I have been married for four years now. I have a child who isn’t for my husband. No, I didn’t bring the child to the marriage. I had it while married to my husband. I know you’ll like to know what happened, so here we go.

It all started a year after our marriage. My husband would leave the house for work and return three days later. If I asked where he went, he would ignore me. Sometimes he would return at 1:00am, take a shower, and leave the house again. Where he went, I never know. He didn’t tell me and he didn’t think it was a good idea to tell his wife where he was going as late as 1am.

We were married but lived our separate lives. He treated me as if I was merely his roommate and not the woman he stood before God and vowed to love and cherish.  I had to endure his emotional abuse and the pain of going through a series of miscarriages. I was constantly worried about him and what he was doing. Most importantly, who he was doing it with. The few times he offered any explanations, they were see-through lies. I felt grossly disrespected by the lack of regard for the sanctity of our marriage.

To add salt to injury, my business collapsed so I had to rely on him financially. This took away my confidence and replaced it with fear. Fear of being starved if I asked him questions. Fear of being pushed out of the house if I stood up to him. So, I left him to his own vices. I stopped calling him when he wasn’t home. I stopped demanding explanations for his absence. I stayed put and observed his going out and coming in as though he was not committed to me in any way. He lived like a shadow, going through walls and passing through the locked doors of our house without any restriction.

One day I got a job. The job was very demanding and I barely had time for myself. It was good for me. I kept me grounded and put something in my bank account to be able to cater to myself.  By the time I closed from work and got home, I was too tired to be sad about the empty cold space beside me on the bed. I didn’t even have time to think about him and where he was on that lonely night when every husband was next to his wife. There were nights I’d wake up and find him lying beside me, those were rare cases but I got used to it.

One day I told him, “You treat me like I have nowhere to go. Like I’m stuck to you forever no matter what. You think I will never leave you so you treat me however you want. I don’t know what this is but it is not marriage. I’ve seen marriage before and I know what it looks like. What you’re giving me is only a pale shadow of what marriage could be. I want a divorce.” He scoffed, “You want a divorce? Where will you go then? As if she has what it takes to stand on her own feet.”

He was right. I had just started working and I didn’t have enough money to move out and get my own place. I decided I would put up with him till I saved enough to leave. These are the things a woman without her own money goes through in a marriage that’s going nowhere. You can’t stay and you can’t leave. Everything in you will scream, “Leave for your own sanity,” but you’ll look at the emptiness of your purse and postpone your leaving. “I’ll eventually go, but not today,” you will tell yourself.

Not long after I brought up the divorce I met a man at my workplace. We started talking and became fast friends. He was also married so it was easy for me to confide in him. I talked to him like I was talking to my husband’s brother; “Have you seen what your brother has done? Can you believe he left home three days ago and I haven’t heard from him? He doesn’t even pick up my calls.”

I was very lonely and I couldn’t talk to anyone about my marriage. I’d kept the loneliness and the pains inside of me for far too long that when I finally found a listening ear, I poured everything on him like the way waterfalls fall from the rocks. This man was very mature and attentive. He listened to my sad stories and made me feel safe. So, I talked to him about everything. He often said to me, “If you need my help with anything, don’t hesitate to ask me.” It was very comforting knowing that I had someone in my life who would show up for me if I needed him to. I’d been with a man for so many years and he had never said that to me.

Maybe it was the closeness of our friendship or the attention he gave me. Maybe I was just emotionally starved. I don’t really know why I did it. Six months into the friendship we slept. I mean the kind of sleep that leads to one going on top of the other. After that unfortunate event, I beat myself up for weeks. The guilt weighed on me so much that it affected our friendship. We started having issues here and there. Little things generated into huge fights. I couldn’t in good conscience carry on with the friendship as if we both didn’t break our marriage vows.

Eight weeks later, I found out that I was pregnant.

We barely talked at the time but when I found out that I was pregnant I called to tell him, “Hey, I’m pregnant and it’s yours.” He didn’t believe me. “But it happened only once. How can you be pregnant? How can it be mine when you live with your husband?” I told him, “It couldn’t be my husband’s. We haven’t done it for a while. You were my last.” He said, “Well, then you know what to do. We can’t have it. Just get rid of it. You know I am a married man. This will ruin my family.” I told him I’ll handle it and he believed me.

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I had been trying to have a baby since I got married. I’d gone through a series of miscarriages that left me broken and in pain. There was no way I would let this one go so I kept it.

I went to my husband and told him I was pregnant. The dates didn’t add up and he tried to say it wasn’t his but he was not too sure about the dates we did it. I looked at him and said, “Just because you are cheating on me doesn’t mean I am doing the same thing. If it’s not yours, then who is it for? Is it the Holy Spirit? God has given us a chance to be parents and you are here doing maths?”

He didn’t talk again. Silent means consent so he took the responsibility for the pregnancy. Nine months later the real father of the child reached out to me. He wants to claim his child.

I am terrified. Many things are unfolding that give me sleepless nights. Two women of God have reached out to me talking about a vision they had. These two women of God don’t know each other, yet they were able to have the same vision concerning my child. They said, “In the vision, your husband found out that your baby is not his and he stabbed you to death. I saw you lying in a pool of blood.”

They don’t even know my story. They don’t know that I cheated on my husband. How can I doubt the authenticity of their vision when it’s clearly the case? I need your advice on what to do. Do I keep quiet, divorce him and move very far away from him? Or I should tell him the truth and let the rest follows? Whichever way isn’t easy but I want to pick your mind on this.

—Kaya

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