10/02/2026
Good afternoon
I recently saw something in my wife’s bag and honestly don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or be worried.
It’s that long teacher’s notebook, the big one teachers use for lesson notes. Only this one isn’t for teaching, she's been using it for accounting.
For three years, my wife has been writing down every single thing she has spent on me and the family.
She writes it daily, every small thing she spends money on. I’m talking about detailed entries.
Even my boxer shorts.
One time we travelled without my boxers. I thought she put them in my bag while she thought I had. I couldn’t find the type I like in town, and she sent a motor rider to a nearby town to buy them. I gave the money for the purchase and the rider charged GHC10 for delivery, which she paid for it. She wrote it.
Another shocking entry is 50 pesewas sachet water. When we go to town together and she buys water for me, it’s recorded.
She records food, data, airtime, transport, no matter how big or small it is. Even the pineapple she buys for me sometimes. She wrote them all down and added the location she spent that money. She wrote the amounts she spent on my birthday as well. Three years of entries.
I sat down and checked the total. What she has spent on me and the family in 3 years is GHC7,386.
Me too, I’ve spent money on her, and I’m not even counting the money I spent on marrying her, the rent, and the hospital bills.
But aside that alone, I’ve spent over GHC44,000 on the family.
Now I’m here thinking.
A part of me wants to be petty:
Subtract the GHC7k from my own amount and show her the balance so she sees how unfair this accounting mindset is.
Another part of me just wants to raise the money and pay her the GHC7,386 so she can stop the calculations and free my mind.
But the real question is:
What kind of marriage becomes a ledger?
What kind of love becomes an accounting system?
What kind of home turns into profit and loss?
I don't know if anyone will understand me but it doesn’t feel like marriage.
It feels like a silent calculation of what she's done for me and I'm worried it'll be used against me one day.
So I’m asking:
Are there married men on this page who have seen something like this before?
Have you experienced this kind of “accounting” in marriage?
What did you do about it?
Did you confront it?
Ignore it?
Address it?
Or just live with it?
Because I don’t want to destroy my marriage with pettiness, but I also don’t want to ignore a mindset that can quietly destroy a marriage from inside.
I need wisdom.
Not insults.
Just honest advice.
Thank you.
Source: Abena Manokekame
