I didn’t know she had a daughter when I was falling for her. She was just a calm woman who came to our office once in a while to submit a report. One day, I asked her name, and another time, I took her number. One day she came to submit a report, and I asked to buy her lunch, and she agreed. I fell deeper that day while I watched her eat her food as though she was afraid to chew.

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I nearly proposed to her, but her time to get back to her office was due, and she had to rush. In the evening, when I called, I didn’t hold back. I gave her my words and what my heart had been grappling with when it came to her. “I love you,” I said. “This is not the kind of love that wastes time. Everything tells me you’re going to be my wife.”

She sighed heavily before telling me I didn’t know her, so I should slow down. I insisted I knew her, and I had fallen deep long before I knew her name. She asked me, “Do you know I have a child?”

I paused in my love for her. “Really? Does it mean you’re married?” I asked her. She responded, “No, I’m not married, but I have a five-year-old daughter.”

Later, I came to know the father of her child disappeared when she was less than a month pregnant. I came to know the family of the man rejected her and called her a liar when she contacted them to tell them their son got her pregnant. She told me even her own parents abandoned her because she had brought disgrace home. They told her in their family no woman gives birth without a man they call a husband.

So out of shame and abandonment, she ran away from home when her pregnancy was barely noticeable. Her family heard from her only when she gave birth. She had started working and had rented a small place she lived in. Her mother came to live with her and later took the child away when she was only two years old.

I swore never to marry any woman with a child, but because I had fallen too deep to remember who I was, I made excuses for her. “This one is different. The man is not in the picture,” I said to myself. “It means the child doesn’t even know her own father, so if we marry, I automatically become the father.”

We dated for a year before I took her home to introduce her to my parents. My mom said no. My dad asked if I had the money to take care of another man’s child. I told them her story. My dad said, “That’s even more dangerous than if the father of the child was in their lives. One day he’ll come, and no matter the work you’ve done in the girl’s life, he’ll take his daughter away from you, and no one can say anything.”

I had to convince my mom and dad that this woman was special and that she was a victim of her circumstances. Later, they agreed. Dad said he wouldn’t stop me from loving my choice, or else one day I would blame him if anything went wrong in my love life. Mom slowly came to terms with the fact that she couldn’t stop a moving train.

We got married after dating for almost two years. We lived together as husband and wife for a year before she brought her daughter in to live with us. She didn’t insist or force me to accept the child. It was a conversation we had, and both of us agreed her daughter should come in.

Four years after marriage, I noticed a pattern I hadn’t paid attention to at first. My wife would go back to her parents every weekend, and when she went, she didn’t go with her daughter. She said there were issues at home that she had to settle. Later, she went with her daughter, and that day, she didn’t return with her, even though the girl had school the next Monday.

Each time she returned from their hometown, she looked overly distant and was talking on the phone at odd hours. These conversations were always away from me, as if they were not meant for my ears. I asked what was going on, and at first, she said her elder brother was giving the family problems without going into details.

I woke up one dawn and saw her awake, typing on her phone. Another time, she left the bed at dawn and went to the bathroom and spent almost an hour there. All these behaviours didn’t sit well with me. It grew my suspicion, so I decided to do my own investigation since she wasn’t telling me anything.

Her phone was the only route to the information, and I prayed she hadn’t deleted anything. One day, I successfully got her password, and another day, I was able to get the phone. After reading a line of the messages, my temperature went up. My heart started acting like it no longer belonged to me.

All the secrecy was because her daughter’s father had resurfaced to claim his child. The guy was abroad but had sent his family to her family to begin reconciliation. In the messages, my wife said, “You can’t take her abroad without me, so start preparing for the two of us.”

The man asked, “So you’ll leave your husband and come and live with us here?” My wife responded, “What husband? Aware papa bɛn? Consider me single because this marriage isn’t anything to call a marriage.”

For four years, we hadn’t had any major fight. I hadn’t disrespected her. When we had a miscarriage, I was there with her, crying with her and consoling her that we would try again. I wouldn’t call us perfect, but what we had was near perfect.

I woke her up and showed her the messages, with anger blazing in my eyes. She went mute when I asked what was going on. She told me she was lying to him so he would come for them, and later she would also come for me. “I’m saying all that because of you. I want you to also reap the benefit.”

What Nobody Tells You About Divorce

“Liar!” I screamed. She began crying, telling me she had told me the whole truth. I don’t believe her. I want to divorce her. I want to leave this house and go where she will never find me, but I’m not able to tell anyone what I’m going through because my parents warned me, and I didn’t listen. They would be right, and that would burn my heart.

Sometimes I ask myself—what if she’s telling me the truth? But how can this be the truth?

—Sarfo

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