My husband wants to come down to Ghana so we can start having children, and terrified is an understatement for what I am going through. I cannot get pregnant for this man, not because I am barren, but because there is a problem.

I met him on this blue app, even though I no longer remember who contacted who first, and at this point it no longer matters. What mattered was how easy everything felt in the beginning. Our connection moved quickly, and conversations came naturally, as though we had known each other long before we ever met. We spent weeks talking, those weeks turned into months, and the conversations became part of my everyday life.

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He told me about himself: a 45-year-old man who had spent most of his life abroad, someone who sounded experienced, calm, and settled. I told him my story too. I was 25, and life had already dealt with me in ways I never saw coming, but I had learned how to survive. I was a single mother, so my life revolved around my child and myself. After school, the white-collar job never came, so I took half of my savings and started an online business instead. He sympathised with me and said I was a strong woman, but I answered honestly, “It’s God that’s helping me.”

We never got the chance to meet physically at first, yet we started dating online anyway, and five years was how long we stayed in each other’s lives. Those five years were unstable. Some months, we were lovers who could not go a day without talking; other times, we became strangers. We were on and off.

Even though, I was a single mother, the dream of having a complete family never left me. I wanted a home, stability, someone to come home to, but dating as a single mother comes with silent rules society places on you. You learn quickly that many people see you as baggage before they ever see you as human, so I settled. Because he was older, I convinced myself that giving him my heart meant placing my worries in safer hands

We got married when he came to Ghana for the first time in the five years we dated, and it all happened in a month’s time. He proposed, then said we should get married instantly before he left the country. He was the one paying for the wedding and everything, but it got to the point where he was low on funds, so he convinced me to pour my entire business capital into the wedding. A wedding feels like a once-in-a-lifetime event, and you tell yourself it has to be beautiful no matter the cost, so I partly sponsored the wedding with money that was supposed to sustain my business and my child.

Even the wedding itself traumatised me. I was constantly sick with stress, dealing with vendors, dealing with photographers, managing family expectations, trying to keep my business alive while also handling a fiancé who somehow made the entire process feel heavier than it already was. Every day felt like I was carrying cement on my head while smiling for guests.

But eventually, the wedding came and went. We danced, we smiled for pictures, people ate until they were satisfied, and gifts were handed over. Then everyone left, and for the first time, we were alone with the reality of marriage.

After he returned abroad, my business started collapsing slowly. Stock was running out, and there was no money left to restock because I had invested nearly everything into the wedding, so I became completely broke. After many months of him forfeiting his duties, one day he sent me a mere thousand cedis. The next time I received money from him was almost two months later.

Life has beaten me too many times for me to sit around waiting helplessly for another blow, so I found a job at a hotel that paid 1,500 cedis a month. Between my daughter’s school fees, transportation, food, data bundles to call him, and basic survival, the money disappears before the month even reaches the middle. By the third week of every month, I am borrowing money just to survive.

Right now, someone carried me and turned me upside down, they would not even find a coin on me. I am completely and dangerously broke.

My family stopped helping me the moment I married a man who lived abroad, their thinking being that my husband has taken over my care, so why waste resources on me? They do not know. I beg him for money, and some days I intentionally stay offline so he realises I cannot afford data to come online and talk to him. Only then does he notice and sends money.

His family members do not like me much either. They believie I am after his money simply because I am younger than him. Maybe they think I manipulated him, maybe they think I trapped him, but honestly, I do not know where they got that idea from because if there is one thing this marriage has not given me, it is financial comfort.

I saw the signs. Honestly, I did. Throughout our five years of dating, he never gave me anything: not a dress shipped down, not money to buy one, not even airtime. I did not mind then because our relationship was on and off, and I did not give it much thought. Now it is glaring. Now I am in it.

I could learn to live with it, but now he says he wants to come back to Ghana so we can start trying for children, and the moment he said it, my heart dropped into my stomach. Terrified does not even begin to explain what I feel. I am not barren, I already have a child to prove that, but bringing another child into my current situation feels like walking willingly into deeper suffering. What assurance do I have that having his child will suddenly transform him into a responsible husband and father? What says this child will finally make him care for us properly? I work at a hotel, and the moment they find out I am pregnant, I could lose my job.

Men Don’t Like It When Women Do The Paying

The worst part is that whenever I try to tell him about my struggles, he shuts down completely and refuses to listen. He is not an evil man. In many ways, he is good, and I love him, and I believe he loves me too. But love does not put food on the table, buy pampers, or buy baby food. What if he leaves and never returns? See why I cannot give him a child? I am nervous to have his child. I feel financially suffocated, and I feel ignored.

Is his neglect and refusal to communicate reason enough to walk away before I bring a child into this struggle?

—Anna

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