When I married my husband, I entered the marriage with the usual hopes most women carry. I believed we were building a life together. I believed that whatever we earned, struggled for, or achieved would belong to both of us. I did not know that in his mind there were two separate families. There was the family he was born into and there was me. And in his order of priority, I always came second.

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It didn’t take long for me to notice it. Every month he was sending money home to his parents and siblings. Sometimes large amounts. Sometimes the kind of money that could feed our household for weeks. Meanwhile, there were days in our own home when we had to calculate how to stretch the little money left until the next salary. There were times we were literally struggling but that never stopped him from sending money to his family.

I tried to understand it at first. I told myself he was simply a responsible son and brother. But the problem was not that he helped his family. The problem was that he helped them at the expense of the woman he had married.

He could pay school fees for his siblings without hesitation. He could buy things for them without blinking. But the moment I asked him for help with anything, even something small, his attitude changed immediately.

“Why are you always asking me for money?” he would say.

That question always shocked me. I was not asking a stranger for help. I was asking my husband. The more it continued, the more it started to feel like I was living with a man who saw me as an outsider in his own house.

One day I tried to suggest something that I thought was reasonable. I told him instead of sending every extra money away, we should start thinking about investments. I said we should buy land or start building something small for our future. He didn’t even consider it. He looked at me and said ,“You cannot tell me how to use my money.”

That sentence stayed with me for a long time. It told me everything I needed to know about where I stood in his life. From that day, I made a decision quietly within myself. If I wanted security in this life, I would have to create it myself. I stopped discussing money with him. I stopped asking him for financial support unless it was absolutely necessary. I decided that when it came to money and investment, I was on my own.

So I started saving quietly. Every small amount I could manage, I put it aside. It was not easy because I was still contributing to the house and doing my responsibilities as a wife. But slowly and patiently I gathered enough to do something meaningful. Eventually I bought a piece of land. I did not tell him. Some people will say that was wrong, but at that point I had already learned that if I waited for his support or approval, nothing would ever happen.

After buying the land, I started building gradually. Block by block. Month after month. I supervised everything myself. Whenever there was progress, I kept it to myself. Time passed and the building started taking shape. Before long, it was almost completed. That was when he found out. He was angry it felt like he wanted to wipe the sea dry. He wouldn’t let me explain anything. He drew his own conclusions.

Instead of asking how I managed to do it, instead of showing even the smallest sign of pride in his wife, he called me deceptive. He accused me of hiding things from him. He went as far as saying I must have been stealing money from him to build the house. the worse was when he suggested I was seeing another man.

“Where did you get the money from? Who are you sleeping with to afford to build a house?”

That accusation hurt me deeply because the truth was the opposite. I built that house without a single coin from him or from another man. But he didn’t stop there. He called my parents and reported me to them like I had committed a crime. In front of them he threatened to divorce me because, if I didn’t confess how I got the money to buy a land and build a house. According to him, I had betrayed his trust.

It was humiliating. My own husband trying to paint me as a thief and a whore simply because I decided to secure my future. Eventually the storm passed and we continued the marriage. But something between us had already changed. I thought from there he was going to contribute something or even ask how the building was going.he never did. He pretended it didn’t exist.

Through the entire construction process he never contributed even one cedi to that building. Not a block. Not a bag of cement. Nothing. When the house was finally completed, he suddenly had a new idea. When our rent was about to expire, he said, “Why do we have to continue paying rent when we can move into our house?”

Now it’s “Our house.”

I looked at him and calmly said no. “That’s not the plan I have for the building. We can’t move in.” My plan had always been to rent it out. The income would give me some sort of stability because I was living with a man who gave me nothing. I needed to protect me from the kind of financial uncertainty I had been living in for years.

The moment I said that, he became furious again. He started calling me selfish, disrespectful, and all kinds of names. Now he is threatening divorce again because I refused to move into the house I built alone. He’s using the kids to blackmail me. That the kids need to feel safe and grow in an environment that protects them.

It’s Not God’s Law For A Man To Apologize To A Woman

At this point, I am no longer afraid of that threat. It has always been his go to weapon and I refuse to bow to that because the truth is simple. A woman who was starving in her own marriage found a way to build something for herself and now the same man who refused to help wants to control what he did not build. I wont allow that to happen. If that is the reason he wants to walk away, then maybe that tells us everything about the marriage we were living in. Or I’m being too hard on him?

—Janet 

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