20/08/2025
In my family, they made us believe that your wife is not your family.
They drummed it into our heads that your children should mean more to you than your wife, because they carry your blood, but your wife doesn’t.
So I grew up with that mentality. And it shaped me. It made me always give my best to my kids, but when it came to my wife, Oyo… she was on her own.
One morning, as I was about leaving for work, she pleaded with me. She said she was running late too, and wanted to follow me in my car since I was dropping our kids at school, that once I dropped them, I could drop her off.
I flared up immediately.
“For what? What happened to Uber? Or don’t you know that me too I’m running late for work? I’m already doing my best for the kids, do the same for yourself.”
Without another word, I carried my kids into the car and drove off.
It was raining heavily. To this day, I don’t know how she managed to get to work. And at that moment, I honestly didn’t care.
The irony? This was the same woman who always put me before the kids. But to me, she was not family. To me, she was an outsider. To me, my children carried my gene and DNA, not her.
But after that incident, I began to notice something. Slowly, she started changing. She became selfish—or so I thought.
My wife, who used to buy fabric with her money, sew matching outfits for all of us, and make us look like one united family, suddenly began to sew only for herself.
At first, I thought she simply forgot. But when I waited for over a month and saw her rocking her beautiful designer outfit alone while I had nothing, I knew that yawa don gas.
Before, if I needed money, she was the one I would run to. But just two days ago, when I had issues with my account and rushed to her for help, my madam looked at me and said, “Check out Ok Cash and maybe take a loan from them. Their interest is user-friendly.”
That statement shook me. It was then it hit me.
I was the selfish one.
All along, she had been kind, patient, consistent, hoping and praying that one day, I would wake up and realize we were a team.
That one day, the upbringing that chained my mind would finally break.
That one day, I would see her not as an outsider, but as my own flesh.
But it never happened. Not until she began feeding me my own venom.
The breaking point came on my birthday.
My wife who used to bake, buy gifts, and gather the children to surprise me, suddenly acted like me. She became the mirror I didn’t want to look into.
She did exactly what I had done to her for years.
That morning, I lay on the bed, expecting her to wake me up in her usual playful way—sprinkling water on my face, surrounding me with the kids and their little gifts. But nothing happened. By 9:00 am, still nothing.
I felt so empty that I angrily stormed into the sewing room. She was bent over her machine, stitching a kaftan.
“Don’t you remember today is my birthday?” I almost yelled.
She looked up, her face calm, almost too calm. “Ah, today is your birthday?
I forgot oh.
So you’re now 37?
Chia… ije uwa.
Toorrh, you’re the birthday child oh, so where are you taking us to?”
She smiled faintly and continued sewing.
Her response broke me.
Those were my exact words to her, year after year. For the past five years, I intentionally forgot her birthday, dismissing her with those same careless words.
I sank. “You’ve changed. This is not my wife that I know.”
“I didn’t change,” she replied softly, her voice steady but her eyes carrying years of pain.
“Today is my birthday,” I insisted. “You used to bake, gather the children… my birthday used to be the happiest moment in this house. Remember?”
She kept quiet. I pressed further. “You used to lend me money. Sometimes you’d even leave it for me without asking. But now, you’ve changed. You even went as far as telling me to go and take a loan that you despise.”
I tried again, “And when was the last time you made matching outfits for us? When?”
Her answer pierced me.
“What’s the need of making matching outfits when our hearts don’t match? What’s the need of loaning you money, always showing up for you, telling you we are one, when every day you treat me like an outsider?
What’s the need of celebrating your birthday, when mine is always forgotten? And I know you do it deliberately, because to you, I’m not family. Your children are your family.
But let me remind you: those children carry not just your DNA, they carry mine too. If I wanted, I could have ab0rted them before you even knew I was pregnant. But I didn’t. I chose to keep them, I chose to keep us.
So explain to me—how can you love the children so deeply, yet despise the mother that bore them?”
Her voice cracked, and for the first time, she broke down. She flung the kaftan aside and walked out in tears.
That moment shook me to my core.
I had never realized the weight of my cruelty until she mirrored it back to me. I thought loving my kids was enough. I thought being there for them made me a good man. But she was right, without her, there would be no children.
That night, I ran after her. I begged. I apologized with every fiber of my being. I told her I had been a fool. That I considered her nothing, when she was everything.
It took time, but she forgave me.
Today, I buy things for my wife. I celebrate her openly. I’m teaching my sons that their wives are not outsiders, but family. That love begins with the woman who stood by them.
I may not be perfect yet, but I am learning. And every day, I am getting better.
Moral: A wife is not an outsider. She is the backbone. The root. Without her, the children you boast about wouldn’t exist. Never treat your wife like she doesn’t belong. Because when the root withers, the tree will surely follow.
When you make your wife feel like a stranger in her own home, you’re not building a family—you’re building a fracture. Marriage is not me and the children, it is me and my wife first, then the children. A house divided at the root cannot stand.
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