My husband is a stammerer. He came into my life as a friend for about a year. I realized he liked me but lacked the courage to tell me. I wasn’t so sure about him, so I tried not to give him the chance to express what was on his mind. One evening, he came to my house looking for me. I saw him coming and told everyone to tell him I wasn’t there. It was my stepdad he spoke to when he arrived. “Gu…gu…gu…good evening, Dad. Please, I’m lu…lu…lu…looking for Asantewaa.”
My stepdad offered him a chair and asked why he was looking for me. My dad thought he was harassing me, which was why I was avoiding him. He told my dad, “Sh…sh…sh…she’s my friend, and I have so…so…so…something for her.” “Have you called her?” my dad asked. He answered, “Sh…sh…she doesn’t pick my calls.” My dad said, “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you or see you. That’s why she’s not picking your calls, so why don’t you ignore her?” He responded, “Ah…ah…Asan…Asan…Asantewaa is like that. She’s a very good friend, and I…I…I can’t ignore her.”
I peeked through a hole and saw both of them sitting there talking. From the look on his face, he wasn’t comfortable. He was struggling to put words together to answer the questions my dad was asking. I started feeling uneasy, so I went out to meet him. As soon as my dad saw me, he said, “I thought you said you weren’t here?” I held his hand and pulled him up. “Don’t mind my father; he’s just teasing you.”
I took him to my room, and we spoke for about two hours. He asked, “You told your dad to say you weren’t here? Am I bothering you?” I told him, “Don’t mind what my dad said; he was only teasing us.” He said, “You’ve been a good friend and a good person, which is why I want you in my life. If you say yes today, we’ll be married a year from now. No jokes. Pure love.”
The mention of marriage triggered me. “I don’t want to marry. Well, not now. Not in a year. So if you really want to marry in a year, then look elsewhere.” He said, “I’ll wait until you’re ready. I’m not in a rush. I only wanted you to know how serious I am about you.”
I noticed something. He stammered badly when talking to my dad, but throughout our conversation, he didn’t stammer at all. I joked, “You were afraid of my dad, that’s why you were stammering so much, right?” He answered, “It’s worse when I’m anxious. I’m not anxious when talking to you. When I’m calm, I can go a long time without stammering.”
A few weeks later, I said yes to him with a caveat: “I’m not in a rush to marry, but if things work well between us, who knows?”
He was patient and knew how to treat a woman right. One night, I asked him about his past relationships and how they ended. I wanted to know what went wrong so I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes. He said, “The women I dated left me because of my temper.” I asked, “You have a temper?” He responded, “They say people who stammer often have a bad temper, but I don’t believe it’s something I can’t change. I get temperamental when I’m anxious about something. It’s better now.”
When you give him a chance to ask you a question, he asks about the future. He made me feel silly for asking about his past while he kept looking ahead. He asked questions like, “How do you intend to manage your personal money when married?” “How many kids—two or twenty?” “What about managing finances together? Would you have issues?” He was always forward-thinking, and I appreciated that a lot.
A year later, he asked, “How many years do we have before marriage?” I answered, “I’m still not sure, but wait until I complete the part-time course I’m doing. Then we’ll talk.” After the course, he asked again, “Ready?” I said, “Not quite yet. My younger sister is still in school; let her finish first.” I was always finding excuses not to say yes.
What was my fear?
I lived with an aunt who married three times and got divorced three times. All her four children have different fathers. She was a good woman. When my mother got divorced, it was she who took us in and cared for us. Her heart was in the right place, but when it came to marriage, her heart was all over the place. She never stopped speaking ill of marriage and men in general. “Men are time-wasters; don’t fall for their tricks,” she would say. “When I die and come back again, I don’t think I’ll ever say yes to a man. They marry you in your youth and leave you when there’s no youth left in you.” Then she’d add, “Look at your mother and what your dad did to her. Be careful with men.”
Her advice was imprinted on my mind and created a fear of marriage in my heart. All those excuses I gave him were to make him go away and leave me alone. But he kept staying and sticking around, even when I gave him enough reasons to leave. One day, he said, “Do you know you’re the only person in this world I don’t stammer when talking to? It’s a sign that you’re the one. Don’t take this chance away from us.”
I remember developing cold feet as our wedding day approached. I caught a glimpse of his temper, and it scared me. Something happened, and he thought his younger sister had been rude to me. He snapped and screamed at her until words stopped flowing from his mouth. He was visibly shaking. I had to calm him down. In my mind, I thought, “Wow, see how he’s treating his own sister. What would happen to me if I ever offended him?”
I spoke to my mother about my fears: “Mom, he’s scary when he’s angry. I don’t want to live with a man I can’t handle when he’s upset.” Mom asked, “Has he ever been angry with you?” I responded, “That’s the point. He’s never been angry with me, so I don’t know what it would be like after marriage. Like Aunt Beatrice always says, men pretend until they get you.”
What my mom said calmed my heart, and I’ve kept it in mind to this day.
She said, “You’ve allowed your aunt to instill fear in you. She married three times, and it never ended well. Do you believe all the men she married were wrong, and she was right every time? She’s a good person, but that doesn’t mean she’s good at everything. Your father left me, I remarried, and I’ve lived with this man for almost 25 years. Do you think it’s because he’s perfect? No. The flower that blooms is the flower the gardener waters well. I’ve watered this marriage for twenty-five years, which is why it’s still alive. If he has anger, water him, and he’ll bloom out of it.”
We got married. We moved into our own place and began life together. I was careful from the start not to upset him or do anything wrong. I wasn’t myself around him because I was scared of making mistakes. Then he started teasing me about the little mistakes I made. I remember one late afternoon when I was cooking soup, and my dress got caught on the handle of the pot. By the time I realized it, the entire soup had spilled onto the floor. I was lucky to jump away in time. He heard the noise and came in. He pulled me aside and asked, “Are you okay?” He checked my skin to see if I had any burns. He said, “Just rest; I’ll handle the rest.”
He never does anything without consulting me, and he makes me feel like my happiness comes before his. For instance, he doesn’t like to sleep under the fan. It gives him a cold and makes breathing difficult. I, on the other hand, can’t sleep without the fan on, even when it’s cold. I’d rather turn the fan on and pull the blanket over me than sleep without it. It’s not just about the air; it’s the soothing sound that helps me fall asleep. So, we compromised. I told him, “We’ll keep it on today for me, and tomorrow we’ll turn it off for you. 50:50—we both win.”
The next day, we turned it off. I couldn’t sleep all night. I tossed and turned for hours. My eyes were shut tightly, but sleep never came. Then, at midnight, I felt a cold breeze on my face. I looked up, and the fan was on. It hasn’t been turned off since that night. That’s what it means to put someone else’s needs above your own.
November 7th will be our ninth anniversary. Three kids and two job losses later, we’re still going strong, as if we married only yesterday. On the night of our ninth anniversary, I’ll look into his eyes and say, “Thank you for giving me a story different from what my aunt made me believe. You’ve turned a nonbeliever into a believer, and as your reward, I’ll always stay true to you and keep watering what we have so it continues to bloom in beauty and strength.”
—Asantewaa, Ghana
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