A year ago, our marriage nearly came to an end. The reason it didn’t was because I found out I was pregnant. Instead of divorce, we both agreed we were going to live apart and see what became of our fledgling marriage. I came to live with my parents, leaving my husband alone in the house we rented to serve as our matrimonial home.

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What happened?

Three things happened. I tried my best to correct them. I nagged about them with love. I got angry about them. Later, when I realized my husband wasn’t doing much about them, I told myself I should live with them, but no matter what happened, I couldn’t live with these issues until that day when we nearly gave up.

My husband brushed his teeth in the kitchen sink. Our bathroom sink was blocked, and we were waiting for a plumber to fix it. I brushed my teeth in the bathroom when I was going to bathe, but my husband chose the kitchen sink to do it. My skin crawled the very first day I saw it. I asked him why. I used Parazone and other harsh detergents to clean the sink. He asked why I was treating the sink as if he had gone to the toilet in it.

Days later, he did it again. Even when we fixed the bathroom sink, he still used the kitchen one from time to time as a matter of convenience. So we fought and argued and stopped talking to each other for days. And then he started doing it secretly. He would spit in it, and I would later find out because of the scent.

This aside, he had a very poor culture when it came to using the toilet. Some days, he would forget to flush and argue that he didn’t do it. Or he would use the toilet and leave stains all over. “Dear, the brush in the toilet is there for this reason. What stops you from using it after finding out you’ve messed up the bowl?”

He said I liked talking about every little thing instead of fixing it. We fought over this issue from day one when we started living together. He would urinate on the toilet seat and leave it for me to later sit on unknowingly. Or he would pee, and some would fall on the floor, and he would leave it there.

I thought these attitudes were for kids, but when he continued doing them, I told him he behaved like he was raised in the village where these things were absent. “You are insulting my parents?” he asked. “I’m questioning why a grown-up like you can’t do simple things right.”

He didn’t talk to me for weeks, and when he did, he called me Madam Perfect. After going through all these hassles, trying to fix his broken character, I had to also deal with his incessant farting behaviour.

He would come from outside to the kitchen where I’m cooking and fart there, so the scent from his fart would compete with the fragrance of the food in the kitchen. Every day when he did that, the scent of his fart won, and it became an argument.

He would do it in bed, inside the duvet, and try to cover my head with the duvet so I would choke on the scent. He would do it loud and proud while we were eating together and burst out laughing. He didn’t mind if I stopped eating the food and walked away. He said I didn’t know how to take a joke or accused me of taking myself too seriously.

But how can an adult like him play with fart? To me, it’s a sign of deficient upbringing, or he simply didn’t want to grow up from the child that he once was.

One night, his attitude got to my neck, and it was all I could take, so I packed and left the house for him to use for whatever he wanted to. He was angry. He said I should go wherever I wanted to and never come back. He even said he would get another woman who knew how to play. I went to my parents’ house, and a few days later, I found out I was pregnant. We’d been married for two years.

That aside, I was scared my young marriage was failing because of issues that I felt shouldn’t be issues. My parents were forcing me to go back home and resolve my marital issues. I was missing him too, but I felt letting him know would empower him. I called to tell him I was pregnant, and a few hours later, he was in my house asking me to go home with him.

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I did follow him, but a few weeks later, after he repeated everything we’d fought about, I told him, “Our marriage won’t survive to see this baby I’m carrying if we continue living together. This time, I’m not angry, but I feel the best option for us to save this marriage is to live apart.”

I came back home to live with my parents. We are pretending to be doing a long-distance marriage. When I need him, I visit, but I can’t stay a day in that house because of… never mind. He comes around too. Very soon, we will have our first child, but the future of this marriage scares me every single day. What’s the essence of having a husband you can’t live with? Hmmm.

—Yvonne

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