We met at a church prayer camp and then we went ahead and dated for one and half years before we finally got married. My wife is a Bible reader and a translator at church. I was an usher. When I made my intentions clear to her, she told me to give her the whole week to think about my proposal to date her and that she will give me an answer the following Sunday. After service the following Sunday, I was invited into the offices of one of the pastors and I went through what I personally describe as an interrogation. I was 33, my wife was 32. I had seen a decent woman at church who I was interested in so I didn’t understand all the questions they were asking me. I felt like I was being vetted for something. My wife wasn’t even present. These pastors were making me quote scriptures, asking me about the number of souls I have won for Christ, if I’m a consistent thither.
It was one question after the other. But eventually it was over and they told me she will accept my proposal. When we started dating and we became very free, I asked about why he had to inform the pastors of the church when it wasn’t even a marriage proposal yet. Dating is about knowing if both of us were compatible. She said the pastors were his fathers. Meanwhile, I have seen how she speaks to her father and how she speaks to these pastors. That was a major red flag, yet I ignored it. Then came the prayer meetings that she went to almost every evening. We quarrelled about this right until we got married. She started looking at me in a strange way. As if I was an antiChrist. I should have ended my plans of marrying her around that time. But everyone thought I was overreacting and I was complaining too much. In the eyes of every other person, she was a God-fearing, submissive and hardworking woman and I was lucky she was willing to marry me.
So we got married. Then the real problems started. I’m not one of those men who demand their wives to respect them like they’re below them. I believe in mutual respect. I have tried my best to show her respect and love but she always places her spiritual fathers above our marriage. My wife gave birth to our son and she was leaving the baby to go to church in the evening. A baby who was less than three months and needed breastmilk. That was where I started to get really pissed. I started stopping her from going out. I went as far as changing our main door keys and she had to tell me where she was going before I allowed her. Then she started praying in the midnights and invoking curses on me and my whole family. When our son became one year, I stopped going to church with my wife. They had brainwashed her and I didn’t want the child to grow up and become like his mother.
We joined a more progressive charimismatic church and then I filed for divorce. My wife and her spiritual fathers are saying that it is a demonic thing to get divorced and God hates divorce. They have rained insults on me and declared a lot of curses if I move on with the divorce. My boy is very young and his mother is fighting for custody of the child and she has a better chance of winning against me in that regard. I don’t want her to raise my son. She will pollute him, make him hate me and destroy my relationship with my son. A friend is advising me to stay in the marriage for a while and tolerate my wife’s attitude for a few more years because I will lose a lot if I divorce her now. I need your advice. Over-religiosity is destroying some of our marriages and wives. I need help on what to do. She is sure to get a lot of my hard-earned property if I divorce her, but I don’t care about that as much as I’m worried about she raising my innocent son. What exactly should I do now?
