It was three days to our second wedding anniversary. My husband had traveled for days. I woke up early one morning to a text message from him. It said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I can’t stay in this marriage any longer. I’m pretending to be happy, but nothing about this marriage smells of happiness. I’m sorry, but we have to end it before this drives me crazy.”
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I read the message over and over again, checking every word and assessing every punctuation the way you’d inspect a product you suspect is fake. The message was sent at 12:06 a.m., a few hours after we had gotten off a video call.
I called his phone with a smile on my face because I knew that message might be a prank. His phone was off. I called the phone several times within a minute, as if I didn’t understand it when the feedback said it was off. I began to worry.
A call from a different number came through during midday. I picked up, and the first thing I heard was his voice. “Hello…” Before he could say anything else, I asked, “What happened to your phone? I’ve been calling you all morning. What’s the matter with you?”
He said his phone was stolen at night while he was sleeping. He woke up and the phone was not there, and that he suspected those guys who pick phones through windows at night.
“The same phone that sent me a text message is stolen? How? Did you send it before it was stolen, or was it the thief who sent me the message?” I asked. “My phone sent you a message? How? What did the message say?”
I recited the message line after line without reading it from my phone. He said, “Wow, how can I send you this message out of the blue? When was the last time I sent you a text message? I would have texted you on WhatsApp, but SMS? Now feel like it’s someone I know who stole my phone.”
I was confused, happy, angry, excited, and distracted. It was a cocktail of emotions—happy that I could finally hear his voice, angry that his phone was stolen, confused about how the person was able to know I was his wife and send me such a message, excited that the message wasn’t true, but then distracted by the little voice in my head that kept prompting me that there was more to it than he was telling me.
He returned with a new phone. I acted very cool and normal, but deep down I was burning to know the truth. I kept the message. I read it every now and then, hoping the way it was written would lead me to a clue. I went through his phone while he was asleep, hoping I would find something.
Weeks folded into months. My heart was gradually giving up on the issue when I had a call from a lady who said she was looking for my husband. I was like, “Did he give you my number to call him?” She answered, “He’s not picking up my calls. Give the phone to him if he’s close.”
I said, “My husband is not here. How did you even get my number?”
She got angry and cut the line. I showed the number that called to my husband, and immediately his demeanor changed. “What did she tell you, and why are you the one she’s calling if I wasn’t picking her calls?” I asked calmly and slowly, “Please, who is she?”
My husband swore he didn’t know the number from anywhere. I tried sending MoMo, and the name that came up was Abena Boadi. My husband swore he didn’t know anyone called Abena Boadi. He couldn’t look into my eyes or smile while he said it. I knew him too well to know his eyes were hiding the truth, which was why he couldn’t show them to me.
I called the number days later. I mentioned her name. “Abena Boadi, what do you want from my husband? He says he doesn’t want to hear from you or see you anywhere close to him, so why are you pushing yourself on him? Do you want him to marry you as a second wife?”
It was a hook with a worm, and it landed directly in her throat, and she swallowed it. “Oh, is that what he told you? Did he also tell you that I was with him long before you came into the picture? Or he’s keeping that truth for another day?”
“Liar!” I screamed. “You think you’ll destroy our marriage with lies? He has told me everything.”
Another hook with a bigger worm, and because she was a hungry fish, she kept swallowing and kept getting trapped.
That message that was sent at midnight came from her. She used my husband’s phone to send the message because she was with him that very night. She ranted a whole lot of truth that put my marriage in a dimension I had never seen it from. And then she said, “I’m not the only one. Before he married you, I was fighting off two other women. And he had the gut to tell you I’m the one pushing myself on him?”
When I started narrating what I heard to my husband, he got up, trying to leave the room. I held him down and forced him to listen. “You were with another woman all the while you were on a video call with me? And you went to buy a new phone just to complete the lie you started? What kind of human are you?”
He denied the truth, but guess what—there was a bigger truth I didn’t know, and I found out about it that very night on his phone. He was not picking Abena’s calls because she was pregnant and had collected money for an abortion from him and didn’t do it. That started their fight. This was the ultimate truth that nailed the coffin of our marriage.
I was ready to forgive the lies, though it was difficult. I was willing to overlook the fact that he went back to his ex when I was the one he married. I was trying to forgive the fact that he gave his ex access to me to insult me and call me names. I was willing to forgive all that until I realized this same ex was carrying his baby while, as a wife, I had no child for him.
I couldn’t stand the fact that my child was going to be the second child and also the fact that a woman like Abena Boadi was going to have a reason to stick to my husband until the end of time. I had the strength to bear it all, but this was beyond me.
Contents
What Nobody Tells You About Divorce
I didn’t tell him when I was leaving, but when he called, I told him I was not coming back again. Yes, we are not fully divorced legally, but there’s nothing remaining that looks like the marriage we had before. We’ve lived apart for the past year, and the only time we talked was when we met in court. He has a baby girl now, and I wish him well.
—Natasha
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