Always Bathes Twice Before Bed — I Finally Discovered Why

Chapter 1

At first, I thought it was just her way of feeling clean.

My wife, Amaka, had always been soft: soft in her movements, soft in her voice, soft in the way she placed things carefully, as if they could break with harsh words. We had been married for five months, and every night followed the same rhythm: dinner, a little laughter, checking her phone, and then she would head off for her second bath of the day.

Even on days when she hadn’t gone out.

Even on days when we didn’t make love.

Even when I begged her to stay.

She would emerge from the bathroom smelling like a perfume commercial—damp skin, towel wrapped snugly, and that same scent of hibiscus and vanilla trailing behind her. She would slip into bed, always facing away from me, saying, “Goodnight, love,” and fall asleep before I could touch her.

I told myself not to rush her. Maybe she needed time.

The truth was—I was afraid of ruining what we had.

My name is Femi. Thirty-one years old. I design kitchens for a living. I’m not rich, but I know how to make a woman feel secure. That was all I ever wanted—someone to come home to, someone who wouldn’t make me feel like I was too much or not enough. When Amaka came into my life, I thought I had finally reached my destination.

We met in a furniture store. She was looking for a new reading chair, and I was fixing a broken drawer. Her first words to me were, “Why are you sweating so much?”

I told her it was the price of honest work. She laughed. In that moment, I knew I wanted to be near her laughter for a long time.

Loving her was easy. She enjoyed old Nollywood movies, yam mash with too much spice, and sleeping with socks on even when the power went out. Her smile held peace within. But it was her silence that lingered the most—not the angry kind of silence, but the kind that makes you wonder what she’s thinking.

I started noticing the second bath in our second week together. At first, it didn’t bother me. A woman has her habits, right? Some snore, others talk in their sleep. If hers was bathing again before bed, so be it.

But gradually… it began to seem like she was washing away something more.

Something more than sweat. More than stress.

Something she didn’t want to lie next to me.

She never told me no.

But she also never told me yes.

Just soft smiles. Light touches. And silence, wrapped in the scent of hibiscus.

Then one night, I heard something.

Just as she came out of the bathroom—the wet hair, the towel clinging to her body—something fell from her.

It wasn’t loud. Just enough to make me turn.

It rolled under the bed.

She quickly bent down and picked it up, too quickly, like someone who didn’t want to explain.

And in that brief moment… I saw it.

A small dark bead. It wasn’t part of her jewelry.

Something older. Rougher.

Something that didn’t belong in our bedroom.

—

Chapter 2

The bead was black, small, and dull-looking. The kind of thing you’d find sewn into the waistband of old handkerchiefs or tied with red thread and hidden under pillows in village homes. It didn’t seem like something Amaka would use, not with her silk scarves, her perfume, and her Instagram turbans. But she picked it up quickly, as if hiding something, and acted as if nothing had happened.

She slipped into bed beside me, said her usual, “Goodnight, love,” and turned away as if the day hadn’t carried any weight.

I didn’t say a word.

My back was rigid against the mattress, but my mind had already left the room.

That same night, I decided I would stop pretending. I had smiled too much. I had ignored too many things. This time, I needed to see with my own eyes what was really happening inside that bathroom.

So the next night, I waited.

I acted normal. We had rice with sauce for dinner. Then we watched a show on TV. I asked her about her day at work, and as always, she replied with the same: “Work was fine, just a bit stressful.” The air between us was clean but thin, like a handkerchief hanging without a breeze.

And then, around 10:30 PM, she got up.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

I nodded. “Okay.”

She grabbed her towel, her sponge, her phone.

That phone was always in her hand—even when she went to the bathroom.

The door closed softly behind her. I counted twenty seconds. Then I got up.

I moved slowly. No slippers. I tiptoed like someone who didn’t want their own truth to hear them coming. The hallway light was off, but a dim light under the bathroom door spilled onto the tiles. That’s when I heard it.

A sound.

Soft at first, like a voiceless murmur. Then it grew deeper. It elongated like a breath. Then it came back again.

This time, clearer.

It wasn’t a prayer.

It wasn’t singing.

It wasn’t anything I had heard my wife do.

I approached. Not too close. Just enough to see that the light from her phone—the screen light—was flickering on the tiles through the narrow space under the door. Then I heard something else.

Wet sounds. Rhythmic. Almost… mechanical.

And then I heard her voice. Not a full speech. Just breathing. And small, muffled sounds that didn’t sound like sadness, or fear, or devotion.

And my heart? It stopped moving normally.

I leaned against the wall. Not because I was tired, but because suddenly my legs no longer trusted the ground. My eyes burned, not from crying, but from that way your face tenses when you’re witnessing something you can’t stop.

Then the sound changed. A low, quick gasp.

And as quickly as it came, silence.

Stillness.

The shower turned on. Not strong, just the typical splashing of warm water. I backed away before I could open the door and see me. I returned to bed like a thief in my own house. I lay down. I covered myself. Eyes wide open. Mind racing.

A few minutes later, she came out. Damp skin. That towel again. That scent again. Hibiscus and vanilla.

She entered the room in peace. As if her body hadn’t been doing something that didn’t include me. As if she didn’t know I was breathing in confusion.

She slipped into bed beside me. Whispered “Goodnight, love,” and turned away.

