I want to know if I am handling this the wrong way because my husband has become a shadow of the man he used to be. He has lost so much weight that sometimes I just look at him and shake my head.
My husband and I have been married for 15 years. We are blessed with four children.
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A few months ago, I started noticing little changes in him. They were small at first, but I am a very observant woman, so they didn’t escape me. He started coming home late more often. His phone suddenly became part of his body. He took it everywhere, whether he was eating, going to the bathroom, or even sleeping. Before going to bed, he would hide it under his pillow.
Our children couldn’t even borrow his phone to play games anymore because he refused to let it out of his sight.
Many nights, I would wake up in the middle of the night and hear someone whispering. Whenever I quietly made my way towards the bathroom, I would find him there talking on the phone. Sometimes he spoke so softly that I couldn’t hear anything. Other times, I could hear bits of the conversation, but they never made sense.
I am not one of those women who goes looking for trouble where there is none. But there comes a point where you have to move before the devil finds you sitting comfortably. His behaviour was new, strange, and completely out of character.
One night, during one of his usual midnight calls, I overheard him begging someone on the phone not to do this to him. I still minded my business after hearing that conversation.
Then one evening, after work, I received a call from an unfamiliar number. She introduced herself as my husband’s side piece. She was pregnant for him.
“He is refusing to take responsibility. He even wants to terminate it. I have already taken out two for him. That is why I cannot remove this one.”
Thankfully, I was able to process it calmly. I made her repeat her story again, and I recorded it this time around.
She asked me to speak to him. If not, she was prepared to take the matter to court.
If she had more proof to back her claim, I asked her to send it to me. There were WhatsApp conversations between them, pictures of the two of them in hotels, photos from vacations they had taken together, receipts showing rent my husband had paid for her, proof that he had been paying for her apprenticeship at a very expensive school, and messages where he begged her to terminate the pregnancy, promising to give her GH¢50,000 if she did.
If I had reacted at the time, it would have gotten out of hand, so I took time to process the news calmly. I even went to a beachfront pub for that sole purpose.
One day, after he left for work, I forwarded every single message to him without fail to see what the outcome would be.
Within minutes, my phone started ringing. He called close to a hundred times, one after another. The missed calls were followed by countless text messages.
I was trying to put something together in the kitchen when I heard the loud screech of tyres outside our gate.
He was home, sweating even though the weather was cold. I came out to meet him in the hall. His knees were already touching the floor, tears filled his eyes, and his palms were pressed together. He started blaming the devil. He begged me not to let the devil win.
“Please pray for me. It was the devil. Our family is beautiful, and the devil wants to destroy it. Don’t allow him to do it.”
Anokwa! The devil has really suffered in this world.
Again, I refused to utter a word. A month later, I have still not said a word to him in the house.
Almost every dawn, he wakes me up just to bring up the issue. I sit quietly while he talks and talks, and when he finishes, I lie back down and continue sleeping.
He has even gone ahead of me to report himself to my mother. She has been here pleading on his behalf. He told her that my silence is making him lose his mind. He says he is afraid because he has no idea what I am planning.
Our pastor has also visited the house. He spent hours preaching about forgiveness.
It didn’t move me. I later heard that he told my husband I am a very dangerous woman because I am not reacting.
But honestly, what exactly am I supposed to do?
For the past month, I have continued doing everything a wife should do except one thing.
There has been no intimacy.
I told him clearly that until he goes for tests for HIV, gonorrhoea, syphilis, hepatitis, and every other sexually transmitted infection and comes back with negative results, he should not come anywhere near me.
At the same time, I have started taking better care of myself.
I have gone shopping for new clothes, upgraded my wardrobe, improved my appearance, and I go out more often these days.
Even when I am at home, I intentionally dress in ways that make me feel attractive, and I can see that it is driving him crazy.
He has lost so much weight.
He has gone to report me again because I go out more often than before, and he says he doesn’t know where I go or what I am doing.
He hardly eats. He hardly sleeps.
I don’t ignore him completely. If he asks me a question, I answer. But I don’t have conversations with him.
He has tried everything just to get me to discuss what happened.
I have warned him to stop disturbing me and go and solve the problem he created.
One dawn, I woke up to see him crying uncontrollably. I took a good look at him to be sure they weren’t crocodile tears, then positioned my pillow properly and went back to sleep.
Since that didn’t work, he now leaves apology notes everywhere around the house. He buys gifts that I have not touched once.
He has even started using our children to beg me, asking them to tell me not to leave him because he will die if I do.
He hasn’t seen anything yet.
As for the other woman, I don’t blame her one bit. She owes me no loyalty.
The person I blame is my husband because he is the man I stood before God with and exchanged marriage vows.
That was our covenant, not hers.
So they should leave me out of the problems they created together. I am not leaving my marriage.
I have four children, and I am not dumping them on another man. No one else will bear this cross. He, and he alone, will.
But I want him to feel the full weight of what he has done.
I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone
I want him to experience the pain that comes with betrayal because I refuse to carry this hurt alone.
If his actions caused this pain, then he should also live with the consequences.
Am I wrong? Am I going too far? Talk to me.
— Vashti
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