Opening up to your loved ones can be a gamble. In the ideal case, your vulnerability creates intimacy. They understand you better and do everything to consider your feelings. However, that’s not always the case. Many times, people use such moments against us. That information becomes a weapon in the wrong person’s hands.

When I was eight years old, happiness seemed to have escaped our home. Tension, verbal arguments and negativity filled each space. I don’t quite remember everything as it comes to me in bits and pieces when I least expect it, but I remember my parents hating each other.

We are four siblings, and two of the older ones were in boarding school. My other brother was barely ten. We lived through each parent talking to the other one through us.

“Tell your mum this and that.”

My mother would respond with, “Tell your dad blab bla bla…”

We thought that was awful, but over time, we realised it was the mild stage. By the time they separated, we had missed school trips because they were proving points to each other, and my dad had stopped eating at home.

We learned more curse words from them than from the TV shows that we were forbidden from watching. The arrival of any of our relatives gave us temporary relief, but fights always escalated after they left.

I remember family meetings among my parents, grandparents, and older relatives. At first, I thought someone had died because I associated meetings with people of that age group with burials. I cried even though I didn’t know who was dead. It turned out the funeral was my parents’ marriage.

We spent most of the time with my mother, but at first we also got to go to my father’s place. That was until he started dating again. My mother hated all his women. They also didn’t seem to stick for long. Mother was even angrier when we told her there was a new girlfriend.

We were young and thought that meant my father would come back to my mother, but apparently, she didn’t like that he introduced us to so many of his girlfriends. Eventually, we stopped going to him. Our relationship with him became solely about money. He was the ATM for us, and we used his absence as leverage to get a bit more money from him.

Meanwhile, our mother often reminded us that she was the parent who stayed. We have given her more grace as we’ve grown older, but that experience made me swear that I wouldn’t put my children through that. Steve knew how my childhood affected me.

We’d been dating for about a year when I found out I was pregnant. The logical step was to formalize our relationship. So we did the traditional process. I did want a white wedding, but the baby needed the resources more, and I figured we’d do it later.

Steve and I were a mismatch. We’d broken up at least twice before the pregnancy. In fact, I got pregnant as we were trying to reconcile after one of the breaks. In many ways, the pregnancy was like a band-aid, but we had hoped it was strong glue that would bind us together.

The cheating started while I was pregnant with our son. Once I got past the smell of alcohol on him, I could smell the different perfumes. I could see the secret phone calls and shift in attention. We fought over it, and he promised to change.

He would ‘change’ for a while, and then he would find another reason to cheat again. At first, it was because I was pregnant, then after the child was born, I was accused of giving all my attention to our son, and the list went on. It was always my fault.

Determined not to have my son have the same experience, I doubled down on my efforts to make it work.  I changed my look whenever I caught wind of his cheating, tried to please him in creative ways, cooked exciting dishes and became his cheerleader. That was the ‘good’ stuff. My efforts also included tracking his location, using mirror apps to snoop through his phone, deleting messages and blocking numbers from other women.

Of course, I got it wrong sometimes. Once, I cost him a client by deleting a message about a meeting. I denied it, but we knew I had done it. I thought it was one of his women. I filled social media with family pictures of us and tagged him. I was marking my territory. It didn’t work, but I tried.

Then his company took a hit, and his salary shrank. That was a hard one because I was forced to carry the financial burden. It was easier to do when I didn’t know he was spending the little left on the other women. At some point, I got tired and tried leaving, but he reminded me of how my parents’ divorce affected me.

“Our son needs his father’s presence,” Steve would say.

I knew he was using that to keep me around, but I also believed him when he said staying together was best for our child. Only in his version of staying together was I supposed to put up with whatever he did. The compromise and ‘peace’ were my responsibility.

Then I woke up sick one day. I had strange symptoms that I couldn’t ignore. At the hospital, I found a wonderful female doctor.

“Do you have multiple sexual partners?”

I told her I didn’t. Then she sat me down and held my hand as she gave me my results.

“You’re lucky that this is treatable, but I have seen many women run out of luck,” said the doctor.

This happened during one of those phases where he had ‘changed’ and wasn’t seeing other women. I lived in constant anxiety and was angry at every woman out there because I was scared my man would find them more attractive. Now I had to worry about diseases too.

That was a sobering moment for me. Steve barely spent time with our son, and I had taken over most of the financial responsibilities. Staying no longer made sense. He couldn’t believe it when I told him I was leaving. When he realised the seriousness of it, he accused me again of being selfish.

“You want our son to go through the same trauma,” said Steve.

There had to be a way to keep my child from that kind of pain, but staying with Steve was no longer a viable option.

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