I want to make this confession because I’m feeling very bad and my wife doesn’t deserve all that’s happening to her. I had an abusive father and he used to beat my mum when they were together. Mum left him when he seriously beat her during the time she was pregnant with me. That was the last straw for her and the marriage ended. I didn’t see much of my dad when I was growing up. It was mum and her parents who raised me. My dad got married to another woman and then when I was in my teens, we heard the woman left her because he kept beating her, he was doing the same thing he did to my mum. Being raised by a single mum always left me feeling inadequate and my mum always had ways of reminding me that she had sacrificed so much for me and she wasn’t having a dating life because of me.
She never said it in a bad way but I somehow grew up feeling responsible for my mum’s loneliness. She was able to endure dad’s abuse but had to leave the marriage to save my life because she could have lost me. When my grandparents died a year apart, my mum became even more lonely. In uni, she would call me and cry on the phone, telling me she can’t wait for vacation because she was missing my company. I always felt responsible. So fast forward, I finished school and got a job. I wanted to get a job around home so I can stay with my mum in her family house, but I got work in a different region. It was far from home. I was able to rent a single room s/c near the place I got work and my Mum wanted to come with me but I didn’t like the idea. It was the first time I had denied my mother something and she started with all the guilt.
It was a difficult thing to do but I left Accra and went to Kumasi without her. I met a girl and we fell in love. We dated for three years and then when I told her I wanted to marry her, she started crying. It was a weird reaction. It will take me months before she told me she couldn’t give birth and she had an accident as a teenager which affected her reproductive system. The whole thing was complicated. I was in love with her so much and I had hope that we could find a solution to the problem. Mabe the doctor didn’t diagnose it well or something. So we kept dating and my mother even knew her because I was visiting my mum with her on some weekends. Mum started pushing me to marry her. She didn’t understand what I was waiting for. I was nearing 30 and I had been with her for over 4 years. My mum said she wanted grandchildren. I always told her I wasn’t ready for marriage until one day, I informed her about the issue.
I told my mum I still wanted to marry her but I was planning to go to a fertility clinic with her first and see. My mum said we should end it immediately and I shouldn’t be with anyone who won’t give her any grandchildren. She later started acting cold towards the girl. She noticed it and got hurt. Then she broke up with me. Fast forward, I attended a funeral with my mum. One of her friend’s husband passed away and we went to the funeral. It was there I met my wife. Thing is I knew her a little when we were kids but I haven’t seen her for years. She’s the daughter of my mum’s friend. When we started dating, my mum was always saying that I shouldn’t waste time to marry her because she already knows her family well and we will have nice kids. I have been chatting my ex all this while though. Just about a year later, I married the girl. I was never in love with her from the start but she has been in love with me from the very beginning.
I dated her because my mum approved of it. Now we’ve been married for six years. She’s pregnant with our fourth child. My mum was so keen on having grandkids that I impregnated my wife before we got married, just to be sure. Everytime I inform my mum that we’re expecting another child, she seems more happy than me. I’m not a happy man. I’m grateful for such a patient and loving wife who sees my lack of affection and tries even harder to make me love her. I’m happy I have kids and I adore them very much. But all these years, I have been seeing my ex. We have s*x all the time. She is 36 and unmarried and by the way things are going she doesn’t see herself marrying. There was a widower in his 40s who expressed interest in her. The man has two children and when she told him about her problem, he was willing to marry her and be with her. They even went out for a few months but she broke up with him and told me it was me she is in love with.
I married my wife because I wanted her to give my mother grandchildren. I married her because she was the girl my mother wanted me to marry. i am now starting to see how manipulative my mum has been all these years. I’m in my late 30s and my mum is still controlling my life, even telling me to make sure we add a fifth child after this baby is born so that she will have 5 grandchildren. My mum wants my first daughter to grow up a little so she can come and stay with her. My wife has agreed to it, but she doesn’t look happy about it and I’m not happy about it either. Sometimes I feel like my wife knows I’m cheating but she has intentionally decided to ignore all the signs and pray for me instead. She is very God-fearing and it’s even the main reason why I feel very guilty for what I’m doing. I’ve married her for my mother and now I’m not happy. Truth is, I want to divorce her and marry the one I love but it will hurt her. She is also pregnant with my child. I can’t leave the girl I love. That option is off the table. What should I do?