We had a two-year-old when he told me he was traveling abroad. He said he wanted us to get married before he left, so his mind would be at peace when he got there.

I wanted it too. Maybe even more than he did. But I could see the weight he was already carrying. He was barely surviving, moving from place to place, pulling together every small resource he could find just to make that journey happen. I did not want to become another burden he had to carry. So I refused to let him marry me.

He eventually traveled. And then, almost immediately, he was deported.

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He came back with his bags, but not his dreams. Those were crushed somewhere between departure and return. He walked into our lives again as a smaller version of himself.

Slowly, piece by piece, he began to gather himself again.

But even before everything fell apart, our love was not as whole as I liked to pretend.

We had ghosts. And I had mastered the art of ignoring them. They say if you stop paying attention to a spirit, it gets bored and leaves. I held on to that belief like a prayer.

He was dating one girl in our neighbourhood like that. He would look me in the eye and tell me I was imagining things. That I was seeing what was not there. But the evidence was always there, glowing on his phone. He thought he was clever, so he saved her name under different names. “Kofi the fitter. Vida the egg seller.” He changed it so many times, but I always found her.

And when I did, he would fall on his knees and beg. He would cry. “If you leave me, I will die. It will never happen again.”

He is a good man in many ways. Loving. Present. A devoted father. I admire him for all of that. But this one thing, this woman, remains the crack that keeps widening

This Valentine’s Day, he proposed. He put a ring on my finger on the fourteenth of February, and we began planning our introduction for March.

I recently went through his phone. One minute we were talking, then he stepped out for a second. I picked up his phone and began going through it. This time, he had changed her name again, but I have the last four digits of her number in my head. I searched it and it popped up. They are still talking. Still together in whatever it is they are doing.

I am not someone who pretends. When I find something like this, my mood changes, and I usually confront him immediately. But this time, I didn’t. I am tired.

I stayed calm. And when I was leaving, I quietly took off the ring and left it in his house without him noticing.

I think I want to walk away, but I don’t even know how to begin. I don’t know what co-parenting will look like for us. A part of me just wants to block him and disappear from his life completely.

I have turned down men. Good men. Men who were ready, stable, and certain. Men who, by every standard, offered more. I turned them away because I chose him. Because I believed in us. Because he has always been there.

What Nobody Tells You About Divorce

So now I sit with this question that refuses to let me breathe: How can a man love you and still choose the very thing that breaks you?

Because I know he loves me

I was eighteen when our story began. We were too young to understand love, but old enough to feel it deeply. At that age, love is not measured. It is poured. So I gave it everything, now see where I am standing. I should have focused more building my life.

—Esther

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