My terminally ill ex husband asked to see me one last time but my current husband said he’d divorce me if I do it.
The relationship between me and my ex-husband lasted over a decade. When my own family disowned me and left me with nothing, he was the only person who stayed. He didn’t just offer emotional support; he quit his job to move across the island so I could be closer to my work, and he worked double shifts to pay for my degree at NUS. He poured everything he had into my future.
Three years ago, he suddenly initiated a divorce. I was blindsided and devastated, thinking he had simply stopped loving me. It was only much later that I discovered the truth: he had been diagnosed with a terminal medical condition. He chose to push me away and endure the illness alone because he didn’t want to “ruin” my life by making me a full-time caregiver before I had even started my career. He sacrificed his own desire for a family—something we both wanted desperately—so that I could have a chance at a normal life.
Now, I am five months pregnant with my current husband’s child. We have a stable life in Singapore, but everything changed yesterday when I received a message saying my ex is in the final stages of his illness and has asked to see me one last time at the hospital.
When I brought this up to my current husband, the reaction was cold and immediate. He didn’t offer sympathy or even try to understand the history. Instead, he called the request “inappropriate” and labeled my ex as “manipulative,” claiming he was trying to interfere with our marriage from a hospital bed. He looked me in the eye and gave me an ultimatum: “If you go to see him, I will file for divorce. I won’t have my wife visiting another man, ex or not.”
I am seeing a side of my husband I never knew existed. He knows what my ex did for me—he knows that without that man’s sacrifice, I wouldn’t even have the degree or the career that helps sustain our current household. Yet, he is willing to throw away our marriage and leave me to raise our child alone over a one-hour hospital visit.
I feel trapped. If I stay home to appease my husband, I will live with the lifelong guilt of failing the person who saved me when I had no one. If I go, I risk losing the father of my child and the home we’ve built. I don’t want to sneak behind his back, but the clock is ticking, and I’m realizing that the man I’m married to now might be capable of walking away from me when I’m at my most vulnerable.