I am a nurse, and he is a nurse. We met during nursing school, became friends, and eventually became lovers. We made promises like lovers do, and those promises were carrying us through both hell and heaven.

I got pregnant for the first time. We were both scared, but we decided to keep the pregnancy anyway. A year later, we decided that I would move in with him, and I did.

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We have talked about marriage. Well, I have been talking about marriage. I kept bringing it up, hoping it would be a signal for him, but it never led anywhere. That did not stop me. I continued raising the conversation, and I pushed it even more after our second son was born.

During the pregnancy, and even while we were naming our child, I suggested that we combine the marriage ceremony with the naming ceremony. I told him, “It will save you money and help us do this thing the right way.”

It fell on deaf ears.

That is how I have found myself cohabiting with a man who is not my husband for eleven good years, hoping that one day he would marry me. As things stand now, I have completely lost hope that he ever will. Our two boys are nine years and three years old.

What hurts the most is not just the waiting; it is the way the waiting has slowly eaten parts of me. For years, I have been telling myself that maybe next year would be the year, maybe after the first child, maybe after the second child, maybe after he is more financially stable, maybe after one more conversation. I have been living on “maybe” for over a decade.

I have invested so much into this relationship. I have been supporting him emotionally, financially, and physically. I have stood by him during difficult times, helped him build his life, and carried responsibilities that a wife would carry, yet I remain the woman people introduce with hesitation because there is no ring on my finger.

Whenever I go to his family instead of talking to him, they tell me I am not the first woman to have children with a man without wearing a wedding band. They say I should stop nagging and focus on what I have in front of me.

Ei.

The house we live in has become a place where I am constantly being mocked. They have formed little gangs among themselves. They have names they call me whenever they are referring to me. If it is not “the unmarried woman,” then it is “the woman who is giving birth on loan.”

I look at my children and love them with everything in me, but I also look at the years that have been passing and wonder how I allowed myself to become stuck in a waiting room that never opened.

I feel useless for spending and investing eleven years of my life supporting a man when I could have been investing that same time and energy into myself. I will be turning thirty-six this July.

There are days when I look in the mirror and struggle to recognize the woman staring back at me. I have been watching myself become a permanent girlfriend in a relationship that has all the duties of marriage except the commitment.

Because of this experience, I have become an ambassador of caution at my workplace. Whenever trainee nurses come for their rotation, I find myself warning them to be very careful about the men they are cohabiting with. I tell them it is always sweet and rosy in the beginning. Then children start coming, investments start happening, sacrifices start increasing, and one day you realize he no longer feels any urgency to go and see your parents because, in his mind, he already has everything he wants.

In my case, his family dislikes me so much that I cannot even turn to them when he wrongs me. The people who should have been my support system have become people I avoid.

I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone

My greatest fear now is going out there as a single mother at thirty-six. I am afraid of starting over. I am afraid of being judged. I am afraid of carrying the label of “single mother” after spending eleven years believing I was building a marriage. But I am also afraid of waking up at forty, then forty-five, still waiting for a wedding that may never happen.

That is the fear that keeps me awake at night in his house.

— Sarah

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