You know your partner’s secret… How do you cover your tracks?
WHETHER or not we want to admit it, we all have a skeleton or two in our closet — or at the very least we have a secret we do not want our significant other to know about.
Sometimes though, these skeletons find their way to the people from whom we are hiding them.
All Woman shares some of the plans hatched by women to protect their sources, after uncovering their partner’s secrets.
Nadine, 26, customer service agent:
Well, for me, I’ll start a conversation around the topic of whatever he did and pick his brain just to get some amount of confirmation, to see if what I was told was accurate. Then from there I can let him know exactly what I know. If he asks how I know, I would tell him that’s not important, what’s important is that I know and that he already confirmed.
Iyana, 33, beautician:
My man had gone abroad on one of the Ministry of Labour-organised work programmes. It lasted six months, and in that time he seemed to have been around quite a lot. It turns out he ended up getting close and intimate with a past schoolmate of mine. Anyway, I was not the one who saw the messages because he was using one of those old model flip phones while he was there, and the messages were on that phone. The sister stumbling on the messages shared the details with me, so I couldn’t let him know. Anyway, I told him how I met upon my friend and she went on the same programme like him and how she even met someone with his name and they got close. This man had the nerve to be like, “Really? And my name is so uncommon, what a coincidence?”
I continued to describe her, until he very nervously said he might have seen her around. I figured if they had been so involved, they didn’t stop communicating, and I was right. When he went to the bathroom he left his phone and I searched it (I wouldn’t usually do this). I used the keyword “sex” in the search section of Whatsapp. This man saved her number as “Apple Farmer”; the girl’s picture was the display pic and I kindly presented the evidence to him. After months of avoiding him, I eventually forgave him and we worked things out.
Sharry, 36, housing developer:
I usually use memes to start the conversation. My phone is full of them to be used to address just about anything these trifling men can do. So I would ask his take on it, and depending on his response, I would then decide how to reveal my evidence. These days, he knows not to play with me because I have given him an ultimatum, and secondly, he knows he cannot hide anything at all from me because I am better than the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation).
Michelle, 29, teacher:
I have had to do this too many times. Sometimes I have to talk about it like it’s another couple that is going through whatever it is that he did. So I would use made-up names and people, and pretend that the friend of mine came to me with the situation. If he doesn’t fess up, after a couple of days I spell things out. I just usually do not tell him how I know the details.
Camille, 41, marketing executive:
My friend told me about the relationship and how my then husband would pick another woman up and take her out when I had to travel for work. I told him I was going to take a short trip — two days in Florida on the weekend. Before I could say, “Who dat?”, he texted the girl arranging to meet up. So based on that time, I booked a make-up appointment with her. I deliberately went late, (I called to notify her), and my friend dropped me off, because, of course, I didn’t want to take my car.
I was there not even 15 minutes when the man came, I didn’t even realise it was her saying, “Boo is so on-time; what a man sweet”. That made me realise he had arrived. I asked to use her bathroom and slipped away; I could hear giggles and butt slapping and what sounded like sloppy kissing, and so I made my entrance to catch a piece of it. I had an eye full. I kindly moved her curtain, picked up my bag and told the young lady thanks, but I had to leave as I watched “we man” lose his mind.
He ran after me, and apart from warning him not to touch me, I can’t tell you a word that left his lying lips. When my friend came, I booked a trip to Florida and stayed there for three days. I used the time to put things in place for my divorce. I am not perfect, but cheating, in my eyes, is a betrayal of my marriage, which I took seriously.
— Penda Honeyghan
