He Broke Our Engagement in Secret — I Sued Him and Collected My Due

On the day I went to buy fabric for our wedding colours, a stranger congratulated me on my fiancé's marriage to another woman. I stood in Divisoria Market with my phone in my hand, my knees shaking, while the whole city seemed to know my shame before I did.

"Ay naku, Ana, you did not attend?" the vendor asked, smiling as she tied my tomatoes into a black rubber bag. "It was two Sundays ago. Small ceremony, but the pictures are plenty."

My throat closed. "Wedding?" I managed.

She pointed at her own phone as if she were showing me a funny video. Marco Santos. Makati church. Then the civil registry office. The new wife is fair, and the dress was nice.

I left my change on the table and walked until the noise of the market became a blur. In my car, my hands shook so hard the key refused to turn. When I finally started the engine, tears burned my eyes, but anger held them back.

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I opened our WhatsApp chat. Two days earlier, he had typed: My love, let us finalise the guest list this weekend. I will call your tito.

I called him.

It rang.

He did not pick up.

I called again.

He answered on the third ring, voice calm, as if nothing had happened.

"Ana," he said gently, "why are you calling me like that?"

I swallowed. "Marco… did you marry someone else?"

There was a pause, then a slow sigh.

"It is complicated," he said.

That was when I stopped begging for honesty and started thinking about consequences.

Marco Santos and I dated for six years. Not the kind of dating that lived in shadows, but the kind that sat in the open like a family portrait. Everyone around us treated our relationship as a clear road to marriage.

We never had a traditional full engagement, but we did follow the informal steps that carry weight in Ghana. He came to my family's house in Quezon City with his tito and two elders. He greeted my mother properly. He spoke to my titas with respect. He dropped the words people say when they want to sound serious.

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"We are here to make our intentions known."

After that day, my family stopped asking if I was "seeing someone". They started asking when. My friends began calling him my husband-to-be. Even the women at church teased me about my future surname.

Marco fed that certainty. He spoke about timelines as though he had already written them.

"By next year, you will not be living with your aunt," he would say.

"Start thinking of colours you like."

"I am saving for the ring. You know I will not disgrace you."

So I reorganised my life around his promises.

When my cousin offered me a chance to move to Cebu City for a better-paying role, I refused because Marco worked in Manila. When a serious man from my workplace tried to pursue me, I shut it down quickly because I believed I already belonged to someone.

I also invested in the future we discussed. I supported Marco when he changed jobs, contributed to some household items he said we would use "in our home", and used my connections to help him secure a business contract with a friend in Ortigas.

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I did not feel foolish then. I felt loyal.

That was the danger. Love can make you treat hope like evidence.

Marco did not just make private promises. He spoke in front of witnesses. He involved the elders. He allowed our families to plan around him.

So when he started slipping away, it was not just heartbreak.

It was public humiliation waiting to happen.

The distance began quietly, like a tap that stops dripping and leaves you wondering if you imagined the sound.

Marco reduced his visits. He stopped coming by after work. He delayed calls, then returned them at odd hours. When I asked what was happening, he smiled and blamed stress.

"My new role is demanding," he said one evening, scrolling his phone instead of looking at me.

I tried to be understanding. I tried to be the supportive woman everyone praises. But the pattern grew sharper.

He stopped talking about wedding plans.

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When I brought it up, he dodged.

"Let us settle some things first," he would say. "Do not rush me."

I did not rush him. I only asked for clarity. Yet somehow, every conversation turned into a problem with my attitude.

"You worry too much," he told me.

"You are pressuring me."

"You want to control my life."

The words confused me because he used to be the one pushing timelines. Now he acted as if I had invented them.

One Saturday, I carried bibingka and fried fish to his place in Makati, hoping food would soften the tension. His gate was locked. His neighbour looked at me strangely.

"Madam, he has not been here for some days," the woman said. "Maybe he travelled."

He did not tell me he travelled.

That night, I called until my throat hurt. He finally answered and sounded irritated.

"Ana, you are disturbing me," he said.

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"Where are you?" I asked.

"I am fine."

"Fine where?"

He paused, then said, "At my brother's place."

I knew his brother. The excuse sounded thin, but I swallowed it because I did not want to seem paranoid. In Ghana, once you show suspicion, some people use it as proof that you deserve whatever happens.

Then the whispers started.

A friend from church asked casually, "You and Marco are okay?"

A colleague said, "I saw him somewhere with a lady, but maybe it was his cousin."

My tita started watching my face too closely.

One evening, my mother called from Pasig and asked, "When is his family coming again? People are asking me questions."

The pressure did not come only from heartbreak. It came from outsiders, from the way people treat a woman's relationship as if it were community property.

Then came Divisoria Market.

The vendor's comment ripped the final curtain.

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When I confronted Marco properly, he did not deny. He only tried to manage the story.

"It was not planned like that," he said over the phone. "Things happened."

"You married her while I was still calling you my fiancé," I replied, voice shaking.

"Ana, calm down," he said, like I was a child.

The coming days were like a storm. People advised me in loud, dangerous ways.

"Go to his new wife's house and expose him."

"Go live-stream it."

"Break his windscreen. Let him feel pain."

"Go to the pastor. Shame him."

I heard those suggestions, and part of me wanted to listen. Humiliation can make you crave drama the way hunger makes you crave food.

I imagined showing up at his office in BGC (Bonifacio Global City), throwing our photos on his desk, screaming until security dragged me out. I imagined visiting the new wife and saying words that would poison her peace.

