George .O. Ochola

I have sex with my neighbor every time my husband travels, but yesterday the man called me and said we needed to stop immediately. I asked him why, because we’ve been doing this for almost a year. He said, “Your husband knows about us.” I started panicking and asked him how. He told me to check my WhatsApp. I opened it and found a message from my husband: “Tell my neighbor to come to the house tonight. I need to speak to both of you.” I immediately called my neighbor, but he refused to answer. That evening, my husband came home, sat beside me, and asked me one question: “Baby, I already know everything. I just want to know one thing… when you were sleeping with him, did you ever feel guilty about coming home and lying beside me?” I broke down in tears and begged him to forgive me. He looked at me for a long moment and said: “You know what hurts the most? It’s not even the cheating. It’s the fact that you chose the one person I never thought I could lose you to.” I looked at him in confusion and asked, “What do you mean?” His eyes filled with tears as he said: “That man is the reason we’re married today. When I wanted to give up on you before our wedding, he was the one who convinced me to fight for you. He told me I would regret losing a woman like you. He stood beside me on my wedding day and told me I was making the best decision of my life.” He paused, wiped his eyes, and continued: “And every time I travelled, I left you in this house believing you were safe. I never worried because I thought the man next door was like a brother to me.” Then he looked straight into my eyes and said: “Do you know what he told me when I asked him why he did it?” I shook my head, crying. My husband let out a painful laugh and said: “He told me he had fallen in love with you before I married you… and that he only introduced us because he thought you would never choose him.” My whole body went cold. Then my husband stood up, looked at me one last time, and said: “So for almost a year, I’ve been sleeping beside the woman I love, while the man who helped me marry her has been sleeping with her behind my back.” He picked up his keys and walked toward the door. Before leaving, he turned around and said: “The saddest part is that I would have forgiven you for making a mistake. But now I don’t even know if our marriage was ever what I thought it was.”