My husband and I dated for eight months before getting married. He ticked every single box I had ever imagined for a husband. I was hopeful and excited. I was entering a partnership with someone I could build a beautiful life with.

He was everything I wanted, but he had one major flaw: he was terrible with money. He could spend his entire salary as if tomorrow didn’t exist. If I tried talking to him about saving, planning, investing, or being more disciplined, he would snap and get angry. Even my mentor knew about this issue and assured me it was something we could work through together.

People always say marriage changes a person, so I reasoned that living as a single man had shaped his habits. I said to myself that once we got married, had children, and faced real family responsibilities, he would step up and change.

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I earn about three times what my husband earns. On top of my corporate job, I run two businesses and am always looking for ways to expand. I am a builder by nature. I constantly think about the next opportunity, the next investment, the next property, and what I can create to secure my children’s future and leave a lasting legacy. I have bought plots of land in strategic places because I am always thinking ahead to the next generation.

I have also always loved travelling. I take trips to breathe, de-stress, reconnect with family, and remind myself that life is bigger than just work and bills. I fund these trips myself, and whenever he comes along, I cover everything for him too.

In fact, I had already started building my first house before I even met him. When he found out, he was completely shocked. I remember the look on his face and thought to myself, “This is it. Once he sees how ambitious and financially responsible I am, he will drop his expensive habits.”

It didn’t change him at all. Instead, I ended up stepping into the shoes of the main provider. I took over paying the electricity bills, grocery costs, water bills, and general household expenses. To be honest, I didn’t mind at first. I am naturally a generous person who loves to help, whether it is a stranger or my own spouse, so supporting my husband and funding our home never felt like a burden.

The problem was that I started realising he was taking my leniency for a fool.

If one partner carries the heavy financial load, the other should naturally step up in other areas. At the very least, help in the kitchen while I cook, guide the kids with their homework, or handle the laundry. Sit beside me, acknowledge my hard work, and let me know you see what I am doing for this family. Above all, have some drive and vision for your own life, because who chooses to live without a vision?

My husband prefers a routine of watching TV, scrolling through social media, eating, and sleeping. I tried talking it out multiple times, but every conversation ended right back where we started. Then last year, I found out he had been secretly taking out loans from multiple lenders and gambling through sports betting. To this day, I have no idea where all that borrowed money went.

Over the years, our arguments have turned bitter and full of verbal abuse. He started calling me names like “wicked woman” and “stingy woman,” along with many other harsh words. I, too, grew tired of taking the hits and started throwing insults right back at him. He tried to tear down my self-worth, asking me what I had actually achieved in life that was making me so full of myself. He even attacked my faith, telling me that God doesn’t hear my prayers.

During our last big fight, I also lashed out with cold honesty. I told him, “You are just a lazy man, a boy who doesn’t know his way around life and refuses to be taught.”

I have tolerated so much throughout our marriage, but over the last two years, things hit a breaking point. We have been married for the last seven years. I realised how much better off my life would be with a husband who actually understands vision and works beside me as a real partner.

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I am done. I am tired of fighting for this marriage, and I am tired of trying to raise a boy into a man, a job his parents should have done years ago.

I used to tell myself I was staying for the kids, but even my children can feel the heavy weight of my unhappiness now. I refuse to spend the rest of my life begging a grown man to grow up. I cannot keep fighting for someone who won’t fight for us. I just want to find the woman I was before I got completely worn down from carrying a two-person marriage all by myself. I don’t really regret marrying him, but there is a moral lesson from it: you can love someone and still realise that you cannot build a life for two people on your own.

— Dorcas
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