We didn’t date for long. She was someone I used to know. Years later, we met at a different place. She looked at my face while I looked at hers. She asked, “Have we ever met?” I answered, “Yes we’ve met but I can’t put a finger to where we met.”

We stood there for minutes, asking each other questions. “Is it Winneba? That’s where I went to school.” She said no. She asked, “Do you come from Anomabo? That’s where I grew up.” I screamed, “Yeah, “That’s where I did my national service.”

We talked about the places we saw each other, the church close to her house and the friend through whom I got to see her. She took my number and I took hers. Months later, it became a love story. A year later, she agreed to wear my wedding ring, move in with me and start a family.

The challenges started for me right the day we moved in. I looked at her and thought I’d made a huge mistake. “What was I thinking when I married this woman?”

We dated for a little over a year, distantly. She was getting the basic wrongs. I didn’t like the way she kept the house. When she cooked, I felt the taste was off or something wasn’t right. Every little mistake got escalated. We started fighting over little things. I was always angry.

She called me difficult. I said, “If you think I’m difficult, you can pack your things and leave.” I meant it. Well, at that time. Whenever we fought and she expressed herself contrary to my opinion, I told her to pack and go. We were a little over a year old but I was thinking about divorce. I thought I’d made a mistake.

I spoke to a friend of mine who had been married for eighteen years and was also a counsellor of some sort. I told him, “I think I will seek divorce. This marriage thing is not for me.” He laughed at me. He asked me, “Who should stay married for you to run away? We die here. You think it’s easy?”

He listened to my problems. He told me they were normal, especially because we didn’t live together for long before marriage. He told me, “You’re not a sinner for thinking about divorce. It will cross your mind now and then but never use it to threaten your wife. Think about it but don’t say it. Eventually, you won’t leave her because you’ll learn. You’ll learn the good things she brings into your life as the years go by and you’ll regret threatening her with divorce.”

So the first thing I learned was that divorce hangs around marriage because the opposite of staying married is divorce. You’ll think about it once in a while when things go wrong between you and the person you chose to do the journey with. It’s normal for divorce to cross your mind when things are bad but it should force you to right what is wrong in your marriage. Divorce doesn’t necessarily solve the problems in marriage unless you’re not going to marry again.

Just when things were getting better in my marriage, I started looking at another girl. To me, she was the girl to bring peace into my life. I asked myself questions, “Where was she when  I was looking for a woman to marry?” She was the grass that was greener on the other side. I took her number. We started talking. She was a vibe. A dream. A relief from the pain I called my wife. I dreamt of making her mine but I changed my mind along the line.

She wasn’t the only woman I fell in love with from a distance. I realized I was drawn to beautiful things on women so I started getting the things I saw beautiful on other women for my wife. When I didn’t have money, I saved for it. She used it and she glowed the way I wanted her to. I told myself, “She’s whoever I see in other people. She’s the green grass on this side of life.

I learned so I tell people that getting married is not a fortress against temptation. Your heart is not locked just because you got married. You’ll fall in love again. You’ll meet your soul mate after marriage. You can be married for ages and still be looking for love. Your heart is still alive and kicking. It doesn’t stop beating just because you got married.

But what you do after falling for someone else depends on how you view your marriage and the level of respect you give to your spouse. Your silly heart will yearn for someone else but it should stop there. Whenever I had that feeling, I remembered the way I felt the day I fell in love with my wife and that feeling wipes away all other feelings.

This happened in the later stages of our marriage when a child came in. Even before that, my wife had a project from her office. According to her, whether or not she was going to be promoted that year depended on the outcome of that project. Everything was relegated to the background for the project to occupy the foreground. She did the barest minimum to keep the marriage going while she gave her all to the project. She came home late. She slept late and was the first to wake up. She missed my calls while away on trips. When she returned from a trip she could be on the phone with her colleagues for hours.

I wasn’t her priority any longer. She looked at me but didn’t see me. I started feeling like a second-hand citizen in my own house. I complained. I nagged her into submission sometimes. When I needed sex and she told me she was tired, I sang a song all week about a married woman who denied her husband sex. I was always angry because she didn’t have time for me. When the baby came, it was worse. Everything was about the baby. I had no attention in my own house. I grew distant. I was sulking. I screamed for attention but no one heard me. It took a long time before we slowly worked our way out of that phase.

I’ve learned that in marriage, you won’t always be each other’s priority because the sun doesn’t rise on your forehead and sets in your eyes. It moves so attention may move away from you to something equally important. When it happens that way, be patient. Understand that everything will come and go but your marriage is forever. Those things can’t outlast your marriage unless you allow it to separate the two of you.

What Would You Do For A Friend Who Has 24 Hours To Live?

I’m sharing these lessons because I saw a comment somewhere that said marriage is difficult. The commenter was wondering if he could ever marry looking at all the negatives surrounding marriage. Marriage isn’t difficult the way some stories paint it on the internet. It’s rather the people in it that make it difficult. If I can do marriage for over eleven years, me with all my wahala, then everyone can do it. We only have to accept what we can’t change, work on what we can change and allow life be life, love be love and you be you.

–Luke

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