United Kingdom based Nollywood actress, Timmy K. MacNicol, has lamented what she has been through for seven years after getting married to a Briton old enough to be her father.
Timmy K said her ex-husband not only abused her but also forced her to take blood oath all through the time their marriage lasted.
The actress and producer got married to a British at the age of 19 and filed for divorce on February 6, 2020 to save her life.
Now depressed and going through divorce, the mother of one also said her ex-husband enslaved her in the United Kingdom. She disclosed that he made her take blood oath so she won’t have extra marital affairs.
“No one believes what I am going through, no one believes that emotional abuse is real. It got to a point that I couldn’t hold myself anymore, I felt empty I felt like the whole world has ended, I felt less human. I can’t be going through pain like this just in the name of marriage. We were married for seven years.
“When we got married, he forced me to swear blood oath with him that I will never cheat on him or leave him in any circumstance. This is why I will always advise young ladies never to marry elderly men no matter how much money he has. If you get married to him because he will better your life just the same way I did there are things inside that marriage that you cannot handle. It will destroy you gradually, you will have money in your account and you can’t spend it.
Due to his abusive nature, I haven’t had sex for good nine years even though I am married. I went back to being a virgin after giving birth to my son,” she said.
She continued by lamenting about how the broken marriage is affecting her son: “Every single day, my son would ask me why is it that daddy is not here to take me school. Why is my daddy not here to play with me? This breaks my heart seeing my son in pains. When he goes to the park and sees other of his friends playing with their dad, he feels so bad because he has never experienced such. Don’t get me wrong, my estranged husband loves his children dearly. He would do anything for them. But I wanted more; affection, being in his life and not by buying expensive gifts and toys. My son’s room is filled with expensive toys. That’s is not what my son really wants or needs in his life. He needs his two parents bringing him up equally. Whenever my son, laments I cry bitterly because it reminds me of me.
“I didn’t grow up with my father or mother. It made me make mistakes in life. I stayed and married this man because I wanted a family. I thought he was a good man. He is a nice man inside but he has ego and rudeness. They cover those nice sides of him.
“He denied me family. My son is nine years old now. I ought to have like two other children but that’s not happening. I am not Mary that gave birth to Jesus without sex. I have been going through trauma. This marriage has cost me a lot.
“In an emotional laden voice, Timmy K passed on an advice to young girls who marry older men and also those who plan to do so, especially the likes of Regina Daniels.
“Young girls should avoid getting married to an old man; an elderly man, old enough to be their father or even grandfather. You would be denied a lot. The man is old already and gotten children from other women. So after one child, he might not want more from you. If you want more than one child, that would be almost impossible. Getting married to an elderly man, you end up giving more to the man, the only thing he would be giving back to you, is money. And not even all the time because he got other children to take care of.
You see, I wasted my life, just like that. In all, I still give God all the glory.
Thank God that I am still alive and talking about my experience, so that other young girls can learn. Thank God I have a son. I pray that God sees me through the divorce. I would have to come back and start life afresh with my son.”
She also narrated what happens whenever she summons courage and ask him for divorce.
“When asked for a divorce, he said I can’t do anything. Asking me where I would go? If I am going back to Nigeria or Ghana, who would take care of me? He would say, ‘I won’t give you a divorce, I want to take care of you. That was the words he used as tricks to hold me down and made me stay. Later, I had to forcefully ask for divorce. Where I live is in the middle of nowhere. I don’t talk to anyone around here. I pray that no human being in this life should experience depression. Even when people want to genuinely call me, I don’t answer because, I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want more negativity. My husband now calls me mental woman after he has tortured me and put me into fear and depression. Every day ambulance would come and pick me up to the hospital. Appointment with the doctor, almost all the time. If it had been Africa, I would have died since. God forbid. Now I walk in crushes.
Going back to memory lane on how the love affair that led to marriage started and how her husband emotional, mentally and physically abused her to the point of divorce, Timmy K said, “My relationship with him started when he was my God father. From there to something else. Then we got engaged and got married. Then I was busy with my career. I was at a movie training in Ghana when I got pregnant. It was a huge project. I was doing Takwando training. We were much then. It would have been my major breakthrough that was when I found out I was pregnant. Then my misery started. When I told him I was pregnant, he was happy and asked me to stop the training because it was not good for the baby. That was how I lost out on that huge project. And paused my career. I lost everything. We hadn’t gotten married then. We got married after the pregnancy. But then the abuse started. I was quite young then and naive too. I was also an orphan, so he took advantage of that. I saw him as a father figure who was willing to help me. I had no idea I was being used by this man.
This man was treating me like his daughter. He goes to the market, does all the shopping and all.
“When I was seven months pregnant, he would go to the bar and drink till 2:am, then return home to go to work by 7:am. I was alone and cried every single day. He doesn’t care about me or the pregnancy. He also hits me during pregnancy. He was also cheating on me. When I confronted him, he hit me so bad. He almost broke my hand and cut my lips.
I took the photos of all the evidence but he deleted all that from my phone.
He put tracking device on my phone and even the TV, he coded it and controls it from Ghana. It was that bad. He knows my whereabouts all the way from Ghana. Every single thing I do, he knows.
“After giving birth to my son, he employed two nannies because I don’t know how to carry new born baby. Then my foster parents were also with me then. Everything was going well then, but there and then the emotional abuse started. He was doing physical until I arrested him. His friend made him make sure he would never do that again. This man has treated me the way I can’t explain.
“My son was one year when he first witnessed his father trying to kill me. He was strangling me. My baby was crying and pushing him off from me. He was crying, saying ‘Dada ..Dada..go go go go…’
“After I went to see a therapist in Ghana, she advised me to go back to United Kingdom. Luckily for me, she knows my husband and his ex-wife too. She understood where I was coming from, so she advised us to go to United Kingdom and train my son there. But after we moved, he refused to stay with us. He moved back to Ghana. Things were so different here in United Kingdom. I became independent again. Doing all my things by myself. He wanted to bring me down in every way, if I put on lipstick, he calls me a clown. He calls me a monkey, awful, disgusting, ugly and fat. He used all kinds of negative words on me. Tears are all I eat and drink like water. He neglected me for years. I tried to make the marriage work, but the more I try the worse he became. Every single thing I do, is not right. I don’t have my opinion in the marriage. He has all the decisions to make and I can’t argue or do otherwise. My sister in-law has tried her best to talk to this man but all to no avail.
“People keep asking me when I chose to stay in a toxic marriage. I have been enduring it since and didn’t realise the damage he was doing to me.
“I was submissive to my husband as a true African woman. I kept thinking of what people would say. And he also apologises whenever he is done torturing me. He would change for two days or three, then go back to tormenting me.
“I had contemplated suicide twice because I couldn’t hold myself anymore. I felt empty. It was like the whole world has ended. All I was thinking of what I was still doing here. I wanted to end it all.”