I know who a good man is because of my husband so each day when I go on my knees I pray to God and thank him for everything including the man he sent my way. I won’t say he’s perfect. I won’t say he had never gone wrong. I would rather say this: He’s the kind of man who strives to do things right. The little things. The bigger things. The things you don’t expect him to do. I remember the help he gave me when we started giving birth to our children. He was fully there for me. The only thing I did that he couldn’t do was breastfeeding. When the boys woke up at night and cried, he was up to take care of them. It didn’t matter that he would go to work early the next morning. He stayed awake taking care of them while I rest my body.

That’s one of the things I call little things. He’ll be in the kitchen with me. He will tell me to teach him this or that. I will do my best with him. The next time you see him, he’ll be in the kitchen all alone, trying what he learned. Putting one and two together to get something that can be eaten. It doesn’t always turn out right but the taste doesn’t matter if the effort is right. He puts in the right effort to make sure that everything revolves around us and not me alone. He’s the helpmate. The kind of person you’ll like to go to war with. When he fights on your side, you know everything would be alright. 

We’ve been married for six years and he hadn’t changed. If he changed then he learned something new that would help our marriage. We have three kids. They all love to be with him than to be with me. When you see me surrounded by my kids then it means their father is not there. Immediately he comes to the house, they all switch their attention to him and leave me alone. I love it. I love it that he’s involved and I love it that his hands are always in the dirt kneading with me. 

What I’m going through currently happened not too long ago. I started traveling for work duties. It’s not the kind of travel you go and spend forever. No. I will go today and come tomorrow. I may go on Monday and come on Wednesday. The longest days I spent out of home were five days. I was on trek training some of our company staffs who work in different regions. Whenever I’m away, I make sure I talk to him morning, afternoon, and evening. Mostly it’s about the kids and how they are doing in my absence. He would ask how the training was going and I would tell him everything. 

My husband isn’t the kind of person you’ll see on Whatsapp. I know this so I hardly communicate with him through that channel. You could send him a message this morning and you’ll get an answer in the evening when you see him in the house. Or you’ll send him a message and later call to tell him, “Dear, I’ve sent you a message on Whatsapp. Please check.” He’s never there so I don’t even try to reach him there. One evening I was away on one of my travels and decided to send him a photo. I went to Whatsapp and he was already there. That was around 6pm. I sent him the photo and he responded. Later in the evening, I sent him a message again but before I got to Whatsapp he was already there.

I went to sleep, woke up around 3am and couldn’t sleep again. I went on Whatsapp and started watching people’s status. I decided to send my husband a message since he had responded to the ones I sent during the evening. The idea was to tell him, “Dear, I’m awake and can’t sleep. It looks like it’s difficult to have a full night’s sleep when I’m not lying next to you.” The thought of the message made me smile. I turned on my belly, ready to type away only to realize that my husband was already online. So the message I sent was, “You can’t sleep too? Is it because I’m not there with you?” He sent smiling emojis. He said, “Maybe. I’ve been awake since 3am. The room is too silent without your snores.” I responded, “Don’t worry, you’ll see me today.”

But I couldn’t stop thinking about what was keeping my husband busy online. “Has he found himself a new group on Whatsapp that’s keeping him busy?” I asked myself. “A new friend?” “A new interest?” I shrugged it off because anything at all can make a man develop an interest in things that he didn’t have an interest in. Of all the things that could pique his interest, women didn’t come to mind. I mean I’ve known him for ten years. Of all the sins he had committed, women weren’t one.

When I came home I watched him and his new relationship with his phone. He couldn’t put it down and he couldn’t pick it up. He was doing everything to hide this new relationship from me. When a message drops, He’ll quickly answer and put the phone away. He wasn’t himself. He looked like someone who was trying to hide something. That night when he slept, I checked his phone, checked the messages, and checked them against the time I saw him typing. Most of the messages were older than the time I saw him typing. “He has cleared his history? Wow. Something is wrong somewhere.”

I wasn’t in a rush to find out and I wasn’t in a rush to ask questions. I just lived my life as a wife and left the rest to him. I would be in the bedroom trying to sleep. He would stay late in the hall pretending to be working on his laptop but I will check him on Whatsapp and he would be online. One dawn I went through his messages and found the one he was chatting with as late as 11pm. Diana. My friend for only God knows how long. I had to check her number on my phone to believe that it was actually Diana that my husband had been chatting with. 

