For more than a decade, Damaris Mutunga believed she was investing in love.
She paid rent. She bought clothes. She covered household expenses. She supported a man who had no job and even took a KSh100,000 loan to help him start a business.
In her heart, none of it felt like a sacrifice.
She believed she was supporting her partner as they built a future together.
Years later, however, Damaris says she discovered that the man she had devoted so much of her life to had married another woman.
Her story is one of childhood hardship, love, loyalty, betrayal and the painful realisation that some relationships can hide warning signs in plain sight.
A Childhood That Forced Her to Grow Up Early
Damaris, a Nairobi mother of one, was one of four daughters born to a mother who was only 19 when she had her. By the time her mother was 23, she had four children.
Her parents separated when she was still young. Her mother later struggled with alcoholism before eventually leaving the children in the care of relatives.
Without the opportunity to attend school, Damaris was forced into the world of work at an age when most children are still learning how to read and play.
At just eight years old, she began working as a househelp.
Her monthly salary was reportedly KSh250—a sum she says she never personally received.
“I never received it at any point. I didn’t even know anything about money. I mean, I couldn’t know anything about money at eight years,” she recalled.
Damaris moved between relatives before a childhood friend eventually helped her relocate to Nairobi.
It was in the city that she began building her own life.
And it was also where she would eventually meet the man she believed would become her husband.
When She Thought She Had Found Love
After settling in Nairobi, Damaris met the man at a church.
She had never been in a relationship before, and she was open with him from the beginning.
She told him that she had never dated anyone.
What followed was a relationship that, according to Damaris, lasted roughly from 2012 to 2022 or 2023.
But from the early days of the relationship, she says she became its financial backbone.
The man was unemployed, and Damaris willingly stepped in to support him.
She paid his rent, provided money for his daily needs and even gave him cash for seemingly small personal expenses.
“He would actually ask me for money to trim his beard, and I would give him the money,” she recalled.
Her trust went even further.
Damaris says she gave him access to her ATM card, allowing him to withdraw her salary.
“I used to give him my ATM, and then he would withdraw my salary and take the money for rent and shopping. Then he would leave the rest of the money in the house for me to find,” she explained.
To Damaris, this was not about keeping score.
She believed they were building one household and working towards one future.
Every December, before travelling upcountry, she says she would leave him KSh15,000.
She also contributed KSh7,000 towards the installation of electricity at his family home—believing that the house would eventually become part of the future they were building together.
“I loved him wholeheartedly and with every fibre of my being,” she said.
“I didn’t fall in love with him so that he could help me. All I wanted was for us to build one another.”
The KSh100,000 Loan
Among the most painful chapters of Damaris’s story was the KSh100,000 loan she says she took at the man’s request.
The money was intended to help him start a business at Gikomba market.
According to her account, the business performed well for some time.
Yet Damaris never demanded that he repay the money.
In her mind, she had not really loaned money to a stranger.
She had helped the man she believed was her partner.
“In my head, I was helping my man using my own money. So he was mine and my money was also mine,” she said.
At the time, she says they were already trying to raise money for a wedding.
She therefore continued investing emotionally and financially in the relationship, convinced that marriage and a shared future were ahead.
Then came the revelation that shattered everything.
The Betrayal
Damaris says she later discovered that the man had been travelling to Embu with a friend while pursuing another woman.
According to her account, he eventually took the woman to their bishop for a blessing.
When that relationship allegedly collapsed, Damaris says she came across conversations between the two.
She decided to contact the woman directly.
The woman, whom Damaris recognised from church crusades, was reportedly unaware that the man was already in a relationship.
“I told her that I think the girl he was talking about was me,” Damaris recalled.
The discovery forced Damaris to confront a painful possibility: while she had been planning a wedding and sacrificing her earnings for their future, the man she loved may have been pursuing another relationship.
Eventually, she says she ended the relationship.
She asked him to return her house key and a woofer.
But according to Damaris, the confrontation took an even darker turn.
An Alleged Assault
Damaris alleges that the man later came to her house while her child was at school and assaulted her.
“He came and beat me up. I was alone in the house; the kid was in school. He beat me up because of that,” she recalled.
She says the incident forced her to confront a pattern of behaviour that she had previously normalised.
According to Damaris, physical violence had allegedly occurred before, followed by periods of silence and then situations in which she felt compelled to apologise.
“He’d beat me up, then go silent, and then I had to apologise. Like, he’d beat me up, but I was the one who had to apologise.”
The Red Flags She Says She Missed
Looking back, Damaris now believes the warning signs had been present from the beginning.
She says the man insisted that their relationship remain secret.
He allegedly did not want photographs with her and would delete pictures whenever they appeared together.
“The first red flag was that he didn’t want me to tell anyone that we were dating,” she said.
But Damaris says she did not understand what those signs meant at the time.
She had never experienced romantic love before and had no previous relationship against which to compare her experience.
“I had never been in love, so I had no idea how it should be. I also didn’t know what red flags meant,” she admitted.
More than a decade after their relationship began, Damaris is now left reflecting on the years, money, trust and emotional energy she invested in someone she believed was building a life with her.
Her story is not simply about money lost.
It is about a woman who grew up with very little, fought her way into adulthood, found someone she believed she could trust—and gave that relationship everything she had.
And perhaps the most painful part is that while she was preparing for a wedding, she says the man she expected to marry was secretly building another relationship.
For Damaris, the experience has become a painful lesson about love, boundaries and the importance of recognising warning signs—even when the heart desperately wants to believe everything will work out.
