We had dated for over three years when he got an opportunity to travel to the USA. I was happy for him, but money for the trip became a problem. Everyone around him contributed, including me. He promised he was going to pay me back once he got there. I didn’t care about repayment. All I wanted was for him to get there, be successful, and come for me. I was with him the night before he left Ghana. He made promises that he would come and marry me and take me abroad. I said I was praying for him.

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A year after he traveled, we were still talking and so much in love. He paid what he owed everybody, but he didn’t mention the amount he owed me. When I needed something and told him, he gave me excuses, asking me to be patient. I was patient with him until one day he said a friend was coming to Ghana and that he had given him something to give to me.

It was a phone and a perfume. I was very grateful. I spent one week thanking him and wishing I was with him. Two years after being there, he hadn’t sent me anything else, but I was hoping something would change along the line and it changed. I asked when he was going to marry me. I asked when he was coming for me. I asked about the future of our relationship. Not once and not twice. He gave me hope every day until one day he told me, “My parents will come and see your parents so they can make marriage arrangements.”

He sent me money for the wedding. The idea was that he was going to marry me in absentia. His family members would represent him for the marriage and later sign in court. We did that successfully, and it was a happy day for me and everyone involved, except my elder brother, who saw the whole thing as a mistake.

He gave me two years to come for me, but within a year he made arrangements for his brother to join him. The following year, when it was my turn to join him, he told me, “Let my sister come, and then you will be the next.” I wasn’t happy, but there was nothing I could do about it. I thought he was just sending money and helping with documentation, just like he did for his brother. It was later that I got to know that he actually married his sister before taking her abroad.

On the phone, I asked him, “James, how is that possible? I’m your wife, and I’m here waiting. How come you would marry your own sister and take her abroad while I’m here? So it’s possible to marry today and take someone abroad tomorrow, and you gave me two years?”

He gave me a lot of flimsy excuses. He told me it was pressure from the family and that once he divorced his sister, he would come for me. Two years later, I was still in Ghana. We had been married for over five years, but he hadn’t even asked me about my passport. I asked him, “What are we doing? What kind of marriage is this?”

He had words, good words to calm me down. One thing that kept our relationship going was communication. Things were not right, but we talked every day. He lied to me, but it was okay because at least I heard from him, until one day he went silent on me.

Anytime I called his number, it was the machine that answered. I asked his parents about his whereabouts, and they also asked about him from me. I was confused. I called his brother abroad and even called the sister he married. They both said they didn’t know his whereabouts. Something felt strange. Even their answers suggested they knew where he was but were not willing to tell me. I cried myself to sleep sometimes. I had a ring on but didn’t know where my husband was. This continued for close to nine months until one day I heard people shouting in my compound, and I went out to see my husband.

I joined the jubilation, though my heart had been breaking for a long while. He wasn’t looking good. He looked haggard and out of shape. Even his smile was dry. When the dust settled and we talked, he said he had been arrested and brought back to Ghana. He couldn’t even pick a toothbrush. I asked what happened. “How could someone who could take others abroad be deported?”

He said it was a long story. He told me the story in halves and hushed the rest. I was already angry about the disappointment he had put me through, but I wanted to know the truth and decide how we would live our lives going forward. I asked if he did drugs and was caught. He got angry that I would associate him with drugs. I asked if he had any savings abroad that he could go back for. He said he lost everything.

Until one day, the truth finally came to light. He didn’t tell me; I found it on his phone. He was arguing with his sister and calling her ungrateful. He had asked her for help, and she was ignoring him, so he recorded a long voice note and sent it to her, and his sister also recorded a long one in response. The truth lay in the two audios.

My husband was deported because he took a woman’s money and married her for documents. Their relationship became bitter, and the woman caused his arrest. He was later deported when they discovered their marriage was a lie, just to secure documentation for the woman. At least, that was what I got from the two audios I listened to, but he denied everything and said that wasn’t possible and that the laws of America don’t work that way. I said, “Then why are you here? Tell me the truth.”

He was in Ghana struggling to travel again to another country, but he had nothing. I was the one working to provide food. I was the one paying rent and utilities while he went around looking for another connection to travel abroad. One day I told him, “I’m no longer interested in this marriage. I want you out of this house.”

He tried using words and muscles to continue living on my charity, but one day I changed the locks and locked him out of the house. It turned physical, but I stood my ground. “Go where you spread your money when you had everything. This marriage didn’t even exist in the first place.” We later divorced traditionally, canceled the scam we signed in court, and went our separate ways.

What Will Make You Leave Me After Forty Years Of Marriage?

He’s still in Ghana, living with his father and helping him sell second-hand car tires. I see him often. We talk sometimes. He’s a shadow of his real self. He talks with deep-seated regret in his eyes, but he can’t go back in time to make things right.

—Martha

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