Betrayal and Love: I Caught My Husband In Bed With My Friend

Twenty eight years ago, I was the operations manager for a government owned commercial bank. My responsibilities saw me sometimes acting as the head teller too. I trained new teller recruits and managed their daily tasks. In came Bennie, she was a breath of fresh air; young, wide eyed and enthusiastic. She took to me immediately, and we became friends. I was about three years older than her, in my early thirties and her in her late twenties. We talked a ton on our lunch breaks, about everything and nothing. We talked about our respective families, our husband’s antics, the stress of raising infants, our hopes and aspirations and ambitions…

Here I was, a forward thinking woman, full of ambition and dreams. I was married to a fine man, full of ambition himself, his entrepreneurial spirit was fierce and palpable, or so I thought. We both invested money and time in his sawmill business. I remember the days we stayed awake into the wee hours of the morning, just discussing our business plans, dreaming together and making love like a pair of giddy, lovesick teenagers. So in love was I with that man, I couldn’t get enough of him. I was totally and completely committed to him and our marriage. In my eyes, he was perfect, my very own Adonis or maybe even Zeus, beautiful in his masculinity; and in total charge of my heart. I did love that man, so much so that I think I ignored the obvious signs, thinking my love for him would smooth everything over. When we had our twins, I thought we couldn’t be a more perfect family. My heart and life were full. We both decided to pull the brakes on having more children, at least for the time being, and concentrate on building some much needed wealth.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine betrayal and love could coexist in our beautiful world.

Life was good and I was coasting. But in hindsight, I see how oblivious and naive I was. He was a master manipulator and a mere dreamer. And he mooched off of me like a leech.

As my friendship with Bennie blossomed, I introduced her to my family, and she introduced me to hers. Our husbands became friends too, and so did her child and my children.

When the abuse started, it didn’t take long for me to notice. Bennie showed up to work with all types of bruises and all kinds of absurd excuses. She was always falling for one reason or another. She broke a finger, then she hit her face on a door, and then broke her arm when she missed her step, and on and on the accidents went.

One day at lunch I asked, “Do you need spectacles? Maybe you can’t see well.”

That’s when she broke down and told me about her husband’s alcoholism and his abuse. She told me how sad she felt, that her man would betray their love that way. She wasn’t falling or having any accidents, her husband was beating her black and blue.

I didn’t know how to support her, she wasn’t ready to leave him and in those days advocacy for women wasn’t as strong and widely accepted as it is today,  so I invited her to spend as much time as she needed with my family. My husband agreed we needed to be her peace in the chaos she was living.

I prepared our guest room for her and her child, they were free to use it anytime they needed. She really only used it a few times, usually choosing to have dinner with my family and going home late nights when she was certain her husband had dozed off.

One morning I left the vault keys at home. Auditors were visiting and I needed to get my act together, so I rushed home to get the key to avoid a scathing report. My manager agreed to cover me while I went home to retrieve the keys. Bennie was on leave that week, I remember wishing she was at work, she would have had something smart and funny to say to lighten my mood. I took a taxi back home, angry with myself for being so forgetful.

When I opened my bedroom door, Bennie was on my matrimonial bed, naked as a jaybird, her long legs up in the air, between them was my husband, butt naked, thrusting away with reckless abandon.

“BENNIE!!!” I screamed.

She turned to look at me and said, “I never liked you anyway,” then she put her legs back up.

My husband turned to me and asked, “What are you doing here?” And he went back to his thrust.

I don’t know how I got back to work, but I did, with wet pants and without the vault key. I hadn’t even noticed I’d peed myself. I think the shock of the betrayal of those two people to whom I had given so much was too much for me.

My manager asked to know what was going on, so without thinking, I told what I had witnessed. He may have told someone, who told someone, because by afternoon, everyone knew I had caught Bennie doing undercover thunder with my husband.

I sank into a deep, unshakable depression. I spent months in the United Kingdom with my brother’s family, on compassionate and sick leave, seeing a betrayal trauma therapist. That betrayal trauma therapy saved my sanity and brought me back to earth.

On my return form the UK, I learned Bennie had been transferred to a border town between Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. I also learned my husband had survived an attempted murder; Bennie’s husband had tried to shoot and kill him, but had instead shot him in the leg.

To add insult to injury, I spent days testifying in court, recounting the sore sight I had seen of betrayal and love. I was subpoenaed by the court on the Bennie family’s request. Mr. Bennie was claiming insanity as his defense in his attempted murder charge. He claimed the news that my husband had slept with his wife made him lose his mind, which led to his attempt at murder. And so I was made to retell the humiliating story of how my husband betrayed me with my friend.

In the end Mr. Bennie was sentenced to a year and half in prison. I thought it quite sad that he had to be the one to pay the price for this story of betrayal and love.

With my parents and sibling’s full support, I divorced my husband. I changed banks, and rose through the ranks quickly. I must say without the dead weight of my ex-husband dragging me down, I excelled quickly. Today I hold an international finance position. I remarried, had one more child, and have had a fulfilling life. My children are doing well and I wake everyday with gratitude.

Without me on hand to take loans from work to fuel his nonsensical business ventures, my ex hasn’t done well. He lives in the slums along the coast in Accra, living off the children he neither raised nor bothered to see until they were adults he could use.

My ex-husband apologized to me years after the incident. It was his attempt at getting me back. He said he didn’t stop when I caught them because of shame. He had bragged so much to Bennie about how he called all the shots in our marriage, and could do whatever he wanted. So when I caught them, he had to prove that point somehow, just to assuage his ego.

The whole time I was busy supporting and loving him, he was in competition with me. Talk of love and betrayal.

I hear Bennie never remarried. I guess when the world learns you’re a whore, nobody bothers to put a bride price on you. 

Quite recently my daughter married, and my advice to her was, “Never say my husband can never do this or that to me. He can. We are all,  as humans, capable of evil. The difference is some of us choose not to act on our evil. So know your husband is capable of evil, but he may choose not to be evil.”

If you enjoyed this personal life experience, you may enjoy this collection of lived experiences.