ROMANCE: WHEN A WOMAN'S HEART HAS LEFT YOU - PART I -BY CHARLES IDEHO

Not real couple in the story.

TJ had never been this stunned all his life. He couldn't recall when anything had so browbeaten him into a dejected state such as what he had just heard from Ronke, his wife of more than a decade. He sat there, his chin resting on both his hands, nonplussed. Where did his relationship with his wife go wrong?

Where did he slip? Had he been too soft with Ronke over the years that she had now become so strong willed as to look him in the face to spew venom on him? He couldn't believe this was happening. JT, just admit it, you have lost it, you lily livered fool! he cursed himself and winced in the process. He knew he had to arrest the drift. He couldn't just sit back and allow a woman mess him up and all he had built for twelve years. The masculinity in him wouldn't let him allow the current row to overcome his sense of authority. He must activate the man in him, he assured himself. But how? He was a man, wasn't he?

Slowly but steadily, he found strength in his voice to speak. He looked at Ronke again.

"Ronke," he called.

"Yes, TJ," she responded, staring at him, noncommittal, while she remained seated, legs crossed, mouth pouting, eyes unyielding.

"How did we end up here," JT asked.

"I don't know. Ask yourself. After all, there are always two sides to a coin."

"So you sit there and have the enfontry to tell me that you've lost faith in our marriage? How dare you, Ronke? What in this world gave you that boldness to speak to me that way?" The anger that had welled up in him was unmistakable. His fists were clenched as though he would hit his wife in a moment. But violence had never been part of him. Somehow, he managed to contain his rising exasperation at a woman who had brought him so much emotional heartache these past intervening months.
"TJ, the truth is, I can't help pretending that I still have any feelings for you. My heart has left you. I've said that repeatedly. I am not given to pretenses and I feel it's best if I told you," Ronke stated, adjusting her sitting position.

TJ stared hard at her, not knowing whether getting up and giving her the beating of her life would jolt her back to life. As far as he was concerned there was no longer life in her.

When TJ had first noticed how Ronke had increased the time she spent on the social media, he was just curious and all Ronke's responses had always been "Nothing. I am just amusing myself." When she abandoned Instagram and was keeping late nights in their living room, leaving him alone in the bedroom nights without number, he knew she was up to something sinister. Somehow he had managed to gain access to her phone, where he discovered to his chagrin that she was deeply into cyber romance on Facebook Messenger  with a man! The chat history they had generated would fill over a hundred pages. And Ronke was no longer enthusiastic about him. She was always smiling to herself, perhaps whenever she recalled the dirty things she and her phantom cyber boyfriend had been chatting  about. They freely discussed sex, sometimes promising to experiment with some positions when they eventually met flesh and blood. Yet sex between TJ and Ronke was now happening once in a long while. Even when it did happen, it had become drab and without life. Passion was dead. Emotion was absent. Affection had since taken flight.
"So you no longer love me, right?" TJ asked, getting to his feet, his gangly height towering above her. He began to pace through the available space in his well furnished living room. "If you no longer love me, why are you still with me?"

"Well, technically, I wouldn't say I am with you. I chose to remain under this roof for the sake and love of my kids," Ronke offered, avoiding his piercing gaze.

"Oh, that's it! You want to remain here to keep pretending that you're still married to me when the opposite is the situation?  How clever!"

Ronke hissed. But TJ ignored her. "You can hiss as much you desire," he told her. "But let me disappoint you, Ronke. I am soon going to throw you out into the streets. And worst still, you will lose your bid to keep the kids. Let me tell you why. I hold the aces in this matter. No Judge would entertain the plea of an adulterous woman who seeks the custody of her children. And your parents and family members will disown you without giving it a second thought. Before long, you will realize that you have nothing and no one to live for. You can go and live with that idiot who has turned your brains inside out. How long do you think you will last with him? In a couple of years, your breasts will give in to his constant assaults and will flatten as a consequence. Your pretty face will lose its radiance and allure. And that idiot will vandalise your body without mercy..."

"You're mad. TJ, for saying that. Are you high on codeine or something?" she cursed.

"Me, high on codeine?"

That hit TJ below the belt. Anger surged through him. He was enraged, as his body convulsed with anger, eyes blazing and clenched fists swinging in all directions. He moved towards Ronke in a flash, crashing a side table in the process. And before she could get up from her seat for safety, he reached and grabbed her by the throat, applying pressure as though to choke her to death. Ronke's face lost colours as she struggled to break free from his hold. As TJ's right hand swung in the air to bring down a deadly blow upon her face, the front door burst open...