Below true life story portrayed ‘sister blessing’ who got married in December 2010, and on February 25 – 2012, her husband, in the presence of both families and the pastor that joined them together, asked her to leave!
This was exactly one year and about two months into their marriage.
One of the husband’s main reasons was that he could have married a younger lady. He was only a year older than the wife. He was already 38 while the wife was just two weeks away from her 37th birthday. So practically, we could say she married at 37.
He deliberately starved his own wife of s*x for almost two years, avoided her like a plague, reduced her to an object of shame and of nothing to be admired, watching her take an overdose of Cenpain Night (a pain relieving sleeping pill) without making any effort to stop her.
He even went as far as physically beating her up in the presence of his family members that had moved in to live with them. None of them came to her aid.
They watched him beat her black and blue just because she was trying to save her home, and asking her husband to look back to the love he once proclaimed to have for her.
She had no voice, she was helpless and weak, emotionally dehumanised, psychologically reduced to a ‘thing’ and so physically traumatised that she lost her job on October 16th, just 15 days after her husband family members moved in to the same house she has been principally responsible for.
Same house she fully paid the rent for, and fully furnished from her own sweat!
Not longer having any self esteem left in her, abused, enslaved, wounded and shattered, she staggered and stumbled out of her own matrimonial home…bowed, bent, beaten, betrayed, battered and broken!
Below is the real story from the mouth/hand of the victim of this misadventure of love.
Welcome to the true life story of “sister blessing”
? HOW WE MET AND MARRIED:
It was in the year 2010, I was travelling from Sagamu to Ibadan. I sat next to a middle aged man who happened to be a ‘prophet’.
Somehow we got talking about marriage, and he got to know I wasn’t married yet. He told me to fast and pray for a day after which my husband would surface.
He also told me that I would be getting married to someone I had known years before.
He said that evil people were responsible for our separation and that within two weeks of me praying and fasting, the person will emerge.
I did as he told me and two weeks later on March 17, 2010, I saw a mail from someone on facebook, he turned out to be Gbenga’s bosom friend.
He told me Gbenga (whom I had met back in 1991, and lost contact with in 1993) had been looking for my number.
Yemi gave me Gbenga’s number and also told me that he would make sure he gave me a phone call.
True to his words Gbenga called me that same day and we agreed to meet on the 19th which was a Friday. We met and after a while we became quite close and decide to get married.
He proposed to me twice – on June 12 – 2010, and then a week later on June 18 – 2010, and on both occasions I accepted.
I was thrilled that at the age of 36, I finally got a man who was ready to marry me. He had no job then but I cared less.
We did the formal family introduction on September 11th, and had our wedding on December 17th and 18th 2010 about two to three weeks to my 37th birthday.
? WHEN COOKIES BEGAN CRUMBLING:
Gbenga had no job when we met but shortly before we got married he secured a job with a private secondary school in Lagos therefore we had to move to Lagos.
He told me he was going to get an apartment for us to stay only for him to move us into a room in Yemi’s 3 bedroom apartment. We had no honeymoon.
For two weeks I was more or less an unofficial maid to Yemi’s wife who was pregnant with their first child. I later had to cough out money to pay for a 3 bedroom at Ikotun area.
He told me it was a 3 bedroom only for me to realise that he got a 5 bedroom flat. We started living together and I noticed that I never saw him when I came home from work during the weekend . He was always with Yemi.
Yemi had an overwhelming influence on Gbenga that was later to harm our marriage.
Apart from the fact that I bore the brunt of all the financial expenses for the house as he always told me that since I appeared to have some cash I should take care of everything.
I can’t remember him buying me a gift, not even one handkerchief. He was unwilling to foot any financial bill in the house.
I ran the house financially and he made sure he made little or no financial contribution. The worst part was when he started comparing me with Yemi’s wife who was much younger and I wasn’t happy with that.
Truth is, I footed the whole wedding bills. I paid the registry fees, bought most of the things Gbenga as a man should have gone out of his way to make provision for.
When we were preparing for the wedding, I made arrangement for photographers for the introduction, engagement and wedding ceremonies.
But Gbenga told me not to worry as his friend would has made adequate arrangement for that part. At least, I was happy he was contributing something tangible towards the wedding cost.
As I type this horrible experience I have been through, and after many years, I am yet to see or have a copy of those wedding pictures.
Yemi never released any of those photographs and that also created trouble when I asked, at least to have an evidence of my own wedding!
The pictures available were the ones my family took on their phones.
? MY TRAVAILS:
The first rays of trouble beamed when I came back from work one day to discover that Gbenga had removed the curtains in the sitting room (the only curtains in the house) to take to Yemi’s house when his wife gave birth.
They used the curtains for their nursery. When I raised objection, I was abused and termed as proud and selfish.
I was shuttling between Ikotun and ilishan in ogun state( where I worked then). At a point I started going daily, yet Gbenga was not staying at home.
When I raised objections, he told Yemi, who came to see me and told me point blank that I was married to two men.
Gbenga had actually told me same thing before. He once said that he should not be seen as a third party in my marriage. He told me that once I see my husband, it’s as if I have seen him.
He also accused me of trying to destroy the long time friendship between him and my husband and he warned me not to even try it.
On my first wedding anniversary, I can remember breaking down and crying uncontrollably because I was sad and unhappy.
It was as if I was in bondage , yet I was unwilling to leave. Matters came to a head on the 25th of February 2013 when in the presence of my parents, his mum and brother, his friend and the Reverend that joined us together (I had called them all for a conflict resolution meeting), he seized the opportunity to tell them all that I should leave. He said in Yoruba “mi o se mo” – (I am not continuing with this)
And that was point the real torture began. He resorted to different tactics to make me leave. He told me he could have gotten a younger girl, and that he married me because Yemi said he should marry me.
I became a professional beggar, begging my husband, begging his friend, and calling his relatives to intervene.
At a point I began to lose my sense of concentration at work and I eventually got suspended. Gbenga still insisted that I should leave the house which I paid rent for.
On the morning of the last Saturday in September 2013, I attempted suicide in my husband’s presence.
I took an overdose of sleeping pills and he just stood there in the kitchen watching me and smiling.
I slept unconscious for a whole day and a few hours, waking intermittently calling his name weakly. He never took me to the hospital, and when I finally regained full consciousness on Sunday evening, he went to Yemi’s house, only for his friend to call me to say that he heard that I attempted suicide.
He asked me if I thought Gbenga would not marry another woman if I died.
Between February 25th 2013 and September 31st 2013, I begged my husband as he was no longer eating my food. I would cook and later throw it away, and neither was he sleeping with me.
My own husband would not touch me and starved me of affection for two years before I finally left. Though I never caught him with another woman, but I surely heard he had impregnated one.
On October 1st 2013. Right in the presence of his sister, brother and their families (who had moved in with him) he gave me a good beating because according to him, I took his 500 naira.
That was the point at which I realised that he wanted me to leave either alive or dead. I lost my job in the heat of this marital crisis on October 17th and finally made up my mind to leave him.
I went to pack my things on October 20th 2013, and he told me he had helped pack my boxes and I should just take them and leave.
And when I started moving things he did not expect, like TV, chairs, rug and etc (because I BOUGHT THEM) but he didn’t want me to pack any these things I bought with my own money as he rushed to the police station with receipts of the things I paid for.
The recipts were written in his name. I had honoured my own husband, boosting his ego so he won’t feel his authority as the head of our family lacked financial substance.
But that was my mistake! The police gave him all the stuffs I put my own hard earned sweat on.
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