My Husband Didn’t Travel Abroad With Me Because He Had 5 Other Women To Handle

I met my husband some years ago when I was working in Ghana. We dated for about two years before I travelled abroad. When I returned to Ghana, we got married. Because of the nature of his job, he preferred to stay back in Ghana and visit me frequently. At the time, that arrangement didn’t bother me. I trusted him, and I believed we were building something solid across distance.

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We are now in our fourth year of marriage, and it was only last December that my world cracked open. I discovered that my so-called husband had been cheating on me, not with one or two women, but with at least five different ladies. I didn’t hear rumours. I didn’t guess. I saw the evidence myself. I read the chats. Every line felt like a slap. It was painful to the point of being unbearable.

What hurts even more is that I genuinely don’t understand what he was looking for. I am a beautiful woman. I’m intelligent, hardworking, and independent. I don’t pressure him financially. I work for my own money and still support him and his businesses whenever I can. I don’t nag. I don’t monitor him. I’ve always believed that marriage shouldn’t feel like a prison, so I never had issues with him going out with friends for drinks or socialising. I gave him freedom because I trusted him.

That trust is what makes everything feel so foolish now.

On his few visits, he often claimed he needed to travel home for a funeral and would leave early. I later realised those trips weren’t about funerals at all. They were carefully planned meetups with other women. Every excuse now feels dirty in hindsight.

His family has spoken to me. They have pleaded on his behalf. He himself has apologised. But I’m stuck in a place I don’t recognise. I don’t know if forgiveness is something I can genuinely offer, not because I want to punish him, but because something inside me feels permanently damaged.

Some of the messages I read still echo in my head. The way he spoke to those women, calling one of them “the love of my life.” He forgot my birthday completely but remembered the birthday of his ex-girlfriend. I keep asking myself how that happens in a marriage. How does a man forget his wife but remember another woman?

Last year, when I visited Ghana, he went out one night saying he was meeting friends and returned around 1 a.m. I later realised he was meeting women. Before anyone asks why I didn’t go with him, I had travelled with our six-month-old baby. I couldn’t be out late with a child. While I was home caring for our baby, he was out living another life.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I truly believe that when your partner cheats on you, it breaks something deep inside. It makes you question yourself, even when you know logically that you did nothing wrong. It creates a quiet insecurity that sits in your chest and refuses to leave. I find myself replaying conversations, moments, and decisions, wondering where I failed, even though I know his choices were his alone.

Now, when he calls, his voice doesn’t comfort me. It irritates me. It makes me angry. If not for our child, I don’t think I would answer his calls at all. Motherhood has forced me to pause where I would have walked away without looking back.

Looking back, so many things now make sense. Him guarding his phone, the secrecy, the late nights, the sudden changes in behaviour. All the signs were there. I just trusted too much to see them clearly.

I’m not writing this because I want sympathy or validation. I’m writing because I’m confused. I’m hurt. I’m standing at a crossroads I never imagined myself at. I don’t know what the right decision is. All I know is that the marriage I thought I had no longer exists in the form I believed in.

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If anyone thinks this pain is easy to navigate, it isn’t. It’s lonely. It’s heavy. And right now, I’m just trying to understand how to move forward without losing myself in the process.

—Amanda  

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