'I made him confess to our child'

by Maureen Koh

For 30 minutes, she sat on the sofa and stared at the TV in the private investigator's office. Disbelief followed shock. Then fury.
The first thing she said to the PI was: "I want revenge. I want him to pay for the betrayal."
Madam Jennifer Goh, 47, an insurance agent, describes her feelings that Monday afternoon in May 2010: "For the first time in my life, I felt like killing someone. Him. My husband.
"I wanted to inflict pain on him, the same way my heart felt like (when) it was being stabbed repeatedly," she says.
Madam Goh had engaged the PI to tail her husband, a businessman, for two months after she found several packets of condoms in his briefcase.
She recalls: "I was stunned because I had gone for a (tubal) ligation procedure after our third baby was born. There was no reason for the condoms."
The procedure closes a woman's fallopian tubes. A woman who has this surgery can no longer get pregnant.
The couple, who have been married for 24 years, have two daughters, 20 and 17, and a son, 16.
From the PI's tracking, Madam Goh discovered that her husband was having an affair with his business partner's wife.
"I couldn't believe it. It hurt so bad that I felt only death could release the pain."
Not once, though, did she contemplate suicide. It was, she says, "because it's stupid and simply not worth it".
It was about a month before Madam Goh finally confronted her husband. She explains: "I wanted time to review our marriage and the life that we have built together.
"I needed to find out the root of the problem and what made him stray before I decided if I should leave or stay."
Madam Goh eventually chose to forgive her husband despite her parents' strong objections.
Which is why her heart goes out to the wife of ousted Hougang Member of Parliament Yaw Shin Leong, Madam Lau Wang Lin.
She says: "As it is, trying to forgive a man who cheated on you is already so difficult for an ordinary woman.
"It's even tougher when the affairs are flaunted in the open and everyone is talking about it. I feel so sorry for Mr Yaw's wife."
Madam Goh knows how long and arduous the road to recovery can be. It took her a whole month just to come to terms with the harsh truth.
During that time she would often lose her temper and break out in tears. She says: "I couldn't function properly. It took tremendous effort to even prepare breakfast for the family.
"I'd pop the bread in the toaster, then go on to cook porridge, only to remember the bread later."
Her erratic behaviour baffled her children, especially her eldest daughter, so much that they wanted her to see a doctor.
Madam Goh says: "Except for a close family friend, I initially didn't tell a single other person."
And because she chose to keep mum, she couldn't turn her husband down when he wanted to have sex.
Her mood worsened to the extent that one day, about two weeks later, the family friend suggested that Madam Goh have her own tryst.
"I was told, 'go and get a man, hire a gigolo, anything, just give him a taste of his own medicine'."
The idea appealed to her thirst for revenge.
Madam Goh headed out to an all-male hosts club and paid for a young man. After a night of clubbing, they checked into a budget hotel. She says: "But I copped out at the last minute. I couldn't bring myself to do it because it just didn't feel right.
"Why should I degrade myself because of my husband's bad behaviour?"
When Madam Goh finally confronted her husband, he was so remorseful that he offered to move out of the home.
"He begged for forgiveness and promised it would never happen again. Of course he had a whole load of reasons, like how she seduced him and later threatened to tell her husband about it."
Not that Madam Goh really believed him.
"He also begged me not to tell our children because he didn't want them to hate him," she adds.
"I refused to accede to any of his pleas immediately and told him to find an excuse to stay away from home while I thought things through."
Three weeks later, Madam Goh allowed him home on one condition - that their eldest child be told that her father was a cheat.
She says: "I don't feel I was being cruel. I wanted him to realise that he shouldn't mess around if the family was really important to him.
"I also felt that my daughter was mature enough to handle the truth. And I wanted her to understand why I had turned 'mad' earlier."
Madam Goh's daughter went ballistic but forgave her father eventually. Says Madam Goh: "The good thing is, she's helping me watch over her father too."
While she has forgiven her husband, Madam Goh reckons learning to totally forget and let go will take more time.
"Time," she says. "We just need time."