And me? I lay there staring at the ceiling.

I wanted to speak. Ask. Even move a little so she would know I wasn’t asleep. But something stopped me.

Shame? Fear? Pride?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t sleep for a long time, but I didn’t cry either. I just lay there, feeling like a stranger in my own marriage.

And while I was still thinking about what I had just heard, something else entered the room silently.

It was Mirabel;

Mirabel was my niece, who had been living with us for a while.

She had a habit of not always knocking. But that night, I was too overwhelmed to scold her.

Maybe she had come to use the bathroom, because we shared the same one, I don’t know. But she lingered for a moment by the door, and after a while, I heard her enter the bathroom…

Somehow, my mind wasn’t at ease. I needed to know what my wife was hiding from me.

I was still lost in my thoughts when, suddenly, an idea crept into my head.

—

Chapter 3

The idea was simple, almost childish in its form, but brutal in its purpose: if she wouldn’t tell me, I would take it away.

That black bead. That strange object she picked up as if it were something sacred. That phone she wouldn’t let go of even to bathe. That voice I had heard, almost like an echo from another life. What else was Amaka hiding behind those midnight showers?

So the next day, while she was at work, I asked for permission at mine. I didn’t say why. I just needed to be alone at home… with her bathroom, her drawer, her clothes. Our shared world that suddenly felt filled with things that weren’t mine.

First, I checked her nightstand. Nothing. Just a body cream, a Bible, and her silk scarf. Then I went to the closet. I smelled her clothes, not looking for clues, but for something that would bring me peace. I found nothing.

I was left with the bathroom.

I closed the door behind me as if I were afraid someone would see me profane that space.

I checked the towel rack, the baskets with creams, the soaps. Nothing out of the ordinary. Until I looked under the sink. There was a small black plastic box. Not very big. No labels.

I pulled it out slowly.

Inside, I found several things: small bottles with amber liquids, white powder in transparent bags, and more black beads like the one I saw roll under the bed. There was also something else: a small piece of paper folded in four, almost like a handwritten note.

I opened it.

It was a list.

—Blessing water — three drops
—Snake oil — no more than one drop
—Repeat the man’s name seven times
—Bathed with the mixture for seven consecutive nights

My body went cold. I felt like the bathroom no longer belonged to me, that the home we built was something else—a scene, a disguise.

I left everything as it was. I closed the box. I put it back under the sink. And I left.

That night, I acted normal. I said nothing. Amaka didn’t either. We had dinner. We laughed. We watched TV. And, as if nothing, at 10:30 she got up.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, as she did every night.

“Okay,” I replied, my voice steady, even though everything inside me was screaming.

This time, I didn’t follow her. I didn’t approach the door. I didn’t listen. I just sat in the dining room. And I thought.

I thought about the bead. About the recipe. About the list.

I thought about why.

And then it all became clear.

Amaka wasn’t bathing for cleanliness. Not for religion. Not even for a ritual of protection.

Amaka was washing me away.

Something, in her mind or in her heart, told her that I shouldn’t be imprinted on her skin. That she needed to wash me away like a stain, a burden, an energy.

Maybe she didn’t hate me.

Maybe… she simply didn’t love me.

Not like I loved her.

When she finished bathing, she returned as always. Shiny skin, soft aroma, warm smile.

“Goodnight, love.”

But this time, I didn’t respond. I just looked at her.

And she—for the first time—didn’t turn to the wall.

She looked at me too.

And in that silence, I knew we both understood.

Final Chapter: What Water Cannot Wash Away

The next morning was the calmest of all.

I woke up before her. Made coffee. Waited for her in the dining room, with the black box in front of me. Not with anger. Not with scandal.

Just with truth.

She came out of the bedroom, in her robe.

She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the box.

“Did you go to the bathroom?”

“Yes,” I replied.

Silence.

She approached, but didn’t sit down. Her eyes didn’t seek to defend themselves. Nor to justify.

She simply said:

“It wasn’t to hurt you.”

“Then, for what?”

She sighed.

“So that you wouldn’t stick to me.”

“Stick to you?”

“On the skin. In the mind. In the soul. I can’t sleep if I don’t wash you away.”

That phrase pierced me.

There was no hatred in her voice.

Just a deep exhaustion. The kind of exhaustion that comes from pretending, from enduring, from not knowing how to leave without hurting.

Amaka wasn’t a witch. Nor a manipulator.

She was a woman who couldn’t love me the way I needed.

“Do you love me?” I asked her.

She hesitated.

Then, with a sadness I had never seen, she said:

“I respect you. I admire you. But I don’t love you as I should. And I bathe because I don’t know how to say it without breaking you.”

And there it was.

The cleanest truth of all.

She wasn’t deceiving me. She wasn’t betraying me. She just didn’t love me. And didn’t know how to leave.

So I left.

Not with shouts. Not with curses.

Just with a suitcase, and the scent of hibiscus still floating in the air.

—

Epilogue

Sometimes, the body knows what the heart denies.

And sometimes, one bathes not to be clean, but to be able to sleep without carrying guilt.

I continue designing kitchens.

And Amaka… I don’t know. Maybe she still bathes twice.

But this time, not for me.

And I, finally, can sleep. Because I understood that not every goodbye needs a fight.

Some just need water… and silence.