My husband returned from a one-week work trip a different person. He was overly excited about nothing. He smiled a lot while looking at his phone and seemed happier leaving home than coming back. When a man starts behaving this way, it means more than anyone can assume. I asked questions because I didn’t want to assume.

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“Who did you meet on the trip? You’re behaving like Saul when he returned from the Damascus trip,” I asked him.

He was laughing at his phone when I asked the question, but the laughter suddenly vanished when he asked me what I meant by that. I didn’t say much. I simply asked again who he had met. He told me my question didn’t make sense.

He went to the toilet with his phone and spent forever there. He even went to the bathroom with his phone as if it were a bar of soap. One early morning, I stood in front of the toilet while he was inside and listened to the conversation he was having. I couldn’t hear much because he was speaking in an undertone. I pushed the door open and heard, “I love you too,” almost in a whisper.

He asked what I was looking for. I told him I didn’t know he was in the toilet. All day he acted strangely. He was looking for a reaction from me, something to prove that I had heard what he said. He didn’t get one from me. I went about my business as if I hadn’t heard anything.

He continued leaving home early and coming back late. At first, he explained why, but later he stopped explaining why he was coming home late. One night, I woke up and saw him staring at his phone and smiling. I pretended to be asleep. His phone slipped from his hands because he was dozing. He picked it up again and continued typing.

I needed to see what was going on on that phone. He had changed his password, but I watched him long enough to learn how he typed it until I figured it out.

The lady who was rocking his world was a twenty-one-year-old university student. My husband visited her hostel after work every day. He sent her money. He had bought her a new laptop and a phone. In one of their late-night chats, the girl was wondering why he hadn’t given her anything while he was there that evening. The girl didn’t know he was married.

I read those messages with my heart breaking apart. This was the same man who complained about our child’s school fees and said we should change schools because he didn’t think a three-year-old should be paying that much in fees. This was also the same man who complained when our electricity went off because our prepaid credit had run out. We slept in the dark because he said he didn’t have money.

We could go a whole month without housekeeping money because he claimed he hadn’t been paid. So I looked at him and said, “You’re cheating. All these changes in your life because of a twenty-one-year-old girl? My child and I are suffering in this house while you’re buying phones and laptops for a university student? What kind of man are you?”

He denied everything I said until I told him I had screenshots, even though I didn’t. He screamed, “How dare you go through my phone? You’re a thief if you can steal my password and go through my phone.”

He answered none of my questions but instead asked his own. This was the same man I married when we both had nothing. We split everything down the middle until our child came and he got a better job. I still paid for certain things, though he took care of most of the expenses. But when that girl came into his life, everything went back to how it used to be—how we split expenses, how we suffered, and how we struggled in the beginning.

We had been married for only five years. I still wanted to save what was left, so I called the girl and introduced myself as her boyfriend’s wife.

“I know you don’t know he’s married, but I’m telling you today so you stay away.”

She responded. A girl her age had the courage to tell me, “That’s your family matter, so leave me out of it. Why did you even think it was a good idea to call me?”

She was right, so I wasn’t angry.

My husband came home charged like an angry bull. He asked, “How dare you call that girl? Who gave you that right? I told you I wasn’t dating her, but look at how you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of a little girl.”

I didn’t talk back when he called me a disgrace. I didn’t talk back when he suggested I had no sense. When he finally calmed down, I packed my things and left.

He screamed, “You think I’ll beg you? Go wherever you want.”

I went back to my parents’ house and told them everything. My mom asked if I was leaving the marriage. I told her it depended on what my husband would do.

It took him three weeks to come looking for us. But those three weeks were all it took for me to realize he didn’t need me that much, and as such, I had to learn to live without him.

I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone

Last year we broke up, and just yesterday, he told me his biggest mistake was letting me go and that he doesn’t think he’ll ever get back on his feet again.

I didn’t pity him because he’s suffering now. When it’s time to send money for our child and he doesn’t, I go after him like a thief. He complains to me as if I were still his girlfriend. He opens up now more than he ever did when we were married, but I’ve moved on.

I don’t think I’ll ever marry again. Once is enough.

—May

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