Trapped in Debt, Trapped in Love

She was supposedly marrying the love of her life-after ten years of dating. Years of shared dreams, laughter, and promises were all gathered up into this wedding. But no more than a week after the pealing of the wedding bells had subsided, a rude reality set in. There was so much her husband, whom she had implicitly trusted, had kept from her-a monumental aspect of his life: an incredibly deep well of debt. Never once in the ten years did he mention it.

Soon after marriage, his business collapsed and took them further down into the very pits of poverty. The life she had imagined started to come apart in front of her eyes. Yet, she did not back down. Always believing in standing by her partner through thick and thin, she plunged deep into her life savings to help. Every cent she had ever earned as a working woman was pumped into the books of his company.

But even with her sacrifices, the debt seemed to grow. They had moved in with his family now; all hope for recovery seemed to flee fast. She came to understand that her husband wasn’t just unlucky; he lacked the skills to pull them out of this hole. He had bad financial habits and no qualifications for a job that could stabilize them. He was not fit to run a business, and neither had he planned any escape from the situation they had found themselves in.

This has taken its heavy toll, and it has left her shattered. They both slid into depression; the once loving relationship now sullied by constant fights and feeling betrayed. She had made certain compromises in her life to support him, but in turn, she was feeling cheated. All those years of honesty on her part, met by lies.

She blamed herself in quiet moments. How could she have been so naively trusting? She had handed him her future, and now found herself in a marriage founded on false promises.

Yet, with all the misery, she had not gotten herself to leave. There were times when she remembered why she had fallen in love with him. He was loyal-if there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that he would never leave her no matter how bad things got. But was loyalty enough to keep her in a life so replete with constant financial strain and emotional exhaustion?

She would most often catch herself weighing her options-really, could she find a more complete and more stable partner? Settle down and finally live an honest life, as one would think? Yet, in a very short time, every time the thought of leaving him crossed her mind, the feeling of guilt overcome her, turning her back on the man she had been loving for so many years. Was it really possible to start over and leave him in his mess, to drown alone? A question of whether to go, where the hope seems to be that things will get better, or to stay, knowing full well they won’t?

For now, she remains undecided, her mind caught in a tug of war between love, loyalty, and debt overload.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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