My husband is fond of taking away things I love. He started with my job.

I gave birth two years ago. When my maternity leave was over, he told me not to return to work until our child was four years old and ready to go to school. It was hard to accept, but I agreed to stay home and take care of our child.

It became boring. This stay-at-home wife thing is not for everyone, so I decided to find something to do with my hands. I was home, consuming TikTok every day, so I found something I could do through the app.

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I started trading there, little by little. Not just trading—sometimes I would fool around a bit to gain followers. It started working. Just a few posts later, I got my first 1K followers. A few months later, I reached 15K. I was motivated to go all out until my husband found out.

Not that he didn’t know. I had a ring light sitting in the hall. Sometimes he saw me creating content and didn’t say anything. He only spoke up when he realized how much I loved making videos. He warned, “You’re always on your phone. Do you even have time to take care of this child?”

By the time he finished ranting, my ring light had been seized, and I was warned not to go on TikTok again.

I stopped creating and only watched, but it was hard. Still, I tried to be submissive to the wishes of the head of the home. Then he took my phone away from me and gave me a basic phone (a yam phone) because, according to him, he suspected I was doing something secretly with the smartphone.

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Now, to use social media, I have to rely on the laptop in the house. It’s not ideal, but it was all I had—until he cut off my access to the Wi-Fi. He only connects me to the Wi-Fi when he’s home so he can monitor what I do with the laptop.

Please tell me, isn’t my whole life this man is taking away from me? I’m not troublesome. I don’t fight back. I don’t talk back. I just agree to everything so we don’t have to fight, but I believe he’s doing all this to me because I don’t express how I feel.

Should I be scared? Is he doing all this for my good or for his selfish interest? Is it time for me to fight back?

— Ewurabena

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