Dear Jumai
I am 27 years old and got married at 24 to a man I loved deeply and prayed to marry. We both abstained from intimacy before marriage and believed our union was blessed by God.
On our wedding night, my husband showed no interest in me. Instead, I discovered he preferred watching explicit videos and pleasuring himself. When I confronted him later, he admitted he enjoyed watching more than being intimate with a woman and confessed that he married me so people would not question his sexuality.
Throughout our marriage, there was no real intimacy. At some point, he even suggested I use toys or find another man to meet my needs. Out of loneliness and emotional pain, I got involved with another man and eventually left my marriage.
Sadly, I later discovered the new man had a wife and children, and I was forced to leave. I am now staying in the church, hiding the truth to protect my husband’s image. With no family support, I am considering returning to my husband simply to have shelter and still be called a wife. Please, what should I do? Comfort.
Dear Comfort,
What you are experiencing is not a normal or healthy marriage, and it is not something you caused. You entered this union with honesty, faith, and hope. Your husband entered it with secrets and fear, and that imbalance is what has broken the foundation, not you.
A marriage without intimacy, honesty, or emotional safety slowly erodes a person’s sense of worth. Being asked to accept substitutes for companionship, or to outsource what should exist within the marriage, is not love or sacrifice; it is abandonment disguised as permission.
Understandably, loneliness pushed you into another relationship, but that situation hurting you again does not mean you deserve suffering or instability. It only shows how vulnerable prolonged neglect can make a person.
Protecting your husband’s image at the cost of your own well-being has left you without support, shelter, or truth to stand on. While your compassion is admirable, silence should never require you to erase yourself.
Returning to him solely to have a roof over your head or a title will likely deepen your pain and delay healing. A label without peace will not restore your dignity or your future. You deserve more than survival; you deserve wholeness.
Before making any decision to return, ask yourself whether staying will heal you or slowly break you again. Stability built on denial rarely lasts. You are still young, still worthy of real companionship, and still allowed to choose a life that does not require you to disappear inside it.
Take your time. Get support. Choose truth over appearance, and safety over titles. A wife is not defined by endurance of pain, but by mutual care and respect. You are allowed to want that and to walk toward it, even if the path begins with uncertainty.