They were talking about a proposal Diana had rejected. Diana said, “You know I can’t do this to Josephine. What we have is too deep for me to treat her this way.” My husband’s response to that message wasn’t clear. It looked like he had deleted his response because right after that, they jumped to a different topic. They were talking about a date that happened that things didn’t go according to plan. It was Diana’s fault. My husband said, “Just bring your mind home. She wouldn’t know it if you don’t tell her.” Their messages went on and on but at each bend, they went on a different tangent—tangent that didn’t confirm or deny the previous messages. It was vague at best and leaned towards nothing. 

Diana is a friend. We are in the same church together. On weekends when I and my husband want to go somewhere, she’s the one who takes care of our children. When my traveling started at first, I would take my kids to her house and ask her to house them while I’m away. Until my husband decided to take care of them himself, Diana was the one doing everything. She’s a sister to me than the two sisters I have. Much as I expect so much from my husband, I expected a lot from Diana too. I’ve read a lot to know that she had been going out with my husband on a date. I know my husband proposed at some point and she rejected it claiming she couldn’t do that to me. That’s nice and all but my issue is, why didn’t she tell me about it?

So one night, I was in the bedroom sleeping while my husband was in the hall ‘working.’ I went online and saw him there. I knew by the time he comes to bed he might have deleted all the messages so I sent him a message: “You’re talking to Diana, right? Where are you meeting next time? Has she accepted your proposal? You’ve done shuperu? Honestly, I didn’t know you like her that much. Why don’t you marry her as a second wife? I will allow it. After all, she’s my friend.” 

Seconds later, he was in the bedroom with me. He asked, “What are you talking about? Why are you talking about Diana this way?” I said calmly, “I’ve been reading your messages. You keep deleting them but the little that I’ve read makes me believe that you two have something going on. Don’t deny it.” My husband swore heaven and earth that there was nothing going on. He swore they never went out. He swore he didn’t propose to her. He said, “I talk to her sometimes just because she’s your friend and she helps take care of the children, that’s all. She’s not even a friend.” I said, “Check your phone.” 

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I sent the screenshot I took from his phone to him one after the other. He was dumbfounded. He said, “But that doesn’t mean anything? It was just a conversation. I’m sorry if you didn’t like it but trust me, there’s nothing going on. Now that you’ve brought it to my attention, I won’t chat or talk to her again. Is that ok?” I said, “You’re not telling the truth. If nothing went on, why then did you delete the messages? Probably, you deleted them because they were so glaring and I would have known the whole truth if I read them. I don’t believe you.”

I’m trying so hard not to fight him about this. Somehow I believe nothing sexual happened. They were getting there. My husband was pushing for it but the kind of Diana I know, would not go that far with him. I trusted her words when she said, “I can’t do that to Josephine.” But why hasn’t she talked about it with me? I speak to Diana every day. After church, we sometimes drop her in her house before we continue to our house. She was my friend first before my husband came in. I want to believe she didn’t like what my husband was doing but why didn’t she confide in me? Or probably ask me to talk to my husband? Why did she keep it going? She kept talking to him late at night. She kept playing coy to the advances of my husband. There’s more to it than I know.

To get to the bottom of this, I want to go to her and ask her to tell me the truth. No, I won’t ask her to tell me the truth. I want to go to her and say, “I know what is going on between you and my husband. If you want me to believe you, open your WhatsApp and show me the conversations between you and my husband. I will believe it only when I read it.” I know she wouldn’t delete her messages as my husband did. She has no reason to. She’s single and owes no one commitment. She’ll keep the messages. When I read them and get the full gist of what transpired, then maybe I will believe them. 

Do you think it’s a good idea?

I don’t want this to upset the balance of my marriage but I want to get to the bottom of it so I can move forward with a clear mind. Even if something happened, I would be glad to know so I know how to tread going forward. It’s better we resolve the issue than play ostrich with the facts available to us. I want to talk to Diana. My husband thinks I’m blowing everything out of proportion and it may even affect the relationship between me and Diana if I go that far. I’m confused. Should I or should I not?

–Josephine

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