I didn’t know I was going to get married to my wife.

Before her, I had dated about seven different women and each one of those seven had some qualities I loved to see in my future wife. Let’s talk about Enyonam…

She was very clean and was the type of girl who loved to put things at where they belong. When we were dating, she always visited with her own set of bedsheets. She would clean my room and place everything in order before she would do anything else. She didn’t do those things for me. She did it for herself. It was in her character and like she always said, “I don’t thrive in chaos. Life is peaceful when the things around you stay where they belong.”

I remember one night, we were busy making out. I was all out trying to give pleasure and get pleasure back. At some point, I realized her attention was gone from what we were doing. She had her eyes fixed on something I didn’t see and she was very quiet and intense with her look. She said, “Wait…wait, wait…” She got up from the bed, walked about two or three steps forward and picked my slippers I had left lying haphazardly in front of the bed. She then pushed them under the bed. She said, “The light would go off and at dawn, you could trip on them.”

I was like…”What? You stopped making out because of some slippers lying where they were not supposed to?” But that’s Enyonam for you. Everything has to be perfect in her eyes or life can’t go on. I thought she was going to be my wife but the tides changed and she became one of the girls I’ve loved before.

There was Sandra…

A girl I dated when I was a fresh unemployed graduate. She wasn’t a girl you’ll call beautiful on the first look. You needed to live with her, learn her ways and her beauty would radiate through her actions and words. She too was my kind of girl—a girl I called marriage material. She had perfect listening skills and knew when to say something and when to just keep quiet for you to solve your own problem. She loved cooking. “Cooking takes me out of boredom so I go out there looking for something new to cook all the time.”

She was working and had her place when I was just about looking for my own path in the career world. She listened to my frustration about job search and always had something soothing to say. At some point, I was virtually living at her end because I was broke and I needed to eat. But when she had the opportunity to choose between me and a self-made fellow, she chose the self-made fellow and left my world crashing down.

Honestly at that moment in my life, if I had the chance to choose between myself and any other person, I would have chosen the other person. I wouldn’t even choose me if I had options so I understood her and wished her well.

When I started dating Afiba, who later became my wife, I was looking for that one thing—that essential thing that separates a woman you only want to date from a woman you’ll like to marry in the future and I couldn’t find it. But there was something about her, very subtle. You hardly see it but it’s there. She wasn’t easy to figure out and she did just enough for you to still keep her around. She loved me. She truly did and it was very noticeable.

And there was this one thing I loved about her…She liked to work for her own stuff. She wouldn’t ask you for anything because she has her own. And another thing…

She was the one initiating s€x in the relationship.

She was a masterpiece when it came to lovemaking. Maybe that was the reason I married her. I liked the fact that I would wake up at dawn and she was sitting on me. After a fight and I’ve decided not to ever talk to her again, she would creep under my skin at night and f**ck the sh*t out of me. She was a goddess at that and knew how to cast her spell on me.

So, during our wedding when the pastor asked, “Do you want to take Afiba as your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and..” I didn’t wait for him to finish and I screamed, “I do!”

Our honeymoon was special. We did it at every little opportunity we had…In the kitchen, at the balcony, in the bath, inside the wardrobe…and in the kitchen. Have I mentioned the kitchen already? It was that good. To date, if you ask me the best day of my life, I’ll always look back to our honeymoon when we had nothing doing but to sleep around just because we could.

We returned from our honeymoon with a pregnancy—our first child. It was so unexpected that at some point we thought of not having it but we were adults and had to make adult decisions. Nine months later, we had our first child and a year and a half later another followed. What followed the birth of our second child was the loss of sexual appetite on the side of my wife. She didn’t want it again and didn’t do anything to want it again.

I was a spoilt child. I was used to being fed with s€x. I just had to be there and she came banging me. I wasn’t getting it again and didn’t know how to ask for it. I became miserable. We go to bed and she slept like a log forgetting she had a husband who liked to be fed at night. I brought the issue up and she said, “Atta, life is not how it used to be some years ago. I was a girlfriend and became a wife. I woke up one day and my name had changed from a wife to a mother. The responsibility that comes with this name is heavy and draining. I’m sorry but if you want it, you can have me in your own way.”

I wanted it so I started working my way around it but this woman will lay there motionless through it all. There was no spark nor excitement. She was just there and did nothing. That killed me.

I stopped.

For several months, we didn’t do anything. We slept on the same bed but we hardly touched each other. It started dawning on me, “Is that why some couple say “as for me and my wife we are like siblings?” They get to this point in their marriage and there’s no action so they settle for being siblings?”

We didn’t fight nor have troubles. We just went with the flow. The day comes and we go to work. Evening comes and we return home. Night comes and we go to bed.

I started looking for a side girl!

Don’t judge me yet. When life’s spice is lost, everyone will do different things to regain the flavor they once had in their lives. I’m not justifying infidelity. I’m only saying at some point, we all do crazier things to get back to where life once was a heaven for us.

I had one but she was a waste of time so I let her go real quick. We didn’t last a month. I kept going, looking for someone who isn’t Afiba but could do what Afiba used to do. I ran out of luck.

The coronavirus pandemic started showing its head in Ghana last month. My wife started working from home and the kids were stopped from going to school. I was still working. My wife’s parents asked us to bring the kids to them since they were home and not going to school. I sent the kids away on the same Friday the president announced the lockdown. For once in our married life the two of us were left alone.

We still were acting siblings when on Saturday dawn, Afiba crept under my cloth and tapped me, “Hey wake up.” Before I could open my eyes, her hands were already in my boxers doing things. I looked at her. She looked right back into my eyes and kept working me out in my boxer. It was very intense. That guy’s popular phrase popped into my head, “Girl, you’re doing well…I say oooin!”

The best day of my life still goes to our times on honeymoon. The next best thing is that Saturday dawn. It brought back memories. She was no longer my sibling but that girl I stood in church and said “I do” to. I asked her, “Where have you been.” She said, “I’ve been away I know. Things get overwhelming sometimes.”

READ ALSO: How Fart Is Your Love?

It’s getting to a week since we’ve been alone in this house and each day is different. All of a sudden we are our young selves again. We talk intensely about everything. I told her I nearly got myself a girlfriend and she said I’m crazy. Our lost connection is back. We didn’t get enough time to be husband and wife. We became parents too soon after marriage and that didn’t help.

As I write this, she walked right past me naked with a drink in her hand. She asked, “Do you want some?” I responded, “I’m ok.” I know she’s wondering what I’m doing on my phone that I’m not paying attention to her but she should wait, I’m only a sentence away from finishing this story. She wants it on the sofa I know. I will give it to her.

—Atta Panyin, Ghana 

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