When I got married to my husband about 10 years ago, I never thought that there would be a time I would ever regret taking that lifetime decision to marry him. He was all I ever wanted in a man, though I earned more than him in the beginning. We had been attending the same church, right from when we were kids, and our families were relatively close.
However, we all lost contact in my final year in secondary school when my father was transferred from Lagos to Rivers State and we had to relocate. But, somehow, destiny brought us together again when my husband (then my friend) was posted to Rivers State for his National Youth Service and his father contacted my father as regards his wellbeing in that area. That was how he started staying with us every weekend.
I graduated before him, and was already working in an oil company as a management trainee at that time, but I was not involved in any serious relationship. So, we hit it off rather quickly and our families soon gave their blessings. The only thing that threatened the union in the beginning was the issue of my being three years older than him. His siblings knew that and they did not object at all. His immediate elder sister actually said that all we needed was love, and since that was in place between us, we should go ahead.
However, things got worse when my husband stopped coming home. Instead of every weekend, he started coming like once in three months, yet, I was not allowed to visit him in Lagos
Our wedding ceremony took place about six months after he finished his youth service because I got pregnant along the line. Through my father’s help, he was retained where he served, although the take-home was not really impressive. But I knew we could manage if we pooled our resources together. The wedding was a very big one. I was the first girl to get married in my family, so it was an extended family affair.
The wedding took place in my hometown in Ondo. Immediately after the party, we went for honeymoon in Lagos and returned after two weeks to Rivers.
Five months after, when my Expected Due Date was approaching, my mother-in-law called to inform me that I would have to come to Ibadan to deliver the baby because their children were not allowed to be born outside their fathers’ original homes, according to tradition.
I did not understand what that meant. How would we have been able to obey such tradition if we were living outside the country? Hard as I tried, my husband seemed not to have a solution. I begged him to make his parents see reason but he said we had to obey them. At that point, my mother waded in and said I should go ahead with what they wanted. She would come to visit me when I gave birth to the baby and would leave me later in the ‘capable’ hands of my mother-in-law.
Barely one week after I arrived Ibadan, I gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. My husband joined us the day before that, and I felt a little comfortable that I had someone I knew very well around me. My mother and siblings also came over and left two days after the naming ceremony. That was when I started learning the first bitter lessons of this institution called marriage.
I got my first shock when my husband told me he was not going back to his job in Rivers, and that the implication was that my own job there had also stopped automatically unless I could get a transfer to Ibadan. Of course, he knew that we had no such position in Ibadan, and that telling me to seek for a transfer meant that I should quit. But he was adamant and so were his parents.
His mother said that they had been keeping quiet all the while, but that they could no longer stand by and watch their only son waste away his life all in the name of marriage. They said the job he was doing in Rivers was substandard, which was why I was the one controlling the family purse. After so much argument, my father-in-law said he would call my father to make him understand their point.
My parents could not believe their ears but decided to follow me with prayers since my husband and his family were so adamant. To worsen the situation, we were not meant to rent a place of our own. We were given the free bungalow in their compound to stay and had to bring some of our things down from Rivers.
After a year, I became really broke. I could not secure a good job in Ibadan. My husband also had to go to Lagos when he got another well paying job through his uncle. I begged him to allow us relocate to Lagos since he had a job there. I was sure that with the help of my parents and some of my other contacts, I would get a very good job in Lagos with my qualifications. But my husband would not allow. His mother also said that he would be coming home every weekend since Ibadan was not far from Lagos. Ours was a young family, and I did not think this was a good idea. Moreso, my husband and I had begun drawing apart because of the incessant quarrels. I confided in my mother and she also said I should abide by whatever they wanted. She reminded me that marriage was ‘for better for worse’ and prayed for me to weather the storm. Immediately, I started blaming myself for getting pregnant so soon after we met again.
I did not even take time to study him or his family very well before getting married to him. But I had a strong will that if I did not give up; everything would be fine. But I was wrong. Weeks rolled into months and before I knew it, I was still in Ibadan, and my husband, in Lagos, when my son clocked three.
The table had turned and I became dependent on my husband for the smallest of needs despite the fact that I had more than enough when he met me. But I was not complaining even when I knew that his mother controlled everything at home. My parents and siblings were very supportive; they were always sending gifts and money
to us.
However, things got worse when my husband stopped coming home. Instead of every weekend, he started coming like once in three months, yet, I was not allowed to visit him in Lagos. I got to know from one of his younger sisters that their mother had been going to stay with my husband in Lagos whenever she told me she was going to visit her mother in Edo. I did not understand what was happening, so I begged my sister-in-law to give me her brother’s address in Lagos and also accompany me there a week after my mother-in-law left Ibadan on one of her usual trips to ‘Edo’.
It was easy to convince her because I had seen that she had also not been happy with the way I had been treated right from when we moved to Ibadan. She said she would just point at the house and leave, but warned me to take things easy.
I had not entered the house when I confirmed my worst fear …
To be continued
