I never imagined that I would one day be afraid of my own husband. Afraid not because he has ever raised his hand to beat me, but because of the way he looks at me when I say no. The silence that follows my rejection feels heavier than thunder.

We have been married for five years, and from the outside, everything looks perfect. We attend church together every Sunday, and smile when people call us the “ideal couple.” But inside the walls of our house, I feel like a stranger living with someone who used to be my best friend.

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It started subtly. The small arguments that followed whenever I said I was tired at night. I thought it was just frustration, that it would pass. But it didn’t. It grew roots.

According to my husband, a wife must always be ready whenever her husband desires intimacy. “You are my wife,” he would say, his voice calm but sharp like the edge of a new blade. “What’s the use of marriage if you keep saying you’re not in the mood?”

The first few times, I felt guilty. I would lie there quietly, pretending to enjoy it. Pretending not to feel like I was being taken. But over time, something inside me broke. I began to dread the nights. I would feel my heart race the moment he turned off the lights, and I’d start finding excuses to sleep early or stay longer in the kitchen.

He doesn’t understand foreplay or the tenderness that makes intimacy beautiful. He doesn’t even try. He just reaches for me suddenly, roughly, like it’s his right and maybe, in his mind, it is. He doesn’t see that I flinch, that my body stiffens. He doesn’t see the fear in my eyes because, to him, affection is a duty, not a language of love.

I have tried to talk to him. One evening, after church, I told him softly, “You don’t make me feel wanted but instead, you make me feel used.”
He looked at me, confused, almost offended. “Used? How? You’re my wife. Everything I do is with you.”
He didn’t understand. And I didn’t know how else to explain.

In Ghana, these are not conversations we are encouraged to have. When I told my mother that my husband and I were fighting because I didn’t want to “do it” sometimes, she laughed and said, “Ei, my daughter, marriage is not for children. Just give the man what he wants so there will be peace.”

Peace. That word again. The peace that sits on top of silence, built on the bruised body of a woman’s discomfort.

So, I kept quiet. I played the obedient wife. I smiled when he came home. But each day, I felt myself withdrawing a little more. I began to hate the sound of his car horn. I started sleeping in a thick cloth, fully covered, even when the night was hot and suffocating.

One night, he came home late and smelling of alcohol. He touched me and I froze. I whispered, “Please, not tonight.”
He didn’t take it kindly. His voice rose, not to shout, but to command. “Do you know how many women wish they had husbands who even touch them?”

That sentence stuck with me. For days, I kept hearing it. Maybe he’s right, I thought. Maybe I’m being ungrateful. Maybe this is what marriage is supposed to be. But my body disagreed. My mind disagreed.

I started avoiding home. I stayed longer at work, pretending I had more on my table. When I finally returned, I prayed he’d already be asleep. But even sleep was not an escape because in my dreams, I kept reliving those moments of forced closeness, his heavy breathing beside my frozen body.

Sometimes I wonder if this is how fear is born — not in a single act of violence, but in the quiet repetition of pain ignored.

There was a day I couldn’t take it anymore. After one of our usual fights, I went to spend the night at my friend’s place at Spintex. I cried till morning. I told her everything. She looked at me and said, “You’re not the first woman to go through this. But if you don’t speak up, you’ll break.”

She was right. I was already breaking.

When I came home, he apologized, not for what he did, but for shouting. He said, “You know I love you. I just don’t know what’s happening to us.” And that’s the hardest part. I know he loves me in his own way. But love shouldn’t make you feel small. It shouldn’t make your heart skip with fear when you hear your partner’s footsteps.

Sometimes I stand at the window and watch the neighborhood; the children playing football in the dust, the women gossiping, the radio blaring highlife from the chop bar nearby. Everything looks normal. Peaceful. But inside me, there’s chaos.

Marriage, I’ve come to learn, isn’t just about sharing a bed. It’s about feeling safe in that bed. It’s about knowing that when you say “no,” it will be heard, not punished. It’s about tenderness.

I want peace. I want to stop being afraid of the man I vowed to love. I want to laugh with him again, not tremble when he draws near. But I don’t know how to reach him anymore.

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So I’m asking…to whoever reads this, what should I do? Should lie and take no matter what? Even when my body is not prepared for intimacy? I know this will make things worse but should I involve someone, maybe our pastor or someone else he reveres? I don’t know what works again because this man I’m with doesn’t work with logic. I don’t even want to talk about walking away because society will laugh at me and say, “You allowed this little thing to destroy your marriage?” But this is not little. Something that eats me alive, inch by inch and piece by piece can’t be called little.

I don’t know what the right answer is. All I know is that marriage should not feel like survival.

—Liz

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