I met my wife through my junior brother. They were schoolmates at the training college. Each time my brother came home from school, he had good stories to share about this lady. “You can’t imagine what Leticia did for me this time around,” he would say.  It was always good things. Apart from supporting him financially, she also ensured my brother never lacked anything on campus. So I asked my brother, “If she’s such a good woman, then why don’t you propose to her?” He told me, “She’s already in a serious relationship. The guy is rich. She takes from the guy and gives to me. I can’t take her from the guy.” 

After school, my brother came home with her and it was the first time I set my eyes on her. She was pregnant then but the pregnancy couldn’t take away her beauty. She got my attention with her smile. I told myself, “No wonder my brother couldn’t stop talking about her.” After that meeting, I never heard from her again. My brother spoke very little of her until he completely stopped talking about her. 

Four years later when my brother was getting married, Leticia came. She was looking more beautiful than the first time I saw her. Immediately she saw me, she smiled and asked me, “Sammy, right?” I answered, “So you didn’t forget my name?” She answered, “I hardly forget a name.” She came with a little girl who looked exactly like her. I said, “Is that the girl who was in your stomach the first time we met?” She laughed and said yes. I picked her up and asked her name. She said nothing but she hung around my neck all day until my brother’s wedding was over. 

What I was feeling for Leticia wasn’t normal. I looked at her finger and there was no ring on it. “Or the guy didn’t marry her after the pregnancy?” It was too soon to ask her personal questions so I left everything in the hands of my brother to do it for me. Days later he called to tell me Leticia was still single because the guy married another woman. I did the sign of the cross and started making plans to make her mine. 

A couple of months later, she was my girlfriend. It was a distance relationship but both of us were determined to make it work. If I don’t visit her on weekends, she would be the one to visit. A year and a half later, we were already talking about marriage. A year later, we were married. We dated for two and a half years. All through our dating period, she was nothing but amazing. I would have been a fool to think twice about marrying her. 

She was thirty-three years when we got married so right from the start, she started talking about kids. “I want to have them early so I can take my hands off them and concentrate on other things.” I don’t want to be forty years old and be thinking about babies. The earlier the better.” I got the message so right from the day we got married, we started trying for a baby. The dream was to have our first within the first year of marriage but that didn’t work out. We went for two years without a child and that triggered her to ask questions. “Do you think everything is alright? Maybe we should visit the clinic to check what is wrong.” 

I followed her around like a lamb, without asking questions. There was nothing wrong with any of us but they gave us drugs to increase our chances. I kept shooting blank for another year. I started feeling uneasy. She already had a daughter to prove that she was capable. How about me? So I started doing my personal rounds, looking for answers. I resorted to herbs and even Chinese medicine. When things weren’t working out, she started picking up a series of fights with me. It could be something as small as not eating all my food. She’ll go like, “You can’t shoot blanks and be wasting food around here. If you know you won’t eat what I cook, don’t make me waste the time to cook it.”

We fought when she made such statements. I knew it wasn’t my fault. It was just a matter of time. One day after church service, she came to tell me a friend of hers has directed her to a certain man who helps people to have babies in no time. “The testimonies coming from people are so huge we can’t close our eyes on it. He sits on Thursdays so this Thursday ask permission from work so we go together.” 

We were both there on Thursday morning. We got there before 9am but the queue we met was so long I suggested we should go back home and come back the following Thursday. She said, “If it’s important for us then we’ll wait. What are we going to do in the house anyway? Shoot blanks? Let’s wait until it gets to our turn.” We were there until 2pm when it got to our turn. When we entered, the man prayed with us and asked us how long we’d been trying. It was my wife who answered. The man asked if we’d been taking any medicine. I mentioned the medicines I’ve been using and my wife also mentioned hers. The man took some seeds from a little container and gave them to us. He said, “You can take these now, so I tell you what to do next but listen, you can’t take them if you’ve had sex in the last three days. That will go against everything you came here for. If you know you’ve had sex not too long ago, you can go home and come next week.”

I quickly did the maths. We had been fighting for a while so we hadn’t had shuperu for almost two weeks. I answered, “That’s no problem. We haven’t done it in a long while so we can take it.” The man laughed. He said, “You two are looking for a baby but haven’t done it in two weeks? Are you serious at all?” While we were talking and laughing, my wife was sitting there quietly. The man said, “Then go ahead and take them. But what I’m going to show you will require a lot of shuperu so you should be ready to go according to instructions.” My wife was still not talking. Just when I was about to take the seeds, my wife said she couldn’t take them. The man asked why and she answered, “I’m not ready. I’ll like to go and come next week.” The man came to look at my face. I looked at my wife. Her eyes were on the floor. The man apologized to us and asked us to leave. Just when we were leaving the room, I locked eyes with the man and he shook his head. I got the message. 

He was thinking the same thing I was thinking about. When we stepped outside I asked her, “What was that far? Why couldn’t you take the seeds?” She answered, “Nothing, I just didn’t feel like taking it.” I screamed, “Liar! You think I’m a child? Who have you been sleeping with? Who’s that man you’re cheating on me with?” She said, “Oh, you think it’s about that? That I couldn’t take them because I cheated? You must be joking.” I held her hand and pulled her back, “If you haven’t cheated in the past three days, then let’s go back and do what we are supposed to do. Were you not the one who brought us here? Why are you running?”

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She said I was embarrassing her in public so she started crying. This is a woman who had been using my childlessness to mock me. God must have a sense of humour, looking at how he revealed my wife’s cheating ways to me. 

When we got home, she packed some of her things and threatened to leave the house. “You think I’m cheating? Don’t you see anything wrong with the seeds? How can you meet a man today and he gives you seeds to swallow and you think it’s alright? I didn’t take it because it didn’t feel right.” She was lying and it showed in her eyes. My wife had been cheating on me and the whole thing began to make sense. Any time we had a fight, this woman will disappear for days. I’ll be going around looking for her from people I thought she could be with. Anytime she reappeared, she told me stories of where she went and why she chose to go there. 

We haven’t been fine since that day. We live together but we don’t talk. I want to divorce her, not because she cheated but because she doesn’t want to come clean and seek forgiveness. It’s clear she cheated but she’s putting up a good show just to cover her shame.

Currently, we haven’t talked about it to anyone. I’m making plans and I believe she’s making her own plans too but I want to ask if I have enough reasons to leave the marriage. I think about it and it burns my heart, the fact that my wife will sleep with someone else. Was she planning to bring another man’s children to me? I don’t trust her again and I want to walk away. She accepts no fault and is not ready to apologize and ask for forgiveness.   

—Sammy

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