My husband and I were friends before we got married. That was all he was to me—a friend. I cherished how we bonded and hoped at the depth of my soul for love to blossom out of who we were. He loved my family because he was treated as part and parcel of it—like part of the fabric that bound us together. He would come to our house and dish out his own plate of food and play with everyone, especially my sister and her children.
We got married in 2016. Two weeks after our wedding, I found a letter somewhere in our room; he had been sacked from work. I don’t ask him anything. I waited, hoping he would walk up to me one day and tell me everything. I didn’t want to do anything for him to sense that I’ve read the letter. I kept cool and continued being the supportive wife I’d always been. He told me nothing.
I got a call from him one afternoon. All was not well. He had been apprehended. According to what I got to know, he was being arrested for some missing items at the company he was working in. We used almost everything I had saved to settle the issue so it doesn’t get to the court. Still, he hadn’t told me anything concerning the sack. I asked him, “What really happened?” He only babbled. Nothing of substance came from his answer. I did not push it.
Then things started becoming hard for him. He couldn’t say it but I could see it right through his actions and the way he spoke. So I gave him my ATM card so he could have money on him without necessarily asking me for money. Thankfully we did not have to pay for rent or utilities because the company he was working with paid everything in advance. That means we didn’t need so much for the time being. We could rely on my salary and be ok.
I’m a financially conscious person. I spend only when I need to and not when I have to. As a matter of fact, the only thing that made me spend my money was my transportation to work and some other travels I had to embark on occasionally for work. It, therefore, was a surprise to me when money started disappearing from my account. Soon there was not enough for me to buy lunch at work so I had to starve. I did not understand what was happening but I never questioned him.
When it became evident that we could not afford the apartment we were living in after the expiration of our rent, I suggested that we move into one that we could manage to pay for but he insisted the company covered for rent for a long time and assured me that we had more time to make things right. I came back from work one day to meet a stranger in our home. It scared the daylight out of me as only myself and my husband could access the house. The stranger said, “Don’t be worried. I got the keys from your husband. He told me to wait for him here.” I called my husband to enquire what was happening and he said, “Don’t mind that guy. He’s very annoying. Let’s meet in town so we get a place to sleep for the night. We’ll talk about that man later.” We ended up in my parents’ house where we passed the night. My mom who lived in the house had traveled to my sister’s place to help her take care of her new child. It was an empty house so we slept there the next night. Nights turned to weeks and weeks turned to months and months became years.
I was pregnant during this whole ordeal. I gave birth and my mom had to come back to help us take care of our child. My husband and my mother’s relationship got strained shortly after she moved in. One issue after the other, to the extent that he stopped eating meals my mom had cooked. He asked my mom to leave. To avoid trouble, my mom left. She left with my son because I had resumed work and I needed someone to take care of my child while away at work. My husband didn’t want my mom to leave with our son. He insisted he would follow me to work with the baby so I come down to feed him when I could. It didn’t feasible so we dismissed it.
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I confided in my mom about the hardships we were facing because they had become unbearable. The weight of our troubles was weighing me down emotionally. I needed to pour out my heart to someone. My husband would not have it. He felt insulted that I told my mom about our troubles. When my mom offered us a feasible way out of our problems. my husband refused to use the opportunity. Eventually, he moved out of our house to his family house where his mother and his three siblings stayed. I wasn’t about to go and live with his entire family when he had just refused a whole new apartment from my mom.
By then I had given birth to our second child. He came back to fetch me and our two babies away but I refused. He accused my mom of being a homewrecker and called her all the names he could find.
It’s been two years since he moved out of our house and I have no intentions of joining him. My five years of marriage have been a constant headache and I am not sure I want to do it any longer. He is not willing to change, nothing I have done seems to be enough for him. He accuses me of not supporting him after everything I’d done for him since he lost his job. I honestly do not know what else a woman could do. He managed to rent a place and he wants me and the kids to join him but quite frankly, I would rather end it all and move on with my life than go back to what looks like a prison.
