We were very young when we fell in love. I had come home from school, my first year at the university, when I met her. She had also come home for Christmas vacation. When I set my eyes on her, something told me she was going to be my wife. Beautiful, well-spoken, and very shy. We started talking that day and we never stopped.

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I proposed to her when we both went back to school. She didn’t have a phone. I had to reach her through a lady she said was her school mother. This continued until she was going to Form Three when I bought her a phone she could keep under her pillow for us to talk.

By the time she was going to the university, I was at Level 400, about to leave campus. I prayed she would come to my university but she didn’t get admission there. It didn’t stop us from loving each other.

I had a job when she was at Level 300 and started investing heavily in her with my salary. I paid fees. I bought groceries. I paid hostel fees and even bought books when she said her parents were facing difficulties. At her graduation, I was there with her parents and that was the first time she introduced me to them as the guy who had been the wind beneath her sails.

Her dad shook hands with me and her mom blessed me for helping her. My salary wasn’t that much ooo. But when love is involved, you give not from your abundance but from the little that you have.

So right after service, I started talking about marriage. She was very happy about it but she wanted to start working so, according to her, she could contribute something to the wedding. It took her two good years to get a job. Anytime I tell people I dated my wife for ten years before we got married, they open their mouths in shock. “Ten years? How many years does it take to even become a doctor?” they ask.

When she got a job, we got married. Our wedding was very simple, something the two of us could afford without being in debt afterward.

We started building together from the very first day we started living under the same roof. Our first baby came and a few years later, the second. We were not even thinking about a third child but she sneaked in, a beautiful baby girl we didn’t regret having.

I wasn’t earning much so I had to change jobs along the way and every job I got only paid a little more than the last one. For a family of five, it was hard sometimes for us but we never went to bed hungry. Never. We didn’t owe anyone. We didn’t have to borrow. We didn’t even have to struggle to get what we really needed.

One evening, I picked up my wife’s phone and went through it out of curiosity. I was just bored, to be honest. Then I came across a message between her and a lady called Sabina. From the chat, you could see they had known each other for a very long time, probably from school.

They mentioned names and asked where those people were and then they zoned into their personal lives. That was when the roof came down. While Sabina painted a colorful picture about her marital life, my wife was all gloomy. “Eiii then you got lucky,” my wife wrote. “You got a good man. This is what you get when you take your time.”

According to my wife, Sabina took her time to explore men and settled with the best, unlike her who settled with the first one who came into her life. I read the messages with a creased forehead, wondering if that was all my wife thought about me. My wife wrote, “It’s just hand to mouth ooo. Sometimes it takes God’s grace for us to get through the day and he’s not doing anything about it.”

Then Sabina responded, “Wo pri dodo. You were the most beautiful among us. You needed to explore to meet the best, but it’s all not bad. Life doesn’t end tomorrow.”

My wife: “Oh, from what I see, there’s no better tomorrow coming from anywhere. I wasted my time. He didn’t allow me to experience life and I also followed him. Now see me. I’m looking like an old woman.”

She talked as if our marriage was the worst thing to ever happen to her. I was doing my best but she spoke to her friend as if I was lazy and wasn’t doing what other men were doing to get money. She even suggested that had it not been for the children, she would have looked elsewhere because she was suffering.

I placed the phone down quietly but it was very loud in my head. Different thoughts were flying up and down. Voices I had never heard in my life kept whispering to me. “Or should I set her free to go and experience what’s out there?” I asked myself.

I asked her the next day, “Do you want to leave this marriage? Looking at all the regrets and gloomy picture you painted to your friend Sabina about me, it looks like the best option for you is to leave this marriage, or?”

Her face changed from smiles to terror. “When it comes to me and Sabina, we never talk about serious issues. I was just joking. I didn’t mean any of the things I said. It was just me talking about silly things.”

I still wasn’t convinced but she apologized. She knelt down and apologized and told me how much I mean to her and the children and that I shouldn’t pay attention to the lies she was telling her friend.

Weeks later and I’m still disturbed about what I read. I see my wife and my heart skips beats. When we are alone these days, we hardly talk. It’s like there’s this wall between us and we can’t speak through it. It hurts anytime I play her words back in my head. How I had been a disappointment to her and how I had wasted her good years.

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Do you think this thought will ever leave my head? I don’t even know if I’ve forgiven her because anytime I remember, every anger, every hurt, every heartbreak comes up fresh and I break down. I love her. I love the kids she has given me. I love who we are and our story but I still can’t forget what I read that night.

—Nkansah

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