We’ve been married for three years. Before marriage, we were together for five years—two years of friendship and three years of dating. If you asked me who my best friend was, I would have confidently said that she was the one. She became my everything around which my world revolved. The day we got married, I counted myself lucky to have been able to marry my best friend. The future looked brighter from that point on. Five years together? What can’t we conquer if we put our hearts to it?”.
I had a job that wasn’t paying well. I wanted to fix that before marriage. She said, “We can’t wait until you get a good job before we marry. We don’t know when that would be and it’s dangerous to make plans based on the unknown.” I agreed with her. She promised to support the process all the way and she didn’t disappoint. She supported willingly without being asked. She had a well-paying job in the oil and gas industry and a few months before our wedding, she got promoted.
I celebrated the promotion with her as if it was my own promotion. I looked at her and all I saw was a woman who had worked very hard to attain whatever she had been given. I even joked, “When I grow up, I would want to be like you.”
We got married and a few months after marriage, she helped me land a job that paid better than the previous work. I added that to the things in my life that I owed to her. We were at peace most of the time. If there was something she didn’t like, she told me and I made effort to change things around. The first thing that comes to mind was my drinking habit. She told me, “You’ve had enough drink in your youth. When we marry, I don’t want you to be drinking again. That’s the first gift I want you to give me after marriage.”
I started putting a stop to it even before marriage. It was hard but when you love a woman you do the harder things for her so you can deserve the love she gives you. I tried. I went clean for three months before our wedding. And the only acholic drink I’ve taken since marriage was the wine I took at our wedding reception. I’ve never gone close to alcohol again.
After marriage, she started complaining about my friendship with Kudjo. She said it was getting too much and if I didn’t take care, Kudjo would drag me back to drinking again. She had a point. I cut down my meeting times with him until it got to nil. Today, all I have left with Kudjo is a simple good morning and good afternoon on WhatsApp.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my wife happy. I’ve let a lot of things go because of her and I don’t regret any of that until the storms of marriage hit our doors some months ago.
She went sour for days. I realized every little thing got her irritated. I asked questions. She said she was alright. But it didn’t stop. She can go quiet for days and wouldn’t even answer my questions. When I forced her to talk to me, she would only give me straight answers. This continued for weeks and months. One day I pushed her to the corner and she told me, “I’m fed up with this whole marriage thing. I don’t see the head and tail of our marriage. No direction and no growth.” I asked, “What do you want to see and what do you want to call growth? We’ve been married for over two years and from all indications, we are doing better. We are happy and…”
She retorted, “That’s the point. You’re happy but I’m not. There’s something missing and I can’t put a finger on what that is. I’m not happy and I haven’t been for a long time.” It’s serious when a woman you call wife tells you she hadn’t been happy. It means a lot and it means a lot has to change. I spent some days trying to get her perspective of things but she didn’t say anything concrete apart from saying that all was not well. Then she said, “Maybe it’s me. I’m falling out of love and the speed frightens me. This is not how I wanted to live my life.”
I was stunned but I didn’t want to argue. I spoke to our pastor and he called both of us one day after church to talk to us. He asked several questions but she didn’t have any answers to those questions; “Is your husband treating you badly?” “Is there something you want in your marriage that isn’t happening at the moment?” “Is he not taking good care of you?” What do you want to be changed in your marriage right now?” Her answer to all these questions was, “I honestly don’t know but I don’t feel right about us anymore.”
We started a two months counseling session with the pastor and some elders of the church. At every session, they asked her, “Is there any improvement in the way you feel about your marriage now?” She would say, “No, I still feel the same way.” At the end of our two-month session, the pastor asked her, “Is there a marriage you’re following that makes you think yours isn’t better?” She answered, “No.” He asked again, “Is there a man in your life right now that makes you think life with him would be better than your husband?” She answered, “Not at all.” He asked her, “Do you think a separation would work for you? So you get time to figure things out properly.” She answered, “Yes, that would work just fine for me.
At the beginning of July this year, they granted us three months of separation where we had to report for counseling every two weeks. Our parents came in around that time but they couldn’t make any impact.
Just when we were about to start the separation, she realized she was pregnant. She told me about it with an indifferent voice and facial expressions. I was happy but I didn’t know whether to express it openly or pretend. I only smiled and said, “Wow, congratulations to us.” She also smiled. I hadn’t seen her smile in a very long while so I thought to myself, “This pregnancy came at the right time. This is what brings us back together again. Yes!”
She called me days ago and while we were on the phone talking, she said, “I don’t think I’m in the right frame of mind to have a baby. I can’t. Not this time that everything is going awry in our lives. It’s not even good for the child.” My heart started beating abnormally. “Hey, what are you talking about? This is our baby. We’ll get over this phase and we’ll be fine. What are you saying?” She said, “You don’t get it. We don’t have to force anything. We might not get back together again and this baby will suffer. We don’t have to do that to the baby.”
Now I don’t even know why I’m sharing this story. It looks like her mind is already made up and there’s nothing anyone can do to bring her mind back home. I told the pastor about the pregnancy. He called her to talk to her but she never picked his call. We agreed to meet at the pastor’s office every two weeks but she missed the first one and didn’t explain why. Her parents are not able to convince her to do the right thing. She’s like a horse running free and causing havoc.
How can you do nothing wrong and still get someone you’ve known for so long to treat you this way? As I’m writing now, I don’t know what has happened to the pregnancy. Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not. She tells me not to worry about the pregnancy because it’s not the most important thing now. How can that not be important? As I said, I don’t know why I’m sharing this story. Maybe I need a place to rant to get my feelings balanced. I don’t know any kind of advice that would help at this moment but just tell me something. I’m in a very bad place right now.
