My wife lost her job two years ago. She has been trying to get a new one, but to no avail. We have two kids. What that means is that I have to shoulder all the responsibilities at home. When she had a job, it was easy. She didn’t share her money with me, but she could use it to take care of herself, so I would be spared when she had to buy anything for herself.

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When her parents called, she could send something. When there was some payment to be made in church, she could pay it without asking me. She could fix her hair and buy her own sanitary pads. Losing her job meant I had to take all that up and also help care for her family when the calls came in.

It had been tough for us. For the first time in our marriage, we couldn’t afford to pay a full year’s rent. We had to beg the landlord to accept six months while I worked to look for the rest. It turned into an exchange of words. My wife was there, and she saw what was going on. I was ready to go on my knees for the landlord to accept that amount.

The most difficult moment in every man’s life is to be shamed in the presence of your wife and kids because you don’t have money. It reduces your confidence. It takes your manhood away from you and makes you feel like you’re not worth the kind of family God entrusted into your hands.

The kids’ school fees had to be paid in installments. The headmistress called and threatened me that my kids shouldn’t come to school if we were not able to pay their fees the following week. I had never defaulted, but that counted for nothing. No grace. It got to a time when the next meal was only going to come through a miracle. I asked, “Where is Galilee so I can run there and get fed by Jesus?”

My wife was a witness to all this. When I prayed, she prayed with me. When I called Ghana a place we were born to die, she lamented with me. I never accused her of being the problem. She didn’t have a job, but I knew a time would come when she would have one.

Then “the one day” in every story happened in my story too. My wife’s phone beeped while I was sitting close. Immediately I saw that it was a MoMo alert, and my interest was piqued. I saw the amount that came in, but before I could snoop, she quickly came for the phone and left with it.

She received GHC2,000 but from whom? Who would send my wife that kind of money, and what did she tell the person to receive that amount? After that amount had dropped, my wife still didn’t contribute anything to the running of the home. “Or it was meant for somebody else?” I thought.

I started digging until finally I was able to enter her phone. I went through her MoMo transactions first, and that amount came consistently every Sunday evening. It wasn’t always GHC2,000. Sometimes it was like GHC500 or even GHC350, but the truth is, it came every Sunday. It came from her younger brother.

I dug deeper. I went to her WhatsApp. She was chatting with her brother about the money. Her brother said something like, “Don’t complain, ooo. The business is like that sometimes.”

I kept digging until I got to the bottom of the whole story. My wife has two cars she’s using for Uber. It was her brother who was handling the cars. Ever since I’ve known her brother, that has been his business, buying cars and using them for online taxis.

How did she come by those two cars? Here’s the abridged version of the story. When she lost her job, her younger brother advised her to buy a car with her savings. When her elder brother abroad sent her money because she didn’t have a job, she bought another car for Uber and has been operating both cars since she lost her job.

My wife had money the day I was begging the landlord to accept half payment. My wife had a lot of money but watched us suffer. In fact, she was rich but turned the other way when all we needed were crumbs from her table.

I asked her. I showed her the evidence. I was so angry the veins on my forehead popped and were glaring. She said, “Why are you behaving as if I committed a murder? The money isn’t all for me. My brother has his share too because he bought the car. The little I get, I save it towards hard times.”

“Hard times? What is hard time?”

It means my hard time isn’t her hard time. When we couldn’t pay rent, it wasn’t her definition of hard time. When we couldn’t pay fees, it wasn’t her definition of hard time. When we struggled to find food on the table, it wasn’t her hard time—so what is hard time?

When you go through what I’ve been through, you learn and most importantly, you learn to define life your own way. So I defined hard times for myself.

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To me, hard time is marrying a woman who is not in sync with your struggles and, as a result, keeps her finances a secret from you and watches you suffer. The man in me couldn’t accept to marry his own hard times, so I decided to let the marriage go. Life is hard. If the one you sleep with and mourn with can’t help make life a little bit lighter, then what’s the point?

We are in the process of getting a divorce. We don’t have anything apart from a piece of land I bought, thinking I would have money in the future to develop it. I told her she can have it if she wants. Anything to let this marriage go so I don’t spend a single night under the same roof with such a woman.

—Nicholas  

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