I have been married for thirteen years with four beautiful children. Our youngest child is four years old. Apart from the occasional disagreements that are common in most marriages, our marriage was uneventful. My wife is a good Christian woman. She always strives for peace, just as I do. So none of us held on to issues for long. It never even occurred to me to question her loyalty in any way until one day when she behaved strangely.

She brought me her phone to check on some settings for her. I was working on the phone when I left to go to the bathroom. When I returned, my wife’s password was no longer working. “Did you change your password just now?” I asked her. She responded, “Yes, the kids were playing with the phone when you left it. That’s why I did it.” I asked her for the new code but she didn’t give it to me. Rather, she unlocked the phone for me and sat next to me while I worked on it. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to when her body language screamed discomfort.

Her behaviour that day made me suspicious. So I persuaded her to change her password back to what I knew. When she did, I started monitoring her chats and call logs. There was a number she was constantly talking to. Sometimes they spoke five times a day. However, there were no chats between them. Out of curiosity, I linked her WhatsApp to my device. That was when I knew that she was chatting with the guy, but deleting it.

Why would she delete their chats if she had nothing to hide? Of course, I found evidence that she was cheating on me with him. I confronted her but she denied it; “We are just friends, I swear!” I didn’t want her to know I was monitoring her chats so I told her, “Whatever it is you have going on with him, stop it. Stop talking to him.” She didn’t stop it. Things rather got intense between them. So this time around, I showed her evidence so she wouldn’t deny it again.

I was determined to make my marriage work so I involved a counsellor. We talked about our problems. I didn’t do anything specifically to wrong her but I felt I might have done something to push her into another man’s arms. So I apologized. “If there is something you are not getting from me, tell me. Don’t go looking for it elsewhere,” I pleaded with her. She didn’t have anything to say apart from, “You are enough for me.” She promised she would cut off ties with the guy and focus on making the marriage work.

I looked at our four little children and also decided to forgive her for her infidelity. I did everything I could to keep my family together. I doubled the housekeeping money. I took her out on dates often. I bought her gifts as well. I tried to spend enough time with her so she wouldn’t feel she was lacking something I couldn’t give her. So imagine my shock when I found out after a year and a half that my wife was still seeing the guy.

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She bought a second phone and got a new number. She kept it at work so I didn’t know about it. God being so good, she forgot and brought it home one day. When I went through it, my heart almost stopped. All their declarations of love. Their meeting dates. And the places they visited, it was all there. “You said you were done with him,” I confronted her. Could you believe she got angry? She accused me of invading her privacy. “Just because you are my husband doesn’t mean you should be going through my stuff without my permission. I have a right to privacy,” she screamed at me.

She then changed her phone’s passcode again and put a code on the new phone. When I tried to address the problem she retorted, “You can go ahead and divorce me if you want. I am even fed up with your accusations. You are always bringing these things up to disgrace me.” The moment she made that statement, it dawned on me that my wife has been planning her exit from the marriage.

This woman never spends a dime of her own money in the house. She has also never invested anything in our projects. Meanwhile, she earns more than half of my salary. I never complained because I wanted to save my marriage. But now I am wondering if there is anything worth saving anymore. Divorce has never been an option for me because of the children. How are we going to co-parent four children if this marriage ends? This is my dilemma.

I have tried to move out to give her space, but she always uses the children as an excuse to get me back home. “The kids are asking for you. They are crying,” she would say. “Where are you? Your children miss you,” she would sometimes yell. I would go over to see the kids and end up staying. I don’t know why she works hard to bring me back when everything shows she has moved on from me. Everybody I have confided in about this problem tells me that they have never seen my level of foolishness before. Am I really a fool for holding on?

—Ekow

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