When I was six months pregnant, my husband left home one morning and didn’t come back. I stayed at home waiting for him. I called his phone, but he didn’t pick up. I thought he might be in a meeting or something, so I texted to ask where he was. I got no response.

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My heart started racing, thinking something might have happened to him. I began calling his friends and even some colleagues I knew. One of them told me, “Oh, I saw him a few minutes ago when I was leaving the office. Maybe his phone is not with him.”

I stayed up all night waiting for my husband, but he didn’t come home that night. At dawn, I called my parents, and they told me to call his parents. I called his dad, and he picked up. He said, “He came home last night, so he’s here. I thought you were aware.”

It was his dad who walked to his room and handed him the phone to speak to me. I asked, “What’s going on? Why are you not here but there? And why didn’t you tell me about it?” He stuttered for a while. No meaningful answer came from him until he said, “It’s too early. Let’s talk when the day begins.”

I demanded an answer. I screamed on the phone, asking him to talk to me, but the line went dead. I had been up all night thinking about the worst possibilities. At least I had heard his voice, so my heart calmed a little. My mind stopped wandering toward dangerous thoughts. I fell asleep briefly and woke up to see his message. He said, “The pregnancy is stressing me out. I can’t continue staying with you and be stressed by your presence. I will stay here until you deliver.”

I read the message over and over again, trying to make sense of it. I wasn’t worrying him with my pregnancy. I was strong enough to go about my business. I wasn’t troubling him with morning sickness. Nothing had changed in our marriage except that my belly had grown bigger.

I called him back, but he didn’t pick up. I texted him for an explanation. He said he didn’t know how he would explain it to me. I called his dad, and he said the same thing—that he didn’t understand what was going on either. So on the weekend, I went there to see him and hear what he had to say.

He repeated exactly what he had written in the message. He said the pregnancy was stressing him to the extent that he couldn’t think straight or sleep peacefully next to me. According to him, he would only come back home after I delivered.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Out of confusion and frustration, I wrote on my WhatsApp status, “What would make a husband run away from the house because of a pregnancy?” He responded immediately. “Oh, so it has gotten to this? You’re now selling our problems to the world? That’s fine.” I replied, “Because I want to understand what is going on. I want to know if this has ever happened anywhere in the world so I can learn how to cope with it.”

He answered that I should go to the BBC to announce it if I wanted the world’s audience.

Because of that, my husband didn’t speak to me for two whole weeks. Nothing made sense anymore. My mother decided to turn everything into prayer. She said the devil must be involved somewhere. I laughed when she said she was going to fast and pray about it. I told her not to disturb God’s ears with troubles caused by a husband who simply wanted to be silly.

Still, she fasted and prayed while my father and I sat there wondering about the depth of my husband’s foolishness.

From that day, our relationship became strained. I was angry most of the time, especially at night when I had to sleep alone. My mind kept running through endless questions. At one point, I even concluded that this would be my last child if this was how he intended to behave.

When I was eight months pregnant, my mom came to live with me. She kept me company and helped take care of the house. She also made me feel safe until the day I delivered the baby.

My husband came to the hospital the next day to see us. He came to pay the bills, and when we were discharged, he took us home. After that, he went back to his parents’ house to pack his things and returned two days later. His father came with him that day and apologized on his behalf. He asked me not to hold the matter against him and allow it to affect our marriage.

“I still can’t understand what was happening,” his father said. “But forgive him. It will not happen again during the next one.”

I said nothing, but in my heart I thought, “Who said there will be a next one?”

Since he returned home, he has done absolutely nothing to support me. He doesn’t even hold the baby. He says the child is too tiny and that he doesn’t know how to handle him. Whenever the baby cries, everything falls on me. My husband does nothing to help with this new situation we find ourselves in.

Everything is left to my mother and me. All he does is eat, watch TV, and sleep in the hall, leaving me and the baby alone in the bedroom. It hurts deeply the way he treats me now. Sometimes I feel as though he sees me as something unpleasant simply because I gave birth.

I have started thinking about leaving the house with my mother until my maternity leave is over. I don’t see the sense in staying in a house where I am treated this way. My mother doesn’t agree with me. She says that no matter what happens, I must stay in my matrimonial home.

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Maybe she is right. Or maybe she has seen something in the future that I cannot see yet. Because if I ever manage to leave this house, it will take a miracle to bring me back.

I will learn how to live alone. I will learn how to do everything on my own. I will call myself a single mother and build the strength to face life alone. And once I learn how to do that, what will I need a man like my husband for? A man who says my presence depresses him? God help me.

—Claudia

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