I Introduced Fire Into My Marriage And The Fire Is Burning My Marriage Down

It didn’t start badly. It started with me noticing how low the fire had become in our marriage. Our marriage felt like a pot on a dying coal stove: barely warm, barely cooking anything, and requiring constant blowing just to stay alive. We were good partners, yes. We were responsible parents. We were loyal companions who shared bills and raised a child. Everything was fine with our marriage except the spark we started with was dead and buried.

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We could go weeks without intimacy. Even when one person initiated something, it felt like a chore. Like we needed to tick “adulting” off the to-do list. Gone were the days we traveled to Takoradi on a whim. Gone were the nights we lit candles for no reason. Gone were the kisses that made the world tilt. Gone was the fire. I mourned it quietly until one day I gathered courage and asked him, “Kumi, are you happy with how things are between us?” “There’s nothing to complain about,” he said.

Nothing? No spark, no fire, no playful teasing but nothing to complain about? Men can be dangerously comfortable. I pressed further. “Don’t you miss how things used to be?” He sighed the sigh of a 90-year-old man who has seen life. “Yeah, I miss it  but it’s normal. We’re not young anymore. And we’re parents.”

Something about that statement pained me. As if becoming parents meant burying passion alive. As if marriage was a contract to forget pleasure. As if love only mattered when you were young. That night, I lay in bed and thought about our early days how Kumi used to lift me up playfully; how he used to whisper sweet nonsense in my ears; how he used to kiss me until my head spun. I realized those days weren’t magic. We made them happen. We created the spark through effort.

So I decided to make effort again. I sat down one evening with a notebook and wrote two lists: Short-term things we could do: more dates, intentional affection, playful teasing, small surprises. Long-term things: trips, shared hobbies, counseling, couples’ retreats. Then I went online and read essays about intimacy, desire, and how to revive the spark. I even watched videos. I wanted my husband back.  Not the roommate version, not the co-parent, but the lover I married. I learned new ways to spice things up. Fresh techniques. Creative ideas. Things I was excited to try.

Then one night, I put them to use. Ei. My husband turned into a whole different human being. Kumi was speechless. He was mesmerized. He was moaning from corners he didn’t know existed. The man was glowing like he had discovered secret gold. I felt proud. I felt accomplished. I felt like I had done something powerful. Like I had opened a long-shut door in our marriage.

But then Kumi, still panting, turned to me and asked: “Who taught you all these? Have you found a younger boyfriend?”

At first, I laughed. I thought it was a joke. I even saw it as a compliment. As in, he was impressed. But the more I replayed it in my mind, the more I realized it wasn’t a joke. It was suspicion. And that one question opened the floodgates of paranoia. Suddenly, if I was ten minutes late from work, he was calling, “Where are you? Why aren’t you home yet? Let’s video call.”

Afternoons, he would call out of nowhere to check if I was “indeed at the office.” One day, he appeared in my office unannounced with the excuse, “I was passing by and wanted to check on you.”

Passing by? My office is in a corner of town nobody “passes by.”

At home, he began checking my phone at dawn. One day he found a number I hadn’t saved, a colleague I spoke to about a project. Kumi picked up the number and called the man, demanding to know his relationship with me.

My heart sank. When I told him I was going to the market one Saturday morning, he boldly said: “You should be home in the next one hour. If you’re one minute late, it means you went to someone else.”

I’m going through all this all because I tried to spice up our marriage? At this point, the irony was choking me. I had gone looking for fire, and instead I found smoke that’s suffocating me. I stopped everything. No more romantic experiments. No more spice. No more techniques. I shut down the very flame I was trying to ignite.

Now here I am, stuck in a marriage where the man I love sees me as a suspect. A stranger. A woman he must monitor. A woman he thinks is too “improved” to be innocent. And I keep asking myself two painful questions: Did I do something wrong?
And how do I restore trust I never intended to break?

How does one regret trying to breathe life into love that used to feel like fire dancing on dry grass? But now Regret washes over me. Not because I tried but because my effort was misinterpreted as guilt. I know I didn’t do wrong. I know I meant well and my intention was pure.

The sad part is that now, because of Kumi’s insecurities, I no longer feel safe expressing love creatively. I don’t feel free to be romantic. I feel like any spark I try to ignite will be treated like evidence against me. And yet, I still want my marriage. I still want the spark. I still want the man I fell in love with. I just don’t want to be punished for trying. I want Kumi to understand that love doesn’t grow by accident. It grows by effort. By intention. By two people watering the same seed.

Is There A Perfect One Out There For Everyone?

Right now, I’m afraid. Afraid the trust is too broken. It hurts that my husband prefers comfort over connection. But I’m hopeful, stubbornly hopeful, that someday he will see my heart clearly again. That someday he will realize I wasn’t trying to stray; I was trying to stay. I didn’t want a new man. I wanted my husband.

And I’m praying deeply that one day, he will believe that again.

—Serwaa

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