My Marriage Is Breaking Apart Due To A Mysterious ‘Tool’ My Kids Discovered In Our House

There is this silent battle going on in my house as I write this. My husband is trying to bully me to accept a lie as the truth because he’s the man but I’m not having it. It’s like he has farted and blaming the odour in my mouth. He doesn’t talk to me. He has given me one week to confess or he would complain to whoever has ears. I don’t care. I know I’m innocent and I believe he’s the one guilty. I didn’t care if I lose the marriage today but I will like to clear my name before I leave.

We live with two kids, a six-year-old boy and a two-year-old boy who is at the centre of this trouble.


My husband travels a lot. In a month, he can travel to about five regions. He’ll spend a day in the north and the next day he’ll be in the Ashanti region. He’ll spend a day or two there and move to another region. It’s his job and I’d come to live with it. I don’t like it. I wish he had a different job that would bring him home every evening but this is not the time to complain. We’ve been married for nine years and that’s what he had been doing all these years. Even before we got married, that was his job so I knew what I was getting myself into when I said I do to him.

We started having troubles when I had my second son. My husband had travelled when I gave birth to the boy. I was expecting him to come home quickly to see us but he never came. To make matters worse, he was not responding to my calls or text messages. So one evening, I sent him a very long text message, telling him how he has changed over the years and how weird it looked that a man will have a new child and won’t bother to come home and visit. I ended, “So if I died during childbirth, you wouldn’t have come home? You think your job is more important than your family? When you die today, they will replace you. It’s us who are going to mourn you for the rest of our lives.”

He read the message and didn’t respond. The following day, he came home to see us. My child was already two weeks old. He came with a frown on his face as if I’d forced him out of a hole into the light. He didn’t talk to me often. My mom was around so he pretended we were fine but at night when he came to bed, he created a barrier between us. We fought it out for days until things came back to normal. We were fine but the number of times he travelled increased. Where he spent one week, he was spending two weeks. It was becoming very difficult to have time with my own husband. He would travel and only talk to me in the daytime. In the evening, I will call him and his phone would be off.

I wasn’t going to sit and pretend everything was fine so I asked him, “Have you found yourself a new woman? Because it’s strange. You’ll call in the afternoon when I’m busy. In the evening when the kids are sleeping that we can have time to talk, I will call your phone and it cannot be reached. Do you share a room with a woman who doesn’t know you’re married? Is that the reason why you’re unreachable every evening? Dear, what’s happening? I can live with the fact that you travel almost every day but I can’t live on suspicion that another woman is warming my husband’s bed so please straighten things up.”

It was supposed to be a calm conversation between a husband and a wife but my husband took things a notch up. He got angry and said a lot of horrible things to me. He screamed, “How dare you suspect me? Of all the things I could do wrong, why only cheating came to your mind? You think I’m like you? Oh, you did it to me so you think I will do it to you, right? I should start running DNA tests on these kids because you’re capable of anything. You’ve done it before and you can do it again.”

I broke down and cried. The fact that he would bring my past into the conversation hurt me so badly. I cheated on him once. I won’t even call it cheating because it wasn’t. We were dating and had a fight. He didn’t talk to me for two weeks and I didn’t know my stand in his life. Out of frustration, I gave in to another guy who was pressuring me for a relationship. The day after I had sex with the guy, he came back telling me he hadn’t left me. I told him what had happened, the fact that I’d been involved with another guy and he said it was ok, he forgives me. Over fourteen years later, this man brought back that history when we were supposed to have a harmless conversation. He bullied his way through and made me feel like he was not accountable to me in any way.

The suspicion didn’t die away so I started looking for clues. I will go through his phone and see nothing. I even went through his emails and saw nothing. His call logs, and his notes. I went through his mobile money transactions and didn’t see anything that looked like he was cheating. I told myself, “It’s either he’s not cheating or he’s a master of covering up.” Instead of killing myself to find what is not there, I relaxed my stands and believed that everything was ok. “No, he’s not cheating. It’s my mind that’s playing tricks on me. No, my husband is a good man and an honourable man. He can’t cheat on me.” I had to recite this to myself every day so my mind will be at peace with the fact that my husband can’t cheat.

He came from his travels one weekend and we were sitting in the hall watching TV. I was the one watching TV and he was somewhere around, working on his computer. The kids were out there playing. They would run from one room to another, playing hide and seek. Then I heard my elder son asking the younger one, “Where did you get the balloon from?” In my mind, I was like, “Balloon? who brought a balloon here?” I brushed the thought off because kids can call anything by whatever name. Then I heard them struggling over it. The elder wanted to collect it from the younger one and he refused to give it to him so they started fighting over it and the younger one screamed! I called both of them to come out and that was when I saw what they were playing with. It was a condom.

I screamed, “Where did you get the condom from?” That drew my husband’s attention quickly. I rushed for it and asked them where they got it from. The younger one is still learning to speak so he couldn’t say much. And the elder son who could have explained where they took it from also wasn’t there when the younger one found it. I knew right there that it was my husband who brought the condom home. I was about to launch an attack when he spoke from behind me, “You see your sins have found you out? Who have you been using this with? When I’m out you go out to play, right? Look at your sins staring you in the face. Where did they get this from? Your bag?”.

I was stunned! I countered him, “You’re not going to get away with it this time. Me? Go out to play when you’re not here? You must be joking. Where will I take these kids when I go out? It’s time to confess, do it honourably and I will forgive you. What are you talking about? You think I will allow this to slide? You think I’m a baby that you’ll say this to? The boys saw the exchange and they went quiet. I saw the look on their faces and it broke my heart. The fact that they had to witness us fighting. I shut up and sent them inside. My husband was still out there singing his disgrace.

We picked it up again when the kids were asleep. He accused me of cheating. He said I was the one who brought the condom home. Nothing I said made sense. “You’re the one. You were cheating all this while that’s why you thought I might be doing the same thing. For your information, I’ve never cheated on you ever since we got married. Can you say the same thing?” I screamed, “I won’t say the same thing. I will swear in front of the mightiest gods on the land that I’ve never done what you accuse me of. Can you also do the same?” He said, “Take me to Benin. Where are those gods? I’m ready to swear right now.”

The next time I brought up the swearing in front of the gods, he pretended he wasn’t the one who made that bold claim.

I know my husband. I’ve lived with him for that long so I know him. He’s always the loudest whenever he’s guilty of something. And I can swear that if he indeed believes with the clearest conscience that I did what he is accusing me of, he would have brought divorce into the conversation but to date, he has never mentioned it. His final words were, “I’m giving you one week to confess, or else, I will report you to your parents, I will bring the pastors into this and someday when your kids grow up, I will tell them this story.” He took the condom, folded it and place it into his pocket.

A week is over. He has travelled. He calls and asks if I’m ready to confess. The whole thing is getting on my nerves. Last night I thought of leaving the marriage but I also know that leaving the marriage won’t clear the dirt he wants to put on my name. The house belongs to me more than it belongs to him so if something is found in the house then it’s probably more mine than it is for him. That’s why everyone will believe him when he sells this story to them. I would want to clear my name first before I take any steps. What should I do?