A Patient Husband Changed My View Of Marriage

My husband has a stutter. He entered my life as a friend for about a year, and I could tell he had feelings for me but didn’t have the courage to express them. Unsure of my own feelings, I tried to avoid giving him the opportunity to share what was on his mind. One evening, he came to my house looking for me. When I saw him approaching, I told everyone to say I wasn’t home. He ended up speaking to my stepdad instead. “Gu…gu…good evening, Dad. I’m lu…lu…lu…looking for Asantewaa,” he stammered.

My stepdad offered him a seat and asked why he was searching for me. He assumed my husband was bothering me, which was why I was avoiding him. My husband replied, “Sh…sh…sh…she’s my friend, and I have so…so…so…something for her.” My dad asked, “Have you called her?” He answered, “Sh…sh…she doesn’t pick my calls.” My dad suggested, “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you or see you. Why not just ignore her?” He insisted, “Ah…ah…Asan…Asantewaa is like that. She’s a very good friend, and I…I…I can’t ignore her.”

I peeked through a crack and saw them talking. He looked uncomfortable, struggling to find the right words to respond to my dad’s questions. Feeling uneasy, I decided to step outside to meet him. As soon as my dad saw me, he remarked, “I thought you said you weren’t here?” I took my husband’s hand and helped him up. “Don’t mind my father; he’s just teasing you.”

I led him to my room, and we talked for about two hours. He asked, “You told your dad to say you weren’t here? Am I bothering you?” I reassured him, “Don’t pay attention to what my dad said; he was just joking.” He said, “You’ve been a good friend and a wonderful person, which is why I want you in my life. If you say yes today, we’ll be married a year from now. No jokes. Pure love.”

The mention of marriage startled me. “I don’t want to marry. Not now. Not in a year. If you really want to marry in a year, then look elsewhere.” He replied, “I’ll wait until you’re ready. I’m not in a rush. I just wanted you to know how serious I am about you.”

I noticed that he stammered significantly when talking to my dad, but during our conversation, he spoke fluently. I joked, “You were afraid of my dad, which is why you were stammering so much, right?” He explained, “It’s worse when I’m anxious. I’m not anxious when I talk to you. When I’m calm, I can go a long time without stammering.”

A few weeks later, I agreed to be with him, but with a condition: “I’m not in a hurry to marry, but if things go well between us, who knows?”

He was patient and knew how to treat a woman well. One night, I asked him about his past relationships and how they ended. I wanted to understand what went wrong to avoid repeating the same mistakes. He said, “The women I dated left me because of my temper.” I asked, “You have a temper?” He replied, “They say people who stammer often have a bad temper, but I don’t believe it’s something I can’t change. I get temperamental when I’m anxious about something. It’s better now.”

Whenever I gave him a chance to ask questions, he focused on the future. He made me feel silly for inquiring about his past while he was looking ahead. He asked things like, “How do you plan to manage your personal finances when married?” “How many kids—two or twenty?” “What about managing finances together? Would you have issues?” He was always forward-thinking, and I appreciated that.

A year later, he asked, “How many years do we have before marriage?” I replied, “I’m still not sure, but wait until I finish the part-time course I’m taking. Then we’ll talk.” After the course, he asked again, “Ready?” I said, “Not quite yet. My younger sister is still in school; let her finish first.” I kept finding excuses to delay my answer.

What was I afraid of?

I lived with an aunt who married three times and got divorced three times. All four of her children have different fathers. She was a good woman. When my mother divorced, she took us in and cared for us. Her heart was in the right place, but when it came to marriage, her heart was scattered. She often spoke negatively about marriage and men in general. “Men are time-wasters; don’t fall for their tricks,” she would say. “When I die and come back, I don’t think I’ll ever say yes to a man. They marry you in your youth and leave you when you’re no longer young.” Then she’d add, “Look at your mother and what your dad did to her. Be careful with men.”

Her words stuck with me and instilled a fear of marriage in my heart. All the excuses I gave him were attempts to push him away. But he remained persistent, even when I provided plenty of reasons for him to leave. One day, he said, “Do you know you’re the only person in this world I don’t stammer when talking to? It’s a sign that you’re the one. Don’t let this chance slip away from us.”

As our wedding day approached, I felt a wave of anxiety. I witnessed a glimpse of his temper, and it frightened me. An incident occurred where he thought his younger sister had been rude to me. He snapped and yelled at her until he was visibly shaking. I had to calm him down. In my mind, I thought, “Wow, look how he treats his own sister. What would happen to me if I ever upset him?”

I confided in my mother about my fears: “Mom, he’s scary when he’s angry. I don’t want to live with a man I can’t handle when he’s upset.” Mom asked, “Has he ever been angry with you?” I replied, “That’s the point. He’s never been angry with me, so I don’t know what it would be like after marriage. Like Aunt Beatrice always says, men pretend until they get you.”

What my mom said eased my heart, and I’ve held onto it ever since.

She said, “You’ve let your aunt instill fear in you. She married three times, and it never ended well. Do you think all the men she married were wrong, and she was right every time? She’s a good person, but that doesn’t mean she’s good at everything. Your father left me, I remarried, and I’ve lived with this man for almost 25 years. Do you think it’s because he’s perfect? No. The flower that blooms is the flower the gardener waters well. I’ve nurtured this marriage for twenty-five years, which is why it’s still thriving. If he has anger, nurture him, and he’ll flourish.”

We got married, moved into our own place, and began our life together. I was careful from the start not to upset him or make mistakes. I wasn’t myself around him because I feared making errors. Then he began to tease me about the little mistakes I made. I remember one late afternoon while cooking soup, my dress got caught on the pot handle. By the time I realized it, the entire soup had spilled onto the floor. I was lucky to jump away in time. He heard the commotion and came in. He pulled me aside and asked, “Are you okay?” He checked my skin for burns and said, “Just rest; I’ll take care of the rest.”

He never does anything without consulting me, and he prioritizes my happiness above his own. For example, he dislikes sleeping under the fan because it gives him a cold and makes breathing difficult. I, on the other hand, can’t sleep without the fan on, even when it’s chilly. I’d rather turn the fan on and cover myself with a blanket than sleep without it. So, we compromised. I told him, “We’ll keep it on tonight for me, and tomorrow we’ll turn it off for you. 50:50—we both win.”

The next day, we turned it off. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I tossed and turned for hours. My eyes were tightly shut, but sleep eluded me. Then, at midnight, I felt a cold breeze on my face. I looked up, and the fan was on. It hasn’t been turned off since that night. That’s what it means to prioritize someone else’s needs above your own.

November 7th will mark our ninth anniversary. Three kids and two job losses later, we’re still going strong, as if we married just yesterday. On the night of our ninth anniversary, I’ll look into his eyes and say, “Thank you for giving me a story different from what my aunt made me believe. You’ve turned a nonbeliever into a believer, and as your reward, I’ll always stay true to you and keep nurturing what we have so it continues to flourish in beauty and strength.”

—Asantewaa, 
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