Dear Agatha,
My husband traveled a day after our wedding 10 years ago. Since then he hasn’t come back to the country, neither have I been able to go and meet him.
We actually met a year before we got married. We met when he first came home from his base the previous year. Throughout that year, he kept telling me on the phone how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me so when he came back, we got married.
At the beginning, we talked almost everyday. He kept telling me to be patient with him. He gave a variety of excuses as to why he can’t come home or process my traveling documents.
However, about two years ago, he instructed me not call him that he would gladly do all the calling. I didn’t mind since it would save me the money. But recently, I needed to talk to him urgently. I dialed his number repeatedly he didn’t pick. I kept calling but he refused to take my call. I guess he must have switched it off after a while because I didn’t get through to him again.
Days after that incident, he called and was very angry with me. He called me a disobedient wife, lacking of respect for her husband. He didn’t even give me the chance to explain why I wanted to speak with him at that time of the night.
After saying all that he had to say, he cut the line. I tried to get him back, he refused to answer my call.
From that point, it became impossible to get him on that line. I told his parents about the development, his mother right in my presence called him but she also encountered similar problem. She told me not to worry that she would get back to me.
She must have, because he called me with another number. He instructed me never to call him on his former number but to use the new number whenever I wanted to speak with him. After listening to my reason for calling him the other night, he promised to send the money I wanted.
Again, I tried calling him one night that I was very lonely but the number was not available. I only get him during the day time on the new number or on the nights he is at work.
Agatha, he sends me money and things but that is as far as I get from him. At 40 now, I have a husband who hasn’t seen me in a decade. I am childless and to crown it all, he appears to be keeping things from him.
Although nobody has told me anything but I have a strong hunch that my husband has another woman in his life. Else, why would he stop me from calling him whenever I want to?
I also observed that his mother is not as worried about his refusal to come for me as before. Her worries concerning when he hopes to start having children in life have ceased. Her attitude these days whenever I complain is that God knows best.
Before now, my siblings have been urging me to think of what to do with the marriage because in their opinion, I don’t have a husband. Then, lots of men were still showing interest in me. One of them actually wanted me to terminate my marriage and marry him. Except for my mother, every other member of my family wants me to end my so called marriage.
I really don’t know what to do anymore. At my age, only men interested in sleeping with me for fun come around. All the serious ones are married; which leaves me with the worry of where to start from.
My friends who married at the same time that I did or after me are all mothers.
It has been very difficult for me. I have a husband but in the real sense of it, I don’t. Age is no longer on my side.
Whenever I ask him about the issue of our having children when he is there and I am here, he tells me soon. He is been telling me that since we got married.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I am frustrated, dejected and very sad at what has become of my marriage and life. I don’t know any of his friends or where he works in England. Whenever I ask him such questions, he tells me, I will meet them when I come. I really trusted him and believed him.
How do I go about this issue? I don’t want any member of his family accusing me of being wayward or unappreciative of what my husband has done for me. In fairness to him, he helped set up my business.
Even if I leave, where do I start from?
Ifeoma.
Dear Ifeoma,
Honestly, you have wasted too much time already as well as taken everything for granted. A man leaves you a day after your wedding 10 years ago without looking back or considering your feelings and you sit quietly waiting for something to happen?
Granted every marriage has its challenges but not your kind of marriage. This one doesn’t even exist beyond the ceremony of you two meeting and getting married. This man has simply put you into a sort of bondage. As it is you cannot move forward or backwards. You are fixed to one spot, a point that leaves you without anything at the end of the day.
Whatever reasons he is giving you for not coming home for 10 years aren’t tenable. If he truly wanted you to join him, he would have made the efforts long ago. The truth is that there is something he is hiding from you; the reason he ordered you not to call him at night or on the number you have always used in communicating with him.
It is this same reason that has kept you a secret from his friends over there.
This simply underscores your lack of knowledge of the man you married.
In the beginning, he may have had the intentions of coming for you after a short while but, something, he is unwilling to tell you must have happened to make him change his mind.
Whatever it is that has kept you a grass-widow for a decade is what you should demand from your husband. it isn’t as if he cannot come home; unless of course he has problems with the law over there and is shy to tell you. Whatever his reason or excuse, at this juncture, there is nothing for you to lose by asking him direct questions. You have kept quiet for too long and if he now considers you a disobedient wife for demanding to know what your fate is with him after what appears to be a wasted decade, so be it.
Insist, you are capable of dealing with anything, including the knowledge of him having a wife and children down there. Anything is better than keeping you in this limbo and confusing state.
Let him realise that being married to him has made it difficult for you to move beyond a point; and that you consider his treatment of you, unfair.
Be clear to him that you can nolonger endure the situation; that you want to end the marriage so as to move on. Giving him this kind of ultimatum is the only way you can get him to admit to whatever it is that has kept him away from you for a whole decade.
But before you do this, let his mother know you have reached the end of the road with her son. Ask her if you were her daughter, would she keep encouraging you to stay in this kind of marriage? If anybody in his family turns around to accuse you of being wayward or unappreciative of whatever it is he has done for you in terms of financial assistance, remind them that you married their son at 30 and haven’t seen him for 10 years. in your shoes, what would they have done? Not that you were pregnant at the time he left and has a child to call your own.
It is their right to talk and yours to plan your life the way you would be happy at the end of the day. A marriage is only a marriage when the two people in it have the same ideas, are loyal to each other, have mutual respect and share each other’s company.
A marriage is to provide companionship. If for a decade you don’t have this, then what kind of marriage is it? His money isn’t what you came to marry; you came to marry their son. Tell them you are ready to stay as long as they provide you with your husband.
Sincerely, the ball is in your court. The longer you wait for this man who appears not in a hurry to come back to you, the harder it becomes for you to start again.
You have to urgently make up your mind over that thing that makes you most happy. You are the only one who can make the decision.
Good luck.
