BEHIND every woman scorned is a man who made her that way, a man who caused her to unleash the fury that made William Congreve compare her to a character more tempestuous than anything hell could devise. Often we marvel at the stories of women reacting to being betrayed, without focusing on the source of their grievance — the men who would have led them to that dark place.

These women tell the depths of the dungeons of despair that their men led them to, that resulted in them shocking friends and family with the ferocity of their rage.

Krystal, 27:

He had not one, but two other women pregnant at the same time I was, and to add insult to injury, had me attending clinic at the public hospital in Spanish Town, while one of the other women was going to a private doctor that he paid for. I only found this out when two of us ended up on the ward at the same time because I had complications and had to be admitted early, and he was basically juggling visits with the two of us, until a nurse called him out for it. It was this second woman who told me about the third one (both of them knew about each other, but not about me). I calmed down, delivered my baby, and made him think that everything was OK. I waited months after, while I planned. He was launching his auto parts sales business and I helped him secure a location, and helped him source the parts, etc. I helped him with the flyers and promoting the business to everyone — taxi and bus drivers, even had a town crier. The night before opening day my cousins and I stripped the store bare, down to the tint on the door and windows bearing the business name. So next morning when he showed up to do business, he thought he’d been robbed.

Camille, 34:

Around the same time I searched his computer (I was borrowing it for work and some things popped up) and found out that he was messaging and meeting women from Tinder, I also found out that he was ‘borrowing’ money from the citizens association account (he was treasurer). I sent an anonymous e-mail to all the people on the board, and to a few other people in the community, including a policeman and a JP, and told them what he had done. Then I acted like I was defending my husband when they confronted him (I even cried like a doting wife), and didn’t make him any wiser that I was the whistleblower.

Taneisha, 28:

He always had issues with infidelity, but I accepted that it was my burden to bear, and I can’t exit my marriage because of my faith. I’ve accepted that he has wandering eyes, and ignore a lot of it, and just asked him not to bring it into my space. Well, when the nanny came to me and said he was making her uncomfortable I flipped, because this is a young girl in school, and my husband is twice my age. I put his number in the newspaper and online, offering services as a ‘reader man’, and people started calling him night and day, 24/7. He couldn’t change the number because it was his work CUG, so I watched him suffer for a long time.

Doreen, 44:

I told him I was leaving because he cheated. I was very, very angry because this man was basically forcing me to start life over again, with two young kids. I got my lawyer to ask for everything, as we had just hit the five-year mark for common-law. My lawyer was my friend from college so she was working pro-bono. He tried to fight it, but I had all the time in the world, and my lawyer hated men as much as I did at that time. He didn’t have the money to fight the case for as long as I did, or to fight for custody, to prevent me from leaving the country with the kids. I kinda feel bad now because he basically lost his house that I didn’t help him to build, and had to sell a lot of things, and even now, he can’t afford to fly out to see the kids. But at the time I was very angry.