I was twenty-three when I had my first heartbreak. The man I loved with all my heart and had been with since I was nineteen, and whom I thought was the one created for me, got married out of nowhere. I was in school when a friend of mine sent me the invitation, saying, “Your George is getting married ooo,” and then added laughing emojis.

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The news hurt. How it was delivered hurt me more. I called her and asked, “What is funny? You’re happy that my boyfriend is getting married to someone else? Are you for me or against me?”

I never spoke to that friend again. To be honest, it was easier for me to forgive George than to forgive that friend.

I called George in tears. He denied the news. I said, “I have your invitation here, and you’re still lying to me?” He still denied it until I threatened to attend the wedding and cause commotion. He started begging, telling me he was doing it because of his family’s pressure.

Heartbreak made its home with me for several months. I couldn’t eat for days. I grew lean. I cursed my stars and blamed the gods who scripted my circumstances. To come out of this heartbreak, I decided to hurt men back. So hurting men became the goal. Making them regret ever meeting me became the mission.

I’m sharing this story because of a story I read yesterday about a lady who said her eighteen-year-old younger sister had been blackmailing men. I wasn’t eighteen. I wasn’t living with my sister. I was able to go out there, find a man, cause him pain, and often ended up collecting money from them.

The easy targets were married men. PK proposed to me while wearing his ring, but I pretended I didn’t see it. I accepted the proposal, met him in a hotel, and had our first intimacy. The next time I met him, I screamed, “So you’re married and you didn’t tell me? How could you do that? Who said I wanted to date a married man?”

He was stunned. “I thought you knew. Didn’t you see my ring?”

We fought. I feigned innocence and later told him to compensate me. He said he wouldn’t. I told him, “Maybe you want your wife to hear about us?” He thought I was offering an empty threat until I sent him a link to his wife’s LinkedIn page. “I know where to find her, so don’t joke with me.”

He called, and we settled it. He sent me GHC 2,000 at first, and later I called to demand more. He sent another GHC 500. Three weeks later, I texted him to say I’d missed my period, so he should pray it wasn’t a pregnancy. A week later, I sent him a photo of a test kit, just like Adwoa did in that story, and asked, “Do you want my child, or will you pay to let it go?”

His voice was shaking when he called to beg me to let it go. I laid my demands on the ground. He said he would take me to the clinic himself. I answered, “No problem, but you’ll have to compensate me for all this stress, or else I will hit back, and you won’t like it.”

Men are not as strong as they seem to be. They are all fragile. They are weak at the seams of their emotions. A six-foot-tall man was reduced to an inch tall. He was going up and down, looking for a way to calm a situation that didn’t exist. That guy really suffered. I don’t think he would ever cheat on his wife again. He ended up sending me GHC 5,000 in total before I let him off the hook.

Aboagye wanted to be smart, so he used protection the first time we met. The second time, I told him, “It looks like the condom got torn. How do I feel like something entered me?” He checked. It was okay, but he still gave me money to buy after pills. Three weeks later, I used the same process I used on PK to extract money from him. He was also married. He was working in a company his wife’s father owned.

It became a game I played. I did it to our own pastor. He was in his late fifties and used to advise me in front of my dad. He annoyed me with the way he tried to play holy in front of the church and used his children as the standard of well-raised children. I tempted him, and he fell for it so easily that I was like, “Was this man already eyeing me?”

Afterwards, I started blackmailing him with our chats. “I have all the messages here. Do you want the church to hear? Or should I tell my dad first?” He paid for my silence and later paid for a pregnancy that didn’t exist. I could go to him after church and ask about the day’s collection and how much he was going to give me. That man wished me dead. I could see it in his eyes.

During COVID, I met a man online. He was from Navrongo and had gone back home because of the lockdown. We talked every day and fell in love. He lied that he was going through a divorce. I asked about his wife, where she worked, and why they were going through a divorce. After the lockdown, he came back to Accra, and we got intimate.

The process started. I used pregnancy to demand money. He swore I couldn’t be pregnant. I said, “That’s fine. Let’s wait for the next nine months.” He said, “Okay, we shall see. And remember, there’s DNA.”

We didn’t talk for days. I thought I’d lost this one until he called and asked, “How much do you need to get rid of it?” I told him, “Get rid of what you said didn’t exist? You’ll pay for calling me a cheat and a liar, and you’ll also pay for the pain I’ll go through.”

He was the most stubborn customer I’d dealt with. He said he wouldn’t pay, but days later, he sent me the money and said, “I know you’re not pregnant, but let me tell you this: you won’t go scot-free. You’ll one day cry for pregnancy, and it will never come.”

In 2022, I got married to a man who made me genuinely fall in love. Everything about him was beautiful. He made me forget the pain. He brought genuine happiness back into my life. Three years after marriage, we haven’t been able to have a child. We try every day, but we are not conceiving. Doctors say we are alright, and I believe them, but sometimes what that man said rings in my ears and scares me: “What if he actually cursed me? Is that the reason I haven’t been able to conceive in three years?”

What Will Make You Leave Me After Forty Years Of Marriage?

The answer lies in the belly of time, but looking back, all that I did was needless and a waste of my own time. I had plenty of money I didn’t deserve. I lived like a rich man’s daughter, but in the end, it didn’t bring any true happiness until I met my husband and he taught me to let go. Men will break you, but it will take another man to bring you back to healing.

—Eno

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