‘It’s the women,’ he often says. ‘They always assume I want sex. How can I refuse what is so readily offered?’

I don’t know these women, I know of them. He never gives me names. Yet each time we’ve been at an office party, I’ve wondered—which of the women around me has he fucked? How many girls talking sweetly to me carry marks on their bodies from his fucking? I hate parties with office people because I don’t know these women, I only know of them.

But they know I am his wife. I can sense them laughing at me, see their eyes mocking me. I know they think I am the poor woman whose husband fucks around and she can’t do anything about it.

‘But I’ve never exploited a woman, never used one,’ he told me. ‘I always give them the truth of it—tell them exactly what they’ll get from me. It’s their decision to fuck or fuck off.’ He’d pulled me closer then, pinched my lower lip between his fingers.

As my eyes watered from the pain he said, ‘I’ve never used you either, love. I told you the truth on our first night, didn’t I darling? You’ve always had the choice.’ He’d laughed and asked me to bend over.

Yet, I’ve never left him. Where would I go? What would I do?

I married him because he was the last option; no one else wanted to marry me and I was done waiting for love. I thought I had love four times before and each time the men used me and then discarded me. They told other men, too.

Men always talk about their exploits. I was an exploit and I was talked about. I was ‘easy’—no one falls in love with a girl who’s easy. Hubby didn’t either, but he married me.

I also didn’t leave him because I’d seen too many examples of ‘strong’ women who made the decision to leave their husbands, to end their miserable marriages—only to live more miserably than before.

Like the woman who was serially, physically abused by her husband. Friends, family, neighbours, everyone knew about it. Everyone sympathized and everyone accepted he was a bastard. Sometimes, after a particularly bad night of beating, some kind neighbour would also cook dinner and bring it over. Sometimes, they took her to a doctor to get her patched up.

‘Bechari,’ they would say, ‘how she suffers.’

Then, one day, she could not take it anymore. It hurt a little too much. He’d broken her ribs. She called the police, got him arrested. She filed for divorce.