Secrets (two)

SECRETS (TWO)

                                                                             

After last week’s topic on secrets, I got a lot of response from readers, and I’ll be sharing one of those responses. For those who missed last week’s edition, we talked about the disadvantages of revealing secrets from your past to your spouse, and we also shared a couple of experiences from people who told it all.

Today, we’ll be talking about the consequences of not revealing those past secrets. Let’s take the story of Mrs. Okoye (not real name).

“I was a lady of the night when I met my husband, but after meeting him, I decided to give up that life and settle down with him. I managed to put a stop to my trade, and put it all behind me. After taking this life changing decision, I felt it wasn’t really necessary for my husband to know about my past, since I had no intension of ever walking down that road again.

We eventually got married, and all seemed to be just fine and dandy, until a distant uncle of my husbands’ whom I was yet to meet came back from Malaysia for a little family visit, my husband was kind enough to offer to accommodate him for the duration of his stay in this country. On that faithful day, the said uncle came home, and when he saw me, he smiled like he knew who I was, although I was very sure we were yet to meet. For two days after his arrival, he took every chance he got to smile at me lasciviously or to make rude and inappropriate comments about my looks. I became very uncomfortable with him in the house, and I tried discussing it until my husband, but being a man that he is, he said he had seen nothing untoward with his uncle’s behaviour around me. After a while, I decided to come out straight and ask Uncle Ken what his problem was, then I got the shocker of my life. He had been one of my “Clients”, and he said he would like to patronise my services again. At this stage, I panicked and begged him not to say anything to my husband; he agreed on the condition that I slept with him just one last time, I refused of course.

I took a decision to come clean about my past that night, but as the devil will have it, Uncle Ken beat me to it. My husband couldn’t believe his ears, he was so angry and disappointed, not just because of the life I had led, but the fact that I kept my secrets away from him. He said it was simply unforgivable. We are currently separated.”

This is just one of the many responses I got, almost all of them toeing the same line of “if only I had just told him/her” about my past. I happen to be one of those people who believe that “what you don’t know, won’t hurt you”, because in as much as we say we would rather know the truth, we can’t always handle the truth, and sometimes, we wish we never knew. I am yet to find any relationship that actually survived the so called truth.

So I am still asking, isn’t it better to just start a fresh, and leave your past in the past?