I was going through a lot in my marriage. My wife only listened to her parents and didn’t listen to me. Whenever she had money, even though we had financial needs at home, she would rather spend it on her family than invest in our little family. I was paying for everything concerning our home and every expense surrounding our son. Sometimes it was hard, but my wife wouldn’t contribute a penny.

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After several conversations, nothing changed. Our marriage was only five years old, but it had started falling apart two years earlier. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my struggles. Out of pain, frustration, and a dose of heartbreak, I confided in a lady in my office, Vida. She had been married long before I got married. I saw how she honored her husband, both on her status and on social media.

Anytime you gave Vida a little space to speak, she would mention her husband and talk about how wonderful marriage was. I felt she would have a solution or, at best, speak to me from a woman’s perspective so I would know if I was the one doing something wrong. I cried the day I narrated my story. She listened keenly before asking me, “Do you really want to know the truth?”

I nodded while looking at her with blurry eyes.

She said, “You love your wife too much, and you’ve let her know that you love her too much. That is why she’s treating you this way. When you love a woman, don’t let it show, or she will walk all over you.”

We spent hours talking about my marriage, and every step of the way I asked what I should do. She kept telling me, “You need to ascend your throne as a man. You’re down, and that’s why she’s stepping on you.”

Every morning she would ask me how I was and how my wife was treating me. If things were good, I answered with a smile. If things were bad, I started my response with, “Hmmm.”

One day she told me, “Ah, Ekow, I should have been the one to marry you. If you were my husband, you would have understood these things.”

I responded, “Maybe my mistake was loving the wrong woman. She’s my cross now. I will carry it. It’s my own fault.”

Then she ran her hand across my chest and said, “A man with the kind of chest you have should be turning women over on a grill the way we grill fish.”

Another time, she asked if I could stay late because she wanted to tell me something. That day, in an empty office, we kissed. She initiated the kiss and didn’t want to stop. She said, “Don’t you notice the way I look at you? Open your eyes.”

I acted like I’d been starved for over a year because I hadn’t had meaningful intimacy for a very long time. But she didn’t allow it to go all the way. She told me we should schedule a date and go somewhere else to have fun.

She had three children, and she still knew how to look like a girl in her teens. She placed my hands on her buttocks and asked, “Press them. How do they feel?”

We met at a guest house out of town, and it happened for the first time. We got there in the morning. By the time we were leaving in the evening, I didn’t know what kind of Vida I was dealing with. “I thought…” Then the little voice in my head would interrupt, “No need to think. That’s who she is.”

She would go home, post her family on her status, and sing the praises of her husband as the best thing that had ever happened to her. On Sundays, she would post scriptures. She would go out with her husband on weekends, and everything they did would appear somewhere on her social media.

I asked myself, “This is a man doing everything for his wife, and she’s still cheating. What about me, who is always fighting with my wife?”

This relationship with Vida went on for several months. I was no longer the man who fought or cared about what my wife did. I realized one thing: the power my wife had over me was because of sex. I knew I would need her when it came to that, so even when she was wrong, I didn’t want to fight with her because she would deny me intimacy for days.

Once Vida came along, I didn’t even crave intimacy with my wife anymore. What was she giving me that I should crave when Vida was turning my life around?

Vida wasn’t my wife, but it got to a point where I started getting jealous anytime I saw her interacting warmly with another man. I thought that the same way I had access to her, another man probably did too.

Crazy enough, I started getting jealous whenever she posted her husband and sang his praises. She said, “That’s why I’m able to do this with you, so he won’t suspect anything.”

We dated for close to a year, and we never fought. The intimacy was always special. All the while, my wife was at home asking why things were no longer the way they used to be. She would cook, and I wouldn’t care. She would offer herself to me on a platter, and I would choose the platter instead.

Vida and I never fought, but she started giving me excuses whenever we made plans. I noticed the change and asked questions. She told me there was fire on the mountain in her home and that she needed time to put it out. We gave each other space, and we never recovered again.

If you ask me, I will tell you Vida somehow helped restore my marriage, but she also destroyed its foundation for me. I no longer trust my wife’s intentions. Even when she’s doing well in the marriage, I suspect she’s only doing it to distract me from whatever she’s doing in the dark.

I go through my wife’s phone every day. I know everyone she talks to and what they say, except for the messages she deletes. I know every cedi she sends and every cedi she receives. We should be fine, but I’m the one hurting because I’m afraid my wife is also cheating on me.

I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone

That’s my problem now: how to relax in my marriage now that everything is working. How not to suspect my wife, and how to love her again the way she’s loving me now.

Vida is out of the picture, but how do I rebuild? That’s what keeps me awake at night. I don’t know how to trust my wife because Vida taught me that you can never truly trust a wife, even if she displays you like a trophy for the whole world to see.