she moved out of their bedroom.
“We slept in separate rooms for something like four months and during those months, we were not intimate, we lived more like housemates,” he said.
“One day she decided to talk to me and that’s when she revealed that she was pregnant, it was obvious the baby wasn’t mine, and as much as I knew that she was not faithful, I was gutted. And she was strategic when she told me, she told when I was leaving for Limpopo to attend a funeral and I was going to be away for the whole weekend.”
Despite the betrayal, Marivati said they continued living together while she was pregnant and he went a step further by taking her to hospital to give birth and also fetched her.
“I did this because I wanted a clean breakup, I hate fights and noise. She lived in the house for three months before filing for divorce. She only got a portion from my pension fund and failed to get a share from my house, she was greedy, she wanted everything,” Marivati said.
“On the day she moved out, she also left her son who was almost four months at the time. I was away, she left him with my last-born. My son was not aware that she’s actually leaving forever.”
With the help of relatives, Marivati raised the boy until he was eight-years-old.
When asked why he didn’t immediately take the baby to his mother, Marivati said he felt sorry for him because his mother had three more children and she didn’t have a relationship with any of them.
“She had three children but during the duration of our relationship, she never went to visit any of them, they were scattered living with different relatives.”
In 2022, his first-born insisted that he take the eight-year-old back to his mother.
“My children were never happy with me raising the boy, they always sidelined him and I would ask relatives to keep him for a while and then I would fetch him when the dust settles. I loved him, I didn’t want to punish him for his mother’s sins.”
However, his love for the boy was not enough because the more he tried to hold on to him, his relationship with his biological children got affected.
“I had no choice, I had to let him go, but first, I did a DNA test and packed the results together with his clothes then took him to his aunt in Soweto, I didn’t know where his mom was,” Marivati said.
“Later that day, his mother called and she was fuming, she called me for at least two weeks begging me to come and take the boy,” he said.
“I eventually changed my number because I was getting tired of her, she then started bothering my younger brother and I told him to stop taking her calls.”
In hindsight, Marivati said he regrets ignoring the cracks in their marriage and for also allowing his ex-wife to continue living with him even though he was aware that she was unfaithful.
“I could have avoided a lot of things, even raising that boy, it was an unnecessary expense.”