After church service one day, I gave her a lift from the church premises and realized we lived not far from each other. She gave me her number and said I should pick her up on Sundays whenever I was going to church. We went to church together every Sunday, and I soon realized I was growing fond of her. I would call her on the phone and never want to say goodbye.

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One day after church service, instead of dropping her off at her junction, I continued driving towards my place. She asked, “Where are we going?” I answered, “I’m taking you to my house.” She asked, “Are you kidnapping me?” And we both burst out laughing.

The feelings I had for her kept growing stronger, but I didn’t know how she felt towards me. She didn’t call unless I did. I would text her, and it would take forever for her to reply. One day I asked if she had love in her heart at all, and she laughed.

“What I’ve been through, there’s no way I have space in my heart for love,” she told me.

I asked what she had been through, and she said it was a long story. I didn’t push it. I asked her to tell me when she was willing to do so. She never did until I proposed to her.

She asked me, “Do you know I have a daughter? I’m a single mother. Do you still feel the same way towards me?”

I slammed on the brakes for a few seconds. “Are you joking?” I asked.

She answered, “Why would I joke about such a thing? You remember I told you I’ve been through a lot? My daughter is one of the things I’ve been through.”

According to her, she had come to Accra just to escape from her baby daddy and have a new beginning. She said her baby daddy tormented her life. He fought against every man who came into her life and swore he would make life unbearable for her. After years of putting up with him, she decided one day to leave town and start afresh, so she took a transfer and came to Accra to begin again.

I asked where her daughter was, and she told me she had left her with her parents. I needed assurance that her baby daddy wouldn’t be a problem in our relationship, and she told me that since she relocated, she hadn’t heard from him again, so there wouldn’t be any problem. A few days after this conversation, she asked me how I felt about her now that I knew her story. I proposed to her again, and this time she accepted.

She would travel back to visit her parents and promise to bring the girl with her, but she would always return without her. We dated for a whole year, and I still hadn’t met her daughter or her parents. I had spoken to them on the phone, and they had assured me they were grateful I was taking good care of their daughter, but I never got the chance to meet them in person. I suspected there was an issue, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

One day, we were cleaning her room when she removed a bag and emptied its contents so she could clean it. While she was outside cleaning the bag, something among the items caught my attention. It was a brown envelope with papers sticking out. I checked what was inside and saw a marriage certificate bearing her name.

The marriage had taken place in 2018, but the certificate looked very new, as though it had never seen sunlight since it was issued. I inspected it carefully, including the stamps on it. It didn’t look fake. When she came back inside, I showed it to her.

“What is this? Are you married?”

Her face changed immediately. She asked where I had found it, and I told her that wasn’t important, so she should answer my question.

She said, “You remember I told you it was a long story? This marriage is part of the long story. Yes, I got married, but I’m divorced.”

I said, “But this paper doesn’t show you’re divorced. So where’s the divorce certificate?”

She told me she had left it behind because she didn’t want to remember what she had been through.

I asked, “So he wasn’t just a baby daddy but a man you married? Tell me the whole story.”

She said they got married, and because she couldn’t have a child as soon as her husband wanted, he accused her of being barren and started abusing her. Even her in-laws abused her while her husband watched without doing anything. She ended up in the hospital and nearly lost her life. That was the turning point for her.

Then she started sobbing in the middle of telling the story. I felt bad for her.

She said, “You see why I don’t want to share the details? It breaks me down anytime I remember.”

I felt there was more to the story than what she had just told me, so I decided to carry out my own investigation.

It took me months, but it was worth the struggle and everything I lost during the investigation. Yes, she had been married, but the man she married wasn’t the father of her daughter, as she had told me. Indeed, it was a long story. After three years of marriage, she couldn’t have a child. Then, out of nowhere, she got pregnant. After the girl was born, her husband secretly did a DNA test, and it was found that he wasn’t the father.

Out of shame and embarrassment, she ran away from town to settle in Accra and start all over again. Her husband also traveled out of the country to begin again. Though they had divorced traditionally, they had yet to finalize the divorce in court, so while she was dating me, she was still technically married.

I confronted her with everything I had found, and she said, “Who are you talking to? It’s okay if you don’t want a relationship, but why would you go around talking to people about me?”

I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone

She called the relationship off, even though I had already checked out. She said I had been sent to destroy her life, and she wouldn’t allow me to do that. She has stopped coming to church, maybe to start all over again somewhere else, where no one knows her story.

I’m still shocked. I think about it and tell myself, “See what I nearly got married to—a cheat?”

I pray every day and thank God for taking me out of that situation. I also pray for whoever ends up dating her, that the person will find out the truth just the way I did. Women like her don’t deserve a rock to hide under.

—Aboagye

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