Before we got married four years ago, we were the best of friends. There was no me without him and no him without me. Friends called us a married couple even before we thought of marriage. If my mom didn’t see him in our house for a few days, she would ask where he was. His mother was also like that with me. She called me “My In-law.” So when we finally decided to marry after dating for three years, no one was surprised.

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Everything was fine with us in our marriage until he started making friends with people I didn’t know about. He would go out with them without me. He would tell me, “I’m going out with friends. We are not going to exhibit wives so stay home.”

He would be gone for hours. On Friday nights, it was worst. He could be gone for the whole night. I knew the places they went. I was lonely because I yearned to be with him. That loneliness brought me closer to Fafa, a friend who lived close by. I would call her to come home and be with me. Sometimes we would also do our own outings secretly. The only difference was, I had to be home before my husband.

During one of those outings, I bumped into Kwesi, a guy I’d known from eons past. We were not that close but according to him, he was crushing on me so deeply he couldn’t go a minute without thinking about me. The first night we met, he stayed with us and paid for our drinks and food. He probably might have seen my ring so he asked if I truly was married. I answered, “Yes I am.” He asked, “So where is he that he allowed you to go out alone?”

I lied. I told him my husband was abroad. Maybe, lying to him was the worst mistake I made. When he realized my husband wasn’t close, he started intensifying his chase of me. He would call and drop a hint about still loving me. He said seeing me revived something in him. I told him to bury whatever that was because there was no chance.

There’s something about men who don’t know how to stop. Who don’t take a no for an answer. You put them in water and they refuse to drown. You put them in the dark and they still find a way to let you see them in the dark. Kwesi was that kind of man. He was relentless in his pursuit of me so at one point, I fell for his desires.

My husband at that time had ignored my needs as a wife on different levels. Emotionally, he was distant. Physically, he had chosen his new herd over me. Even when he was home, he was on the phone with them planning their next outing. What we once did together, he did with new people in his life. When it came to intimacy, he asked me, “Where are you going with that much of intimacy? I’m not a robot to be doing it every day oo.”

The man I knew and married was no longer there. In his place was this stranger who said no to me in everything. I saw Kwesi’s pursuit of me alluring. Something I was missing in my life. Something I felt would make me whole. I fell for him and not long afterwards, he started scratching the itch my husband had been running from.

At first I felt guilty whenever it happened. I would come home and not be able to look at my husband in the eyes. I would say less even when he had much to say. I would coil and think about everything that would go wrong if I continued seeing Kwesi on the side. But as time went on and my husband was still not listening to my emotional needs, it became normal, whatever happened between me and Kwesi. It wasn’t only sex. Kwesi was really there. He listened. He helped me resolve problems, even problems I had with my husband, he helped me resolve them.

Unbeknownst to me, my husband had gotten a hint of what was happening and was investigating me. I thought I was fast. I didn’t even save Kwesi’s number on my phone. Whatever conversation we had on the phone, I deleted it before the night fell so I wouldn’t sleep for him to read it. Every day for the thief, one day for the owner so this day, I forgot to delete everything and that was the very day the chat went deep—too deep we talked about even the sex we had the previous night.

My husband was shaking when he was asking, “Who has this number and why are you sleeping with him?” At first I lied. I wanted to calm the situation so he wouldn’t attack me and probably hurt me. The lies were thin. I said I gave my phone to Fafa to chat with her boyfriend because she had lost her phone the previous day.

He bought the lies for a while and later thought, naa that can’t be possible. He called Kwesi with my phone and even before he could say a word, that silly guy started mentioning my pet names. He said, “So it’s true, you’re the one sleeping with my wife?” Kwesi cut the line and never picked any call that day and the days afterwards. He left me to deal with it all alone.

From that day, I’ve realized two things about my husband. That he’s very accommodating and that he loves me very much but didn’t express it the way I thought love should be expressed. All the things I was expecting to happen when a wife cheats hasn’t happened. All the things I’ve read men do when they find out they are being cheated on, he hasn’t done any of them. He keeps telling me, “Just say the truth and I will forgive you.”

It’s been two weeks since this happened. He hasn’t healed and I haven’t healed too but he’s doing his best to get to a place where healing is possible and forgiveness is divine.

He wrote down a list of questions for me to answer and these questions are the reason I’m sharing my story. I want to tell the truth but these questions seek something deeper than I can tell and I also feel it would be disrespectful to truthfully answer all these questions.

#1. How long have you dated him?
#2. What did he do different that I’m not already doing?
#3. Did you sleep with him out of love?
#4. Is he better in bed than me?
#5. Is his ‘thing’ bigger than mine?
#6. How many times have you been intimate with him?
#7. Raw or with protection?
#8. Did you enjoy doing it with him or you just did it to spite me?
#9. What did you do with him that you haven’t done with me?
#10. Did you ever think of me while he was on top?
#11. Do you do it with me while fantasizing about him?

Just tell me, are these questions necessary? What do these questions seek to solve apart from bruising the wounds we are trying to heal? He says he wants honest answers. I say there are no honest answers so we should let go of what happened and forge ahead.

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I’ve regretted my actions and if he gives me a hundred chances in the next life, I wouldn’t do it again. He doesn’t listen. He wants answers to these eleven questions before forgiveness will be possible.

I’m happy he wants to forgive but I also feel answers to these questions won’t make life better for any of us. I have no one to discuss this with so I’m here asking, are these questions necessary?

—Claudia

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