I dated my husband for four years before we got married. We were a year into our marriage before I found out by accident that he had a son. I asked questions when we were dating. I could have suspected everything but not a child because I knew my husband from school.

In school, I helped him financially. It was the reason we became very close. He sold anything he could find. He even sold me a cap I had no need of. The way he would approach you. The way he would coerce you. The way he spoke nicely to me. I parted with money because I liked him, not because I liked the cap he was selling. I bought it but never used it.

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When we started dating, I realized he was the same person paying his fees. Nothing came from the house. So I paid his fees for the last year on campus. When he needed to eat, he came to me. We knew each other from soul to soul, I thought. When doing national service, I rented a place for him so he could have peace and do his service. I did these things willingly and with love because he was such a good person.

After national service, he had a good job. A year after, he said we should get married. I was very proud of the man he had become, looking at where we started from. I didn’t shake my head. I wasn’t working. I was helping with my parents’ business then. My mom asked me to wait for a while. My dad thought it was too soon, yet they were ready to support me throughout the journey.

I didn’t listen to them. I knew this man well enough, so why not? We got married. He showed me off to the world. He told the world our story and what I’d come to mean to him and his life. It was a happy day for both of us, and we soaked it all in.

My dad gave us a whole house to live in, apart from everything he did for us during our wedding. He told my husband to come home and when he did, my dad gave him money. He said he was contributing to our life’s journey. All these happened in love and acceptance of our relationship. He had no reason to lie or he had every reason to tell me the whole truth.

He didn’t, until I found out the truth for myself. We attended his uncle’s funeral, and his son and baby mama also attended. When I saw the boy the first time, the resemblance with my husband struck a chord. If my husband were with me at that moment, I would have told him, but he wasn’t. Later, someone would come and call my husband, and he would leave me and go. Another would whisper in his ears, and he would get up and go. He would have a call, and he would get up and leave.

Finally, when he went out and wasn’t coming, I followed to see what was happening. He was seated in our car with his son and the baby mama while his mother was standing beside the car and having a conversation. The lady saw me and started misbehaving, trying to give me attitude. Right there, his mother broke the news to me. The lady had come to the funeral, demanding my husband take their child with him to the city.

I stood there like a tree planted between rocks. I knew it was true, but I still wanted to hear his voice say it was true. His head was on the steering wheel while his mom did all the talking. That she didn’t mean for me to find out this way. And that the family was planning to have a meeting with me and discuss.

He had the child when he completed SHS. Actually, they were in their final year when the pregnancy happened. Luckily for them, they completed before it showed. While I didn’t know anything about it, my husband was sending a monthly allowance to them. While we were still in school, he was still sending money to them.

The way I found out shocked me to the core, but I was grateful that I found out. It put me in a better position to think about our marriage going forward.

While coming home, he apologized. When we got home, he apologized, asking me not to bring a third person in so we could deal with it within ourselves. He showed enough remorse, but I’ve also grown to understand that people who don’t show remorse until they are caught can’t be trusted or forgiven easily. If you didn’t catch them, the band would have kept playing while you danced to your own dirge.

To be honest, he was a good husband and a support to me. I wasn’t going to leave the marriage, but something had to be done, and I was ready to do it. I told him, “You see how men die, and all of a sudden people appear out of nowhere claiming stakes in the man’s property? I don’t want it to happen to me.”

I told him I didn’t want that child anywhere close to our marriage. As his mom was forcing for the child to be with us in the city, I warned I didn’t want anything to do with the child. He could rent a place for them in the city or build for them, I didn’t mind, but everything he does for them should come from only his sweat and not mine.

Where we live belongs to my father. I asked him to rent a place for us or pay a worthy rent. “If you can’t pay the rent here, that’s fine. Wherever you can pay, I’ll follow you there,” I told him. He said that was too extreme. I told him I wouldn’t give him that advantage of a soft life. “You’ll live in my father’s house and save your money for your child? Someday you’ll die, and he would appear to fight over a property he didn’t sweat for? No.”

The money that my dad gave to him at the beginning of our marriage, we used it to start a joint account. I told him, “I want out of that joint account, and I’m leaving with the total amount my dad gave plus interest. So you can use your own money to take care of yourself and that of your child.”

It was the last thing I said that shook him to the core. I told him going forward, we are not acquiring any properties together. He said it was excessive. I told him he should do it for his son so that his son can benefit from only his sweat and not mine.

I’m pregnant with our first child, and it should be a happy thing for us, but both of us are broken. He wants me to change my stand. I told him if he wanted, I would bring my dad in to resolve the issue, and he pulled back. Nobody in my family knows this. If I tell my parents right now, a lot of things will go backwards. My dad supports us very well. I’m his first child, so he lives his life through me to a certain extent.

We are all girls, and I’m the one who’s hard among my siblings, so my dad makes me aware of everything he does so that when he’s not around, I can take care of what he left behind. He would be very disappointed to learn my husband has done that to me. It’s not so much about the child but the way he handled it. If I knew right from the start, I wouldn’t have married him, but I would have understood him and let him go.

He knew about that, so he decided to hide everything from me. To me, that’s a huge fraud, and he has to suffer the consequences. I’m not changing my stand, and I’m not going to do things that will make it easy for him to make his child benefit from my sweat. I saw what the child’s mother did the day I met her in the car. I could imagine how that lady would be a thorn in my flesh if my husband should die today.

Three Months After Our Breakup, He Got Married

So going forward, he’s free to live a life that will help him take care of his son, and I’m also free to live a life that contributes nothing to taking care of that child so that in the future, that boy can inherit purely what belongs to his father and not my sweat. Even if I die before my husband, I know what I’m doing to secure my sweat for my children, the way my husband will get nothing.

—Juliet

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