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But another part of me felt afraid.

Not afraid of him, but scared of what rage could turn me into.

I did not want my life to become a headline or a cautionary tale.

Still, I wanted accountability.

Marco had moved like a thief, breaking our engagement in secret, and leaving me to explain an empty future to everyone who had celebrated it.

He thought silence would protect him.

He forgot that silence can also become evidence.

My turning point did not come from prayer or a motivational quote. It came from a lawyer with tired eyes and a firm voice.

I visited Attorney Liza Reyes, a family friend who worked as a legal clerk in a small office near the regional trial court in Manila. I expected her to tell me to "move on" the way people always do.

Instead, she listened carefully, then asked one question.

"Did he make a marriage promise that caused you measurable loss?"

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I blinked. "Loss?"

She nodded. "Time, opportunities, money spent, social damage, mental harm. Ana, this is not only a romance issue. It is also a responsibility issue."

I sat up straighter.

She explained that there are lawful ways to seek damages for a broken promise, especially when the promise was serious, public, and involved family. She did not promise me a miracle. She did not sell me revenge. She spoke like someone handing me a map.

Then she said something that changed everything.

"Stop treating your evidence like memories," she said. "Your messages, your witnesses, the introductions, the items you bought, the expenses you incurred, the plans you changed. These things speak."

I felt my body calm for the first time in days.

Because rage had kept me reactive, but knowledge made me strategic.

I went home and looked at my phone from a different angle.

I found his voice notes talking about rings.

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I found screenshots where he told my tito, "I will come for the formal pamamanhikan soon."

I found messages where he asked me to "buy the cooker so we can move faster when we marry."

I wrote down dates, not feelings.

I listed names of witnesses, not enemies.

I remembered the elders who came with him. I remembered my tita who served them drinks. I remembered my pastor who prayed over us as "future husband and wife".

Suddenly, I was not a woman begging for closure.

I was a woman collecting facts.

The power dynamic flipped.

Marco had expected tears and noise.

He did not expect a file.

I did not confront his new wife. I did not go to church to shout. I did not go to social media to express my pain.

I chose the legal route because it allowed me to stay clean while still holding him accountable.

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With Maame Akua's help, I organised everything. We printed conversations. We saved voice notes. We gathered receipts. We contacted the elders who attended the introduction and asked them to confirm, calmly, what they had witnessed.

Some people hesitated, afraid of "family issues". Others surprised me with honesty.

"Yes, we went with him," one tito admitted. "He spoke as a man who wanted marriage."

We filed a civil claim for damages, underscoring the toll his promise had taken on me. We did not frame it as a fight over love. We framed it as a breach that created harm.

Marco reacted exactly as expected.

First, he tried to dismiss me.

"You are wicked," he said when he received notice. "You want to spoil my name."

I replied once, carefully.

"You spoiled my name when you broke our engagement in secret."

Then I went quiet.

He tried to negotiate privately.

He sent messages through mutual friends.

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"Ana is doing too much."

"Tell her to calm down."

"Let us settle it like adults."

But I was already settling it like an adult.

During the process, I learned discipline. I learned how to speak only when necessary. I learned how to let documents carry emotions; I didn't need to shout.

In the end, he chose to compensate me rather than prolong the fight. The amount did not replace my six years. It did not heal my embarrassment overnight. But it acknowledged that my life had value and that his actions had consequences.

When the money landed, I did not celebrate loudly. I sat on my bed in my aunt's house and cried, not from joy, but from release.

Because the compensation was not only cash.

It was closure with structure.

I used part of it to restart plans I had abandoned. I applied again for roles outside Manila. I started saving for my own place.

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I went back to therapy through a counsellor at a clinic in Mandaluyong, because I needed to process what betrayal does to trust.

Marco moved forward with his new marriage, but he did it with a scar on his record, a reminder that secrecy does not erase responsibility.

And I walked away with my dignity intact.

For a long time, I thought dignity meant staying quiet. I believed a "strong woman" swallows betrayal and pretends it never happened. In Ghana, people praise silence the way they praise suffering.

But silence is not always strength.

Sometimes, people can use you badly by staying silent.

Marco broke our engagement in secret because he believed I would react in the only ways society expects from a heartbroken woman. Cry. Fight. Shame. Destroy. Then regret.

He expected me to lose myself in emotion, so that he could frame me as unstable and himself as the calm victim of a "dramatic woman".

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That is why the legal route mattered.

It reminded me that accountability does not need chaos. It can be structured. It can be calm. It can be firm.

I also learned that a promise is not a poem. When a person repeats timelines, involves elders, and asks you to reorganise your life around "our future", that promise carries weight. Love cannot be an excuse for carelessness. Romance does not cancel responsibility.

I do not advise people to sue for every heartbreak. Some wounds need time, not court. However, I now understand that there are moments when the appropriate response is not revenge, nor silence.

It is boundaries with backing.

Today, I choose my future with more caution. I do not build my life around words alone. I ask for clarity. I protect my options. I keep my plans alive, even while in love.

Because a partnership should expand your life, not suspend it.

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If someone promised you a future and quietly took it away, what would it look like to respond with wisdom instead of rage?

This story is inspired by the real experiences of our readers. We believe that every story carries a lesson that can bring light to others. To protect everyone's privacy, our editors may change names, locations, and certain details while keeping the heart of the story true. Images are for illustration only. If you'd like to share your own experience, please contact us via email.

Source: YEN.com.gh