I don’t feel alive. Not in this marriage. I am trying to find the right word to describe this stage we have gotten to but I doubt there is any. On paper, he is still my husband. In practice, the story is something else. Recently he told me, “I will only accept you back as my wife if you stop using a phone.” To think that I wasn’t surprised to hear this should tell you something about who he is. The first one is, he hates to see me with a phone. According to him, I use the phone to report him to other people.

The second thing you should know about my husband is, he never has money. The first time I met him was in my diploma class nine years ago. We were coursemates. We were not friends but we had some friends in common. So one day he took my number from one of the girls and called me. Although we had just started talking, he did not feel shy to ask me for money the least chance he got.

Any time he came to me looking for money, I gave him what I could. This was the nature of our friendship. On the other hand, I never asked him for money, not even for a loan. which I give him.

If you take this money thing out of the equation, we had a good friendship. He was someone I could easily talk to. I enjoyed his company too. I could tell he also liked me. However, nobody proposed to the other. The friendship just naturally evolved into a romantic relationship.

He became my world, and I became the sun his world revolved around. With love as intense as ours, the desire to tear each other’s clothes off in a frenzy of passion was strong. It took a lot of restraint for us to resist our yearning for each other. It’s not as if we didn’t want it to happen. Who wouldn’t want to make love to the woman he loves? But it has to be done within the confines of marriage. That is what our Christian faith teaches us.

We knew the temptation would keep getting stronger and stronger. We also didn’t want to compromise on our values and end up fornicating. The next step then was to get married.

On the day we sat down to discuss our budget for the wedding he told me, “Currently, I don’t have money. I took some loans that I am still paying off. So if you can afford to, bear the cost of the ceremony. I will repay you my part as soon as the loans are off my hands.” Maybe I did it so easily because I was too entangled in my feelings for him.

I bore the cost of almost everything; traditional ceremony, white wedding, and court registration. His contribution was money in an envelope for my family, and an empty suitcase, the one we filled with the rest of the items on the marriage list that I paid for.

All the sweet-as-honey love we shared vanished after marriage. It first started when he hit me out of anger during an argument. That brings us to the third thing you should know about my husband. He is abusive.

The longest we’ve been happy and peaceful together is two days. All the times I spent with him, if we went beyond two days then on the third day there was bound to be drama. Sometimes he ignored me for days. On days I broke down and cried because of his coldness, he screamed; “Why are you disturbing my peace in this small space? If you want to cry go and sit outside and do it.” If I didn’t move, he would literally “shoo, shoo, shoo” me out as if I were an unwelcome chicken in his kitchen.

I wanted the marriage to work so I put up with all his abusive ways. I even apologized for things I didn’t do. Anything to keep the peace, you know.

As time passed, it dawned on me that I hadn’t gotten pregnant. That’s what is usually expected about marriage, isn’t it? We weren’t on any family planning methods. Although our marriage started as a long-distance one, I visited him every weekend. And we always did it without protection. At least, one of those intimate encounters should have resulted in the fruit of the womb.

Out of concern, I went to the hospital to get checked out. There I was diagnosed with fibroid. The doctor must have seen the sheer panic on my face when he said it. She calmly said, “Don’t worry you can have kids.” She then advised that I try for a baby so we take care of the fibroid too.

I reported everything the doctor said to my husband and his response was, “You must have had an abortion in your past. That’s why you are having these complications.” After that, he showed no interest in anything concerning my health.

If anything, he became colder and more distant. Now, how would I get pregnant in this kind of joyless environment? My husband even said, “If I have kids with you they won’t be healthy because of the Hepatitis B you have.” He refused to touch me because of that.

I spent a lot of money on medication to treat myself. I let him know measures could be taken to prevent mother-to-child transmission but he still wouldn’t sleep with me. By and by, the fibroid got bigger. So I had surgery to remove it.

A lot happened before the surgery and after the surgery. First, I needed emotional support when I was anxious about the surgery but he wasn’t there for me. I needed financial support to pay the hospital bills and other expenses. He sang his favorite song, “I don’t have any money.”
I did it all alone. After the surgery, he left me.

He didn’t ask for a divorce or a separation. He just took a transfer to another town and moved away without telling me. He wouldn’t even communicate let alone tell me where he was. I knew things were not great between us but how bad was it that he couldn’t tell me he was leaving?

In my confusion and angst, someone who knew where he was told me where to find him. But I didn’t pop up there demanding answers. Rather, I kept trying to talk to him until I finally got through to him. He then allowed me to visit him so we could talk.

When I got there he had a lot to say. “I feel like you’ve wasted my time in this marriage,” he started. Then he brought up the fact that I have Hepatitis B and said, “What are we doing in the marriage if you cannot give me children?” Well, I am also tired. I have not experienced any joy for the entire six years we’ve been together.

Now, he is giving me a condition that he would only stay in the marriage if I gave up my phone so I wouldn’t talk to people about him. I am a worker. How can I do that? Please I need some advice on what to do.

— Britney

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