When I got married to my husband about 15 years ago, all my friends and family members saw him as a special gift from God to me. It was clear to all of them that my husband was truly in love with me. He never hid his feelings when people were around and would always do things that would make people (especially in my part of Nigeria) believe that he was in bondage. We went everywhere together, including the market. All my vendors knew him very well and would challenge me on a few occasions when he couldn’t go to the market with me. We were actually what people called us – Romeo and Juliet.
I am the first of four girls, so my mother was always happy that I found my own husband. He was a catholic when we were getting married, but after our wedding, we started attending my church. It took awhile for me to conceive after marriage, but my husband’s family members were not initially too bothered because they knew that he married me as a virgin. It was a big deal for my husband at the time, so he told anyone who cared to listen. It was a time when keeping one’s virginity was no longer in fashion.
I broke down in tears as he exposed the greatest betrayal of all times. He told me how my husband had confided in him that my sister had come to his office on so many occasions to tell him that my mother and I had chained him in the spiritual world, and that he would continue to live like my servant
As God would have it, after intensive prayers and fasting, I conceived after four years of marriage. The waiting period, instead of straining our relationship, only made it stronger. We became inseparable best of friends. I had a boy first and a girl after two years.
My family members were free to visit our house, so were his. He was free with my sisters just like I was free with his brothers and sisters. Just before my second child, I got a job at a top bank and things improved at home. My husband, as a lawyer, was working in a reputable law firm. He was earning well, but also had some first-rate personal briefs that helped a lot. In short, we were comfortable.
Along the line, my younger sisters got married one after the other and we practically bankrolled their wedding ceremonies. After a few years, my son was about three years old at the time; I found out that my husband’s behaviour was slowly but gradually changing from good to offensive. He became irritable and would snap at me at every opportunity.
At first, I thought it was because we were approaching 10 years of marriage and that we were also witnessing what I had read in books about that critical stage in the lives of a married couple. But the horrible situation went on for long and I didn’t know who to turn to.
My father passed on around this time and we all had to go to Akure, Ondo State (my hometown) for the burial. Something strange happened during this period that I did not quite understand. My younger sister’s close friend saw my husband, called his name (with an uncle pre-fix) and greeted him warmly. Then he was trying to remember where they met, and she told him in her house with my sister. I was surprised because I never visited my sister’s friend’s house with my husband and he never also told me that he had gone to her house before.
The explanation my sister gave later was that my husband saw her carrying bags at the busstop one day, and offered to take her to where she was going. It was shady, but I decided to forget it and work hard at returning my relationship with my husband to what it used to be.
However, in the days that followed my father’s death, things went from bad to worse. My husband hardly stayed at home. He would always tell me that he wanted to spend the weekend with his mother in Ijebu (Ogun State).
At home, he started being suspicious of every move I make. He moved to a separate room and said he needed some privacy and became really nasty. I also noticed that his mother became hostile too and I could not talk to her about her son’s unbecoming attitude.
I was really sad, but did not want to frighten my mother; we had been managing her health since the death of my father. So, I approached one of his elderly friends, who is a medical doctor. He was the one who let the cat out of the bag. In fact, it was his wife, who began the revelation before he summoned the courage to tell me everything. I broke down in tears as he exposed the greatest betrayal of all times. He told me how my husband had confided in him that my sister had come to his office on so many occasions to tell him that my mother and I had chained him in the spiritual world, and that he would continue to live like my servant until he cut that chain.
She went to the extent of telling my husband that my mother had also asked her to do the same thing for her own husband but that she declined. I was dumbfounded that my own blood sister could say all she said out of envy because she and everyone knew very well that my mother was a clean and virtous woman, who would never even do anything close to that. How she wrote that satanic script or cooked up the story remains a mystery to me.
My husband’s friend said he also believed at first but started having a second thought when he found out, two weeks before I visited them, that my husband had started an affair with my younger sister. I almost fainted. He said he had cautioned my husband against it several times. But he needed to tell me so that I could confront my sister. But his revelation was too late. My husband had relocated from Nigeria.
My husband’s colleague at work, who attended our church, also confirmed the story. I was really sad that more than one person knew about this and I did not know anything at all. My other siblings later confessed to me that they knew when it all started; but they twisted the story by saying that it was my husband who was disturbing my sister, and that they decided not to tell me so as not to destroy my marriage. The same siblings told me how my sister had been collecting money from my husband and they had to warn her at some point to stop. Can you smell deceit?
It’s three years now without a husband, though we are not officially separated. I have left everything to the God that I serve and He has been so wonderful. The same sister now virtually relies on me for the upkeep of her immediate family and her sick father-in-law. I have forgiven her. But one question keeps crossing my mind. If you were in my shoes, what would you do?
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