The job I was doing didn’t pay but used me the way farmers use donkeys in the field. I came home tired every day, but my salary couldn’t afford a full medical checkup. I complained to my husband every day, and each time I complained, he told me, “If you took your cooking business seriously, it would have grown to take care of you rather than this peanut you always complain about.”

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One day I listened and decided to give it a try. It was just an experiment I didn’t know where it would lead us.

The few months that followed were humble. I cooked from our kitchen, delivered food myself, and celebrated every small order as if it were a major victory. My husband watched it all with pride and kept encouraging me to try. When friends came to visit, he would brag about me before I even opened my mouth.

“My wife’s food is the best you will ever taste,” he would say.

He put me out there when I didn’t believe in what I was doing, and I must confess, these little compliments he gave me urged me to go harder. One day I had a wedding order from my friend. While at the wedding, a lady contacted me and said she would love me to handle her wedding that was coming soon. Before I knew it, I was doing two weddings in a month.

The day I resigned from my 9-5 job, I told myself, “This is no longer an experiment. I either go hard or go home.”

Somewhere along the line, I noticed something very subtle. My husband’s smiles had become very quiet. I didn’t notice it immediately because I was too busy trying to keep up with the growth of the business. My mind was always occupied with suppliers, menus, and staff schedules.

We went to an event together, and someone I knew called me “Madam CEO” and laughed. I turned and saw my husband had frowned. He was quiet throughout. I asked if he was okay and he nodded.

That evening, he asked about some bills and I told him I’d already paid them. I didn’t do it because I thought I had found my feet. I did it just to help the house, but he took it wrongly. He snapped, “Since when did I tell you I can’t pay my bills?”

Even before that, I had paid the children’s fees and he didn’t say anything. When my business started doing well, I did a lot of things around the house that he used to do. Once we had to pay for something and it got to my attention first, I paid. Because I was doing food orders very often, he didn’t have to give money for housekeeping. It felt natural for me to pay because I could, not knowing he didn’t like it.

The day he told me he hadn’t asked me to pay bills, I calmly obeyed. But nothing was the same again.

The arguments started gradually. He complained that I was always busy. He said the house no longer felt the same.

Because of his incessant complaints, I stopped taking certain orders. It got to a point I felt he was happy when he didn’t see me working. Anytime he came home and saw me busily working on an order, he wouldn’t greet me. He would walk into the house and be moody all day.

I was scared I was losing my marriage. I didn’t know which side to lean toward—my marriage or my business.

We had a conversation about it. I asked if what I was doing angered him. My question angered him to a point where his words could barely come out.

“What do I care about what you do? You think I care? You can cook for Donald Trump and I wouldn’t care. After all, that’s what you want to do with your life. You don’t even care about the kids. It takes those girls you work with to take care of them.”

I was shocked at how deep the problem was. I had asked those girls once to help my kids settle down and eat their lunch because I was bagging orders. Only once. Not knowing it had become part of his anger. Everything he said showed my business was getting in the way.

One pastor advised me to rent another place for my business so it wouldn’t look like my business was taking over the home. I thought it was a good idea, so I did it. I got the place and told my husband about it. I hadn’t even paid for the place when I told him.

Come and see ranting that day.

Later, he told my parents that I had rented a new place and was moving out of our matrimonial home.

I told the pastor I was no longer going to do it again, and the pastor said, “He’s angry when you do it in the house. He’s angry that you’re moving it out, so what are you going to do—stay for him to always get angry? Move out. He’ll finally come around.”

I moved out and, unbeknownst to me, I moved out with the marriage.

After a huge fight one night, he asked me to go back to where I was coming from, when he knew very well that I was coming from work. He accused me of staying out late just to entertain men. He said I was cooking for men while they slept with me, and that was the reason I no longer cared about our home.

I was doing my best both ways, but all I received were accusations.

And then one day he locked me out of the house when I got home around 9 p.m. I went back to the cooking place and told myself, “I’m not going back ever again. This place is my new home.”

I went there the next day for a few of my things. I carried the kids with me. He came there fighting me to give him the kids because they were not my property, and then he added, “Unless you’re telling me they’re not my kids again so we should do a DNA test.”

I lost it and gave it back to him. Every angst I had harbored. Every embarrassment he had caused me and every shame he had called me pushed me to fight back.

He went to tell my parents I had disrespected him, so the marriage was over. He told his parents the same thing, that I had fought him when he asked for the kids, so he wouldn’t marry again.

My parents asked me to go and beg him. I said, “Not today and not tomorrow.”

I Left Him Because He Didn’t Help In The Kitchen

We lived apart for six months. He only came just to pick up the kids to spite me. When people asked him what happened to our marriage, he told them I chose money over the marriage and became disrespectful but in quiet moments, I sometimes replay the years in my mind and wonder, “Is it the success of the business that bothered him, or the fact that it’s mine?”

I don’t have my marriage. Sometimes I wish we had handled things differently, but I have a business to handle, and this keeps me grounded. We’ll see what the future holds.

—Julie

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