After four years of marriage, my wedding rings became very tight on my finger. I asked my husband if he knew a place we could take them to so they could be enlarged. He promised to speak to a friend who had had his enlarged not long ago. I asked every day if he had spoken to that friend, and he gave me excuses.

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Because they were getting tighter and tighter, I found it uncomfortable to wear them, and I was also scared that one day they would get stuck on my finger and I wouldn’t be able to take them off again. So sometimes, I would take them off depending on what I was doing and put them back on later when I was done.

I was washing when I took them off and placed them on the wall close to me. Honestly, after washing, I forgot to pick them up until the evening, when my husband asked where my rings were. I quickly dashed out of the room to check where I had placed them, and they were not there. My heart skipped several beats.

Maybe they had fallen on the floor and rolled into hidden places. I picked a broom and swept the compound carefully, looking to see if I could find them. I heard no sound, and I didn’t see any of them. My husband was standing around, watching me. He said, “Don’t lie. Where did you go that you had to leave your rings?”

“Oh, what are you trying to say?” I asked, disappointed. “I removed them just this morning and placed them here. Why would I sweep around here looking for them if I knew I didn’t place them here?”

He went inside, and when I had searched everywhere and couldn’t find them, I joined him in the room. He wore a heavy frown and looked at me with piercing eyes, as if I had cheated on him and he had caught me. “A married woman who can’t keep her rings on, I’ve never seen such before. If you’re not doing anything, why would you be taking your rings off?”

I tried to ignore him because, let’s be honest, he was acting silly, and what he said came out of nowhere. He knew my problem with the rings, so suggesting I was taking them off for any other reason was just plain silly. I went into the bedroom to see if I might have taken them inside and forgotten.

I looked in corners that hadn’t been visited since they became corners, but I couldn’t find my rings. I asked neighbors. I asked kids in the adjacent house who usually came to our place to play. Nobody had seen my rings.

Rings are symbols, and symbols can be replaced when lost, so when I finally came to the realization that I might not find them again, I decided I was going to buy new ones. My husband jumped up from his seat and screamed, “You haven’t explained why you had to take them off. I’ve been watching you a lot these days. You hardly wear them when you go out. Explain. Where did you leave them? What were you doing?”

That question made me so livid I had to fight back. So it became a back-and-forth. He made it clear that I was cheating that was why I could take my rings off and lose them. I responded, “Do I have to take my rings off to cheat? Is that what you do when you go out there to do your things?”

I was angry. He was angry. Anger sometimes makes you say things you don’t mean. I was fighting back, so I said things I didn’t mean. I don’t know about him, whether he meant them or not but he said a lot of mean things to me. He concluded, “I’m giving you three days. If you don’t bring the rings, you’ll pack out of the house and go to your parents. Go and explain to them why a married woman like you doesn’t wear her rings.”

The three days passed quickly. I had even bought fake rings and was wearing them. True to his words, he asked me to leave his house. Where, in the name of hell, does that make sense? He became aggressive, so I had no choice but to call his dad and tell him about it. His dad called him on the phone. I was there. He said the same thing he had said to me, that he knew I was cheating, the reason I took them off.

Out of anger, I called my parents and told them I was coming home. I told them what had happened, and they even laughed. “How much are rings that you can’t get them again?” my dad asked. He asked me to stay until he talked to my husband, but I started pulling bags here and there, picking clothes out of them to get ready to leave.

There were bags stacked on top of one another. The first two belonged to my husband, and the last one was mine. I needed to take that bag, so I stood on a chair to pick it up from the top, but the stack shook and the bags fell. I heard a tinkling sound of metals instead of plastic. I looked around the floor, and my rings were lying there as if to say, “Thanks for setting us free from where we were kept captive.”

I watched them like a miracle that had appeared from heaven. I dashed out, held his hand, and brought him in. I said, “So you stole the rings and hid them so you could get me out of this house or what? What are my rings doing under your bags?”

Another long argument that turned into insults and name-calling. He even picked up the rings and inspected them as if they were not the actual ones.

We had been married for four years without a child. My husband already had a child before we got married, so he said the problem wouldn’t come from him. I was the one taking medication and trying to conceive. That day it occurred to me that my husband might be trying to get me out of the house because of this issue and was not able to say it directly.

What Nobody Tells You About Divorce

I picked up the rings and still left the house. I now live in my parents’ house. My parents have invited him over twice, and he hasn’t honored that invitation. The rings have been found, so why are we still fighting? Why can’t he say sorry so we can rebuild? It tells me he has been meaning to get rid of me. I’ve told my parents nothing will take me back to that house again, and if they push me, I would one day take a man home and sleep with him in our matrimonial bed so the eviction he would give me would be worth the crime.

We are not divorced yet, but everything shows that’s where we are going, and I’m not afraid to go there.

—Cynthia 

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