A few months ago, my wife was sleeping on the sofa when her phone’s screen lit up. At first, I ignored but it kept coming and coming until I got curious. “Who might be trying to get my wife’s attention at this time of the night?” I went to her side and picked the phone up. The first message read, “Are you home?” The second read, “Is he around?” The third message read, “Are you too busy to talk to me? I’ve been thinking about you.” The name of the sender was P.K.

I put the phone down and went back to my seat. A few hours later, she woke up, pick up her phone and read the messages on the screen. She looked at my face and went back to continue reading. She picked her bag and went inside the bedroom. The whole night I kept thinking about the messages and the sender. Who could this P.K guy be and what does he want from my wife? What relationship does he have with her to be thinking of her late this night?” A man with thoughts hardly sleeps, when the thoughts are about his wife and another man, he doesn’t sleep at all until he finds answers. That night she slept with her phone clutched under her arm.

She looked like she was protecting the phone from someone and that someone could only be me. I made no fuss about it. I continued playing my role as the loving husband that I’d always been. We talked nicely and played as though nothing was wrong. I had to guard against my emotion so no sign of worries get leaked. A week or so later, she let her guard down. While asleep and her phone was lying around, I picked it up and started probing. Her password was changed but I kept trying other combinations until her birth date worked.

I went straight to the conversation between her and PK. They haven’t been talking for long. All messages between them were flirty and amorous. They talked about sex and they talked about what they like when it comes to sex. They spoke about their favorite sex positions and my wife gave him a list of things that turn her on. I’ve married my wife for five years after four years of dating and I didn’t know calling her with her local name turns her on. From all indication and the kind of messages they’ve exchanged, you realize that they haven’t met yet. They found each other and trying to know each other.

Something that was also apparent was that the guy knew my wife was married because he kept asking if I was around. I picked the number and tried to dial on my phone. A name came up; “Paa Kow.” My heart sunk. Paa Kow? I dialed again and the same name came up. “But how could Paa Kow be chatting with my wife this way?”

Paa Kow was a colleague in my office. You can call both of us friends when we are at the office but when work closes, that’s all. We hardly talk after work and we hardly do anything together outside work. The only time my wife met him, I was away on a job assignment when a cheque arrived for me. I wasn’t coming back anytime soon and I needed the money to solve urgent problems so I asked my wife to go to the office and pick the cheque up from Paa Kow. I gave his number to her to call him before she gets there so the cheque would be ready upon arrival. Just one time—only one time that these two people met.

And that one time was enough to get them talking behind my back.

That night I couldn’t sleep. My heart was heavy. I wept about the infidelity. I couldn’t find anything in the message that said they’ve had sex or something. I needed that information to make a concrete decision. I didn’t know how I was going to act towards her after knowing what I knew. That morning when I went to the office I took a critical look at Paa Kow. I started reading him very well and I realized some guilt in the way he looked at me. I said nothing to him and avoided him as long as I could.

In the house, I tried to act normal. It wasn’t easy. Everything my wife did got me angry, just a mere mention of my name got my blood boiling but patience was everything. For the next several days, my character was tested and my resolve was stretched to the endpoint. Some days later, I sneaked through her phone and read their messages again. This time around, Paa Kow had sent my wife a photo where he was wearing only boxers with his penis bulging out of it. My wife sent back the emoji with wide eyes. She said, “I can’t wait to have you in me.” Paa Kow replied, “Make up your mind already. We can meet somewhere tomorrow.” My wife responded, “Hmmm, I’m a little bit scared. I wouldn’t know how to face him after that.”

I read their messages till I got to the bottom of it and that was where I nearly died of heartache. I believe they were chatting while my wife was at the office so she put the camera down her desk and snapped her wet pant and said, “See what you’ve caused down there.” At that point, I couldn’t bear the pain again. I smashed her phone on the floor causing the screen to shatter into pieces. She jerked-up from sleep screaming, “What’s that?” I buried my face in my palm and started crying. Men don’t cry until you get to that point where your tears don’t need permission from you before falling off your eyes. I cried like a baby. She saw her phone on the floor with a shattered screen and begun shivering.

She might have gotten the hint judging from my posture. For so long she couldn’t talk. She was quiet and pensive until I asked her; “How did it start? How did you get to the point where you can send a photo of your wet panty to my colleague at work. She started stuttering. She couldn’t say her words clearly. “I said, “If you don’t talk, you and I might not see the morning.” She began, “Please forgive me. It’s the devil. I didn’t know what I was thinking. It’s the devil that wants to destroy us. Please don’t hurt me. It won’t happen again. I beg you in the name of God.”

I didn’t ask you to beg me. I’m asking what happened.”

She started talking. Paa Kow sent her a message one day after he had watched her status. They began talking and they planned to meet which she didn’t do it because she thought it wasn’t right. She said Paa Kow kept being flirty and at some point, she picked the bait. I asked her, “What made you fall for his flirtations? Why didn’t you tell me when it started?” From all her explanations she kept blaming the devil. She kept saying she didn’t know what happened but one thing that made me relieved was that she didn’t say it was my fault. She didn’t blame me for making her lonely. She didn’t say she did it because I was absent.

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The next day, I reported the issue to our MD. He was so shocked he didn’t know what to say. A few weeks later, he was given an opportunity to resign or get sacked. He chose the former.

What about my wife?

We are still here, trying to build up again. The whole situation got her foundations trembling. She was not the same person again. She lost weight. She fell into serious depression. She woke up each dawn pleading with me not to leave her. I don’t want to say it was those things that got me to change my mind, no. Throughout the five years of marriage, she had been nothing but amazing but even amazing wives come with flaws just like beautiful software have bugs. Maybe I let my guard down thinking we had everything figured out. No, we didn’t. So we used this catastrophe as a springboard to build what was broken.

One day at a time. We move. We resolve. We love. Someday, our smiles will come back and out of that, we’ll learn to laugh out loud again like we used to but for now, our hands are busy in the dirt of a crumbled relationship. We are building again. From scratch.   

—Casper, Accra