When money stops flowing Part 1…

This is actually an experience that a male reader shared with me. ’We were married for about 13 years, with three children. Sometimes, I think I made a mistake by migrating her to the United Kingdom. Because, ever since she got there, I have become the most useless thing on earth. Yet, this is a woman that had never paid a single bill while we were together. My benefits over there take care of everything.

She was relieved of her job about 15 years ago. I suggested she learned a skill and I paid for her to learn how to bake, also paid for all her kits and materials needed for the new venture.

She learned and started baking. Although the beginning was rough, as in most businesses, but I kept encouraging her. It was when she got to the UK that the worst of her began to manifest.

I came back to Nigeria in 2001 and married her in 2003.

We were friends in college, but I never paid attention to her “after school behaviour.” I just went away with what I thought I knew about her and believed it was that same person (I knew in our younger years that I married her).

So her life-from when we left the University- to when met again…I ignored. And that is the price that I am paying today.

We got married in Nigeria and lived together until we decided she relocated to the UK in 2013. I went with her and the kids, just to help them settle in. I was supposed to come back and finish a project that I was handling in Nigeria but she asked me to stay back with them a bit. For that reason, I lost the two projects that I was handling back home. I lost close to N50 million, probably because I listened to her pleas to stay back.

Yes…I lost a lot back home and I still became a useles man.

This was when our problems started. The money was not flowing. And she had started mixing with some ladies in the UK.

I have my faults as a human being but I do not think it’s enough for the woman I call a wife to abuse my mother and sister in my presence and the presence of our children. Sometimes, I kick myself for refusing to read the writing on the wall at the onset of the relationship.

I mean…someone that can bear a grudge with the brother for 16 years…doesn’t that say a lot?

I have always put my family first and made sure they are okay. I never bought luxury stuffs for myself except for my wife and kids. Yet, in all the years that I was married to her, she’s never bought me a single present. Her mother stayed in my house for six years. I never complained. I trained her nephew through his final years in the University. I took her mum like mine and made sure she received befitting medicals.
Yet, she would claim that I didn’t do anything for her.

I had to file for divorce.

These days, she is quick to advise women (on Face book) not to take shit from any man and to “look good” instead. Her closest friend in the UK is a woman that has chased several husbands away. I have had to sit four of her friends down and advised them on how to handle and win their men back. Today, they are all doing very well and have never stopped thanking me.

The surprising thing…the same “friends” she moves with are the very same women who used to tell her how lucky she is with the kind of husband she has. Because I would bath the kids, cook, clean the house and take my kids to school in the UK-same in Nigeria.

My point is…

. When some people’s advice to you (on the social media or elsewhere) is always prejudiced, please look into their lives.

. Only bad friends will stand by and watch your beautiful marriage crumble. A genuine friend will rather go her way-if it seems you are losing your head and can’t be advised.

. True happiness does not come from convincing yourself that all you need is ‘looking good.’ Life in the real world awaits you-after the social media jamboree.

. It’s no longer marriage if a partner can turn her back on you and begin to make mockery of you, when things are rough. It’s better to let such a person live her life the way she wants it.

. Believe it or not…there is a spiritual aura around everybody. There are people that once they are in your life, all you will ever know is loss.
My question is also this…

Why is it that Nigerian women do not appreciate a good man?’’