Loose lips sink ships

THERE are many expressions that highlight the positives of sharing — sharing is caring; shared joy is double joy; and sharing will enrich everyone with more knowledge. But there are also warnings about sharing too much — loose lips will sink ships, and other utterings like those.

Because once something is said you can’t take it back, and sometimes — many times, in fact — as a wise man once said, you just have to stay silent. This applies especially in relationships when the desire to blab, to share all, to surrender all, overrides common sense. As the people below explain, when their partners bared their soul, there was less redemption and more condemnation.

We asked, what was something your partner shared with you that made you think less of them?

Omar B, 40:

She said all her exes had cheated and then went on to marry other women right after they broke up with her. She was just telling me about the bad experiences she’d had with guys, but it immediately raised my red flag meter. What was wrong with her why every guy never saw her as wife material? It made me think less of her to be honest, and I didn’t really give any serious thought to taking the relationship further. We broke up, and I warned her not to share so much with men, but I bet she’s telling her new man that all her exes broke it off with her and she doesn’t know why.

Garfield R, 46:

Her babydaddy wasn’t taking care of their daughter, and they were in and out of family court for years duking it out. I wasn’t really interested in the case, I just did my part and was there for her and her kid. One day she was upset at the outcome of one of the court hearings and started telling me that the judge was upset because she had lied to the dad about her daughter being in a serious accident in order to get money from the dad. I pressed her for more info, and she spilled all the many lies and manoeuvrings she had done over the years to keep custody and get money. While I understood that she needed child support, my heart turned against her same time, ’cause I realised that she was a witch, and woman wicked and lie.

Ed B, 45:

My ex said when she was in university she used to go on dating sites, meet men, and get money from them and that’s how she paid her fees. She said she never slept with any of them, but how could I trust a con artist? Even though I met her years after she left college and she had a career that paid well, all I saw after her confession were gold digger signs each time she opened her mouth.

Cherise, 37:

My husband shared that his mother was basically a go-go dancer, and she had several other kids apart from him that she just left with their dads in various parishes. He was explaining why he never got to finish school and had to practically fend for himself from he was 12 years old. If he had told me before I probably wouldn’t have minded, but he had told me some other story about his family situation, then after we were married, told the truth. Yes, I looked down on him and his family after that because it really wasn’t the kind of entanglement I wanted to be mixed up in because my family is very nuclear and traditional.

Ann-Marie, 39:

Like three years into us dating, he casually mentioned that he had a nine-year-old daughter who lived with his mom in St Elizabeth. There had been no mention of the child before — no pictures of her in his house or his phone, and no visits, because he spent all his time with me and my two kids, who weren’t his. We lived together and he was super involved with my kids — I mean big, big soccer dad. I couldn’t look past that. If he could ignore a whole child, what would he do if I was to have his child and we broke up? After trying in vain to have him start a relationship with the child, including having her come visit on holidays and him being against it, I just left him. Because a bad father cannot be a good husband.

Blonzah, 32:

The abortion debate was hot in Parliament, and he chewed fire at any woman who was a “walking cemetery”. While I respected his position, the venom, I thought, was uncalled for. A year or so later we were talking about exes and he mentioned how he had to take a girl to Spanish Town to get an abortion because she was his friend’s woman and he was “hitting it” and they “made a boo boo”. So he was OK with abortion when it suited him, but he was anti the act when it didn’t. He was too much of a confused soul, plus his arguments were dunce, so there was no way we could last.