Hello Admin and readers, please I need help on what to do. I’m a 23 year old Muslim lady married to a 47 year old man. Right after completing SHS at 18, my parents told me about him and that he was to be my husband. He used to come and visit us since I was a child and I thought he was just a friend of my parents. I didn’t like it because I did well in the Wassce and I wanted to go to the University. Everything was even settled before they told me so my disagreement meant nothing to my parents. I was to be his second wife and he married me just a few weeks later. He promised me that if I am respectful and submissive, he will let me further my education. He and his first wife had no child and unfortunately she died a year after our marriage. She was battling an illness for years.
My husband used to be good to me. The first year, I tried my best to do all what was expected of me. One time I saw an application for a distance education programme in one of the Universities and I told him about it. It was a weekend programme. My husband accepted and paid for my enrollment as he promised. But then I started noticing some small small things about him after the first year of our marriage. He can suddenly get angry with no real reason. He started treating me less of a human being and more like a slave or an animal. We can be watching T.V together and he will tell me to go and bath and lie down and wait for him to come and have s*x with me. The first time he said that, it was around 7pm and I had served him food after he came from work. I thought he would join me in a few minutes since he said I should go and wait and that he was coming.
It’s a master bedroom so I took my bath inside and came to lie down and waited. I could still hear the TV on and he was watching the movie we were both watching. I don’t remember the time I slept, but a hard slap woke me up. It was so painful that I started to cry. That was to be the first of many abusive things my husband would do to me. That night, he warned me to never sleep when he commands me to go and wait for him to have s*x with me. He said I was lucky and next time, he will beat me with his belt. He did the same thing again another night. I was in the bedroom for more than 3 hours and he was watching TV. I gathered some courage and went to tell him to please come and have his way because I was very sleepy and I didn’t want him to beat me.
He warned me to never do that again and he said I have disrespected him. Right now, I am in hiding so I want to narrate all the pain I have gone through in his hands. He wanted s*x all the time and he didn’t care if I was wet or not. If I wasn’t ready or enjoying it. He will say I am the woman and it is my duty. Many times, sex felt like rape to me because it hurt. He can wake me up in the midnight and turn me over for doggy when I wasn’t ready. If I should make any sound out of pain, he will hit me and warn me to not make any sound. I was calling my mum and crying all the time. My mum made everything worse for me. She asked me if I knew what she has endured in her own marriage with my father and that we have been created to serve the man. I got pregnant in our second year of marriage. My husband told me to stop the school. He said now that I am pregnant, I will stay home fully and raise our future kids.
I even suggested I defer so that I can continue later. He said I will not continue again. That night, he slapped me and beat me with his belt. I was pregnant. He didn’t care.The next day, I went home to report my parents. My dad didn’t say anything. He just said I should go back to my husband’s house. My mother just told me things will get better when I start having children. Then I woke up one day and I was bleeding. My husband took me to the hospital and it came out that I had had a miscarriage. I had a second miscarriage after that. My husband became even more bitter. He was having s*x with me like he was punishing me. I told a friend about this, especially the s*x part and he said I was lying. My husband looks too gentle for her to believe me. Then came the time I thought I had malaria. I was shivering. I had just been to the drugstore to get malaria medicine. When he came home, I was in the bedroom.
I didn’t come to meet him. He was calling for me and when he got inside the bedroom, he asked why I was lying down. I told him I wasn’t well and I even showed him the medicine. He didn’t say anything. He just left me and went downstairs. Then he called me to serve him food. I tried my best and did that and went back to bed. In the midnight, he called me from sleep and started spreading my legs. I told him I wasn’t well and he should even see that my temperature is high. He didn’t mind me and he was trying to penetrate. I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t well. I hadn’t eaten and he didn’t care that I was shivering with fever. I started resisting it and trying to stop him. That night, he beat me so much that the neighbours heard it and came to bang on our door. It’s a new area and the next house and is not directly next to our house. There is bare land before the next house.
The neighbours were an elderly couple in their 60s. They took me to their side to sleep there for the night. My husband didn’t even resist it. Maybe he saw how he had hurt me. The next morning, this couple drove me to a hospital. It turned out I wasn’t having malaria, I was pregnant again, but these symptoms were different from my previous pregnancies. The domestic abuse became a DOVVSU case and I went to stay with my parents. My mother was always insulting me for being weak and disgracing them. My father said he is still my husband and he has helped my family financially for years so I better go back. Suicide crossed my mind many times, but in the end, I reached out to a classmate friend I had in SHS. He is also Muslim so he will understand. I didn’t even know he had travelled to another region. I begged him to help me and I was crying on the phone and narrating everything to him. He wanted me to speak to an Imam or other respected people. But I was scared my parents will say I have disgraced them even more. If I go back to my husband, he will kill me and my parents will still blame me for my death.
I begged him to come and stay at his side for some time. I could even see that I was going to inconvenience him but he accepted cos I was really crying. I didn’t wait for the first prayers, I left home. It was just one bag that had a few clothes and my toothbrush and buta. Long story short, he met me at the station at his end and we took another car before we got to his house. I have been here for three days. I haven’t switched on my phone since I got here, except for one midnight. I just left a short note on my father’s favourite chair to tell them I was okay and they shouldn’t look for me. My friend is a real Muslim gentleman and he hasn’t touched me. He sleeps on the floor and he has given me his bed. He is the quiet type and I can see how this is bothering him.
What should I do in this situation? I am pregnant and it’s even surprising that I haven’t lost this one after the way my husband beat me and the stress I have gone through after that. I can’t go back to the abuse. He can kill me one day when he feels like it. One midnight, I put on my phone to see a lot of messages. My husband has come to my house to promise my parents he will never beat me again. It could also be my father lying to make me come home. My siblings are all younger than me and they don’t even understand a lot, especially the small ones. The one who comes after me is just 11 years. I don’t have anyone. It’s just this friend of mine. Meanwhile, I am pregnant and it’s not right to stay in this single room with him. People will think he has impregnated me when I start showing. Please what should I do?