The first time I met her, she was walking with a girl around six years old. It was the beauty of the girl that attracted me. I asked her if the girl was her sister, and she smiled without giving me an answer. She was waiting for someone and was alone, so I sat by and baited the girl to play with me. You know kids, she fell for it and ran to me. I asked her quietly, “Is that your sister?” And she answered, “No, she’s my mother.”

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I was a little surprised because she looked younger than someone who could give birth to the girl I was playing with. She told me her mother’s name, and I shifted my attention to her mother instead. I got her to talk, and by the time she was leaving, I’d been able to get her number.

I called her the same evening, and she was very receptive. A week later, we were talking every day. When I asked her out, she said she wasn’t the outing type. Even when I pleaded, she said no to an outing and said she would rather stay home and enjoy a moment alone.

When I persisted for weeks, she finally invited me to visit her place. I got there, saw the house she was living in, and asked if she was living alone. She answered, “That’s my house.” I probed, “As in, you own the house?” She nodded and smiled.

That pushed me to ask about her age because it looked like she had lived a lot of life at her young age. She said she was thirty-five. As the day went by, I learned a lot about her and her story. I learned she married at a very young age to a man who was very rich. They had a daughter, and the marriage started decaying.

According to her, right from the beginning, the man abused her physically. She was only twenty-three and had dated the man for two years before they got married. When the abuse became consistent, she decided to leave the marriage but her parents wouldn’t allow her.

Anytime she ran home, they pushed her back into the house where she was constantly beaten and left to starve, even though she was the one cooking the meals. She said one day she ran away with her daughter and never looked back. The divorce lasted for over two years but she never went home until the divorce became final. The house and the car she was using were her divorce settlement.

I loved her and loved her story too. You could see what she had been through had made her stronger and very independent. I was consistent with her and with her daughter. Her daughter called me daddy even before she said yes to my proposal. It was hard. She didn’t trust me to be different. I told her, “Look at you and look at me, do you think I would have the courage to lay my hands on you?”

She trusted me enough to say yes to me, and we dated for a year before we got married. Before marriage, we talked about where to live and how to begin life afresh. She made it clear that she wouldn’t want us to live in her house because of obvious reasons, and I understood her. I was living in a single-room self-contained apartment. I was cutting my coat according to the material available. We agreed we would rent a place and move there.

We’ve been married for close to two years, and she’s currently pregnant, but we don’t live together. She lives in her house, and I live in my single-room self-contained apartment because we don’t seem to agree on where to live. We moved around looking for a house in the early days of our marriage. We got nice places. They were either too expensive or too far from our workplaces.

I go to her place and spend two to three weeks there, but she wouldn’t let me move in. I suggested she should let me move in until we got a place we could move to. She told me, “If you move in here, you’ll never want to leave again. So let’s get a new place and move in together.”

When my rent was due, I thought I was going to move soon, so I paid for only three months. Three months later, I had to pay for another three months until my landlord threatened to eject me, so I had to pay for two years. She doesn’t come here. She says this place is too small for her and her daughter, which I understand, but she wouldn’t also let me move in with her except for short stays.

She wants us to find our own place so she can sell the house and invest the money for her daughter’s future. To me, it’s a bad idea. To her, it’s the best idea because, according to her, she doesn’t want to keep anything that reminds her of her previous marriage in her current marriage.

When she got pregnant, we stopped looking for a place because she wants to be in a stable environment to have the child. I’m the one who goes out and comes in like I’m a stranger in the family. Everyone tells me my wife isn’t being reasonable. I don’t need them to tell me because I already know it. Her problem is her trust issues, but I believe we’ve come a long way for her to trust me.

I want to live with her now that she’s pregnant. I want to stay close and go through the whole process with her, but the longest I can stay at her place is two weeks. Anything beyond two weeks makes it feel like I’ve come to settle, and she starts complaining. I asked her if it’s her plan for us never to live together, and she answered, “Far from it, but I don’t want my ex-husband to feel I can’t live my married life without his house.”

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

By law, the house belongs to her, but she still sees it as something that belongs to her ex-husband, and I don’t have a say in that matter. It hurts me. It confuses me, and I don’t seem to enjoy this marriage because of this issue. I’m not forcing my way into her house. All I’m asking is that we live together until something permanent comes along. Am I asking for too much?

—Junior 

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