I am from a well-to-do family. A very respectable one too. I didn’t live a reckless life when I was young. I played by the rules. I did all the things my mother taught me good girls did. I didn’t date anybody’s husband even when married men threw themselves at my feet and told me to use them however I wanted. I told myself, “What belongs to someone does not interest me. Besides, karma is a b**ch. What if I go after somebody’s husband and I also get married someday and another woman comes after my husband?” So no matter how hard they pressured me, I refused to tempt fate and give in to them.
When I completed school and started working, I knew I was ready to settle down. I was still quite young but it didn’t matter. When Nana proposed marriage to me, I studied him and knew that he was a God-fearing man. He earned the nickname, “The Preacher” among his friends. They make jokes about how he always preaches to them to stay away from sinful lives. Even the married ones, he never ceased to warn them to desist from extra-marital affairs. Apart from that, he was so loving and caring. He made me feel safe every time we were together. I told myself, “This is the man I am going to spend the rest of my life with.”
Before we got married he told me about a lady from his past. He said they had a fling before he met me. Well, every saint has a past so who was I to judge him? All I knew was that I had landed myself the most eligible bachelor in my circle. He had a good job that could cater for us, and of course, I knew I would also contribute to the upkeep of our home.
The only problem was that he wanted us to live in his mother’s house after marriage. He said, “Look at how much it would cost us to rent. Let’s save that money, and keep saving up until we are ready to buy a piece of land and start our building project.” Although I was uncomfortable with the idea, I knew that we had to start life from somewhere so I agreed to it.
A while after we got married, my husband’s younger brother attacked me in our kitchen. It was a traumatic experience. I expected my husband to be there for me. And help me heal from the trauma, but he rather became distant. While I was dealing with the pain of what happened, I felt I was losing my husband. He was cold. He refused to touch me. Whenever I managed to get him to agree to intimacy, I would end up with an awful infection. This continued for over two years.
As far as I was concerned, I was doing everything a dutiful wife should do. I am not trying to toot my own horns but I was literally a Proverbs 31 woman; submissive, nurturing, resourceful, and homely. So why is my husband treating me as if I am a bad wife? I would sit down and think about how happy I was before we got married. I was a ball of sunshine. However, the neglect I experienced at his hands turned me into a lonely recluse.
One day out of curiosity, I went through his phone to find some answers. What I discovered broke my heart. Remember the lady from his past? I read their chat thinking she might be the problem. Unknown to me, she was rather his confidant. Everything I didn’t know he was doing, I found out from their chat. He told the lady that he started having an affair a few months after his brother hurt me. At the time I read the chat, the affair had been going on for two years. All I could say was, “So all this time that Nana has been preaching to his friends not to cheat on their wives, he is the president of the Side Chicks association?”
The girl he was having the affair with comes from a very poor home. So he is her financial breakthrough. I went to read his chat with the girl, and I almost lost my mind. This man who told me he didn’t have money to pay our son’s school fees, was paying nursing school fees for his girlfriend. All the times he left home that he was covering night shifts for his colleagues, he was spending them at her place. He used to travel for a week or even a month for work. It turned out he was spending all that time living with the girl.
While we live in a single-room self-contained apartment in his mother’s house, my husband had rented a two-bedroom house for this girl. He did that so they wouldn’t be moving from hotel to hotel. The only question I kept asking myself was, “Where did this man get all the money from?” , I know how much he earns at the end of the month. There was no way he could afford that lifestyle on his salary. He and the girl were living large. While he is a struggling husband to me, he is a rich man to this girl.
This lady got so comfortable that she even suggested my husband divorce me and marry her. But he refused. After reading their chat, it was a miracle I didn’t end up in the hospital. The next thing I did was to go to his workplace. I was hurt that he had been living a double life all this while, but I was more concerned about the money. So I decided to investigate it.
You won’t believe what I learned. They told me he lost his job about a year ago. They fired him when they found out he was extorting money from some clients. I had no idea he was unemployed until that moment. But it all made sense.
All that money he was spending lavishly on the girl came from all the extortions he did. At this point, you can imagine how I felt. It was as if the man I married had been replaced by a body double. I didn’t know who he was anymore.
When I got home that day I confronted him. All he said was, “If you’ve managed to find out about the money, keep it to yourself. No matter what you do, I am still your husband. Just because I have a mistress doesn’t mean I am leaving you. The only thing I am doing is taking sex out of the marriage. It’s all part of ‘for better or worse’. Moreover, she is just a side chick, so allow me to do my thing on the side in peace.” Shock does not even come close to what I felt. The only word I could say was, “Wow!” as I collapsed into the nearest couch.
This affair continued and brought a lot of drama to me. At some point, I read their chats again. The girl told him, “I will do everything in my power to keep you because my family needs to come out of poverty.” I didn’t know what to do when I saw this. I was so broken.
We owned two cars but he sold them, just so he could maintain his lifestyle with this girl. But that’s not the worst of it. I thought I had seen it all until I received a phone call from a stranger one early morning.
The person said my husband had gotten married to his mistress. I said, “How? When? He told me he was traveling to meet a potential client for a business idea he was working on. So when did he get married?” I thought it was a joke until they sent me evidence. I informed my family about this said marriage. They made enquiries and confirmed it was true.
The painful part is that I was the one providing for his upkeep all this while. He was always borrowing money from me, friends, and everyone, to the extent that he convinced me to secure a huge amount of loan for him. He said he was going to use it to start a business. It was later revealed that he used the money to renovate the girl’s father’s house in a Zongo in Buduburum at Kasoa. Then they used the rest of the money to fund their wedding. Meanwhile, I was suffering to get money to pay our son’s school fees and buy clothes for our newborn.
The list of things goes on but I will spare you the rest of it. He is going about telling people he married a second wife because I requested money from him one day before agreeing to have sex with him. Does this even make sense? Instead of admitting that he had tasted sin and found it too sweet to stop, he is making me look like a bad wife. Some people are saying it’s spiritual but at this point, I am done. I should have left long ago but it’s not too late. I am leaving now.
I am just so sad that these people ruined my life. Everything I dedicated my life to has been rendered worthless by their selfish actions. My husband has messed with our kids’ lives and spilled mud on them. What sort of wickedness is this? Sɛ papa nyɛ hwee a ɛnde bɔne nso nyɛ hwee. If they turned my good to evil, then let me wish them ill luck. What’s going to be the best punishment for these evil people? I wish God will send an equally wicked person to kill them slowly and make them suffer till their last breaths.
Source: Nnamdi Chekwube Rebecca
