What Do Men Want?

When I met my husband, I was standing on my own two feet. I had a job, I earned my own money, and I took care of myself and my family. I never stretched my hand to him asking for money, and on the rare occasions that I did, I always planned to pay him back. But he would refuse and say, "Just keep it." I thought that was love.

He was the one who came to me first. He looked me in the eyes and told me he really liked me and that he wanted me to be his wife. I said yes not because I was desperate, not because I had no choice but because I was genuinely, completely in love with him. Everything felt right. Everything felt real.

We built something together. Life was not perfect but it was ours, and I was happy.

Then one day, I picked up his phone.

That single moment cracked my world open. What I found was not just betrayal it was the beginning of a new kind of pain. Suddenly the man I loved became someone who looked me in the face and made me feel like I was the problem. He twisted every conversation until I was the one defending myself. He was the one cheating, yet somehow I was the one who "didn't trust him."

It did not stop there.

He was planning to meet two different girls from two different cities. He was sending money and making promises to another woman. Meanwhile, I had to beg sometimes more than once, sometimes more than I can count just to get him to do something simple for me. Money for my hair. A moment of his time. A real conversation about us. I would have to ask, and ask again, and then ask one more time before he would even acknowledge me.

But if one of those girls sent him a message? He would stop whatever he was doing. Work could wait. I could wait. Everything could wait except her.

When I try to talk to him, to close the distance I feel growing between us every single day, he shuts me down immediately. He gets angry. He says I only bring things up because I don't have a job, like my pain is just boredom, like my feelings are just a side effect of having too much free time.

And when he hurts me, he does not apologize not really. He goes cold and silent and somehow makes the air feel like I am the one who did something wrong. When he finally speaks, it is a flat, hollow "sorry" followed by "what is your problem?" and "why are you overreacting?"

I am left standing there, wondering if I imagined everything.

Sometimes I look at him and I feel like he hates me. Like everything I do, everything I offer, everything I am is not enough. Like I am invisible. Like I am tolerated, not loved.

I used to know who I was. I was someone who worked hard, who loved deeply, who gave freely. Now I spend my days questioning myself, shrinking myself, begging for the bare minimum from someone who once told me he wanted me to be his wife.

All of this happened because I fell in love.

I gave my heart to someone I believed loved me back.

And I am still trying to understand, what do men want?