These Hoes Ain’t Loyal

Hello David,

I am a follower of your Facebook platform, so is my ex-wife. We were married for 7 years, and blessed with a son. I think sometimes you’re a little prejudiced when it comes to men and women on your page. Your conversations are always tailored around men treating their women right. Little is discussed about how women should treat their men. Are we not deserving of being treated right? Or as a man yourself, you mean to say your feelings aren’t that worth appreciating?

My ex-wife was so focused on herself and needs in our marriage, my own emotions and needs were placed on the sideline. She did not understand how to treat me right as her man. To the rest of the world, I was the monster making her unhappy in our marriage; but tell me Dave, which man in his right senses will be empowered to do more than the usual for a wife who refuses to put in the effort into making her man happy?

Things were okay between us in the beginning years of our marriage until I lost my job. And I pray no married man ever loses his job in this Ghana, and ends up relying on his wife; your marriage will break up. My experience wasn’t even a flat-out-firing. I was downsized, and I lost more than just my paycheck; I lost my wife’s genuine respect for my well-being. Trust me when I tell you these hoes ain’t loyal. Many of them marry men for their paychecks and employment statuses; love is just a word on their lips.

My wife stopped seeing and trusting the fact that I was working hard to find work; she stopped seeing the embarrassment I felt for being unemployed. Her expectations of me shifted; her usual routines at home suddenly changed, not because money was tight, but because I was depending on her to hold the family down. For the first time in our relationship, we weren’t on the same page with money, all because I was unemployed. Unfortunately for me, another man with a better job rather got my wife’s 100% attention, care and pampering. The very things I craved for because I thought the “I do” in our vows mandated our marriage to be my source of strength in times like these. But no, another man enjoyed my wife’s support and encouragement; he profited from my wife’s resourcefulness.

I became emotionally troubled – I missed out on a lot happening around me in my own home. In all honesty Mr. David, I wasn’t asking for much; I just wanted her kindness and compassion, that was why I had to recoup into taking two steps forward and one step back on my journey to maintaining a healthy marriage. While I tried to get our connection back to where it used to be, my wife was taking one step forward and four steps back. She was in love with someone else. She manipulated my feelings, tried also to guilt-trip me, and worst of it all – when I made a little mistake, my ex-wife would catalog all of my errors from 1952 with an elongated monologue.

When I forbade her from pursuing another love interest with her current husband, my ex-wife took up a voluntary total fasting exercise, starving herself almost to death. She would cook for me and our child, but refuse to eat. This continued for more than three months. She lost so much weight and grew lean, it was scary. I don’t know the story she was selling to family and friends because they all started believing she was suffering from battery and abuse. She wouldn’t answer the phone calls of her family and friends; she stopped going to work, and as a result, lost her job. Outsiders started vising our home unannounced, and at odd times to check on her. She told her siblings and best friend that I had isolated her from her family and friends, psychologically beaten her down and was physically threatening her. The day I heard her mother tell her she deserved to live free of fear, she filed for divorce. Three weeks after our separation, she started putting on weight again.

Image Credit: Karolina Grabowska