by Adaobi Okwy

I don’t have a husband but I do know that telling my husband that I am feeling emotionally drawn to other men is a deal breaker. But then, some other people may disagree. Someone may say that talking about it helps the feelings to be addressed. In this, I ask about the personality of the person being told…

Over the weekend, I was indirectly caught up in a situation- a husband was raising major storm because my Aunt who he called in to advise them on a problem, told his wife that she shouldn’t tell her husband everything especially if it would cause their problems. The husband got wind of this advice and went ballistic. He called the advice “satanic and demonic” and my Aunt an “agent of marriage destruction”. His wife would only keep things from him to the detriment of their marriage, he decreed.

Now let’s back up a bit… what did my Aunt hear from his wife that made her give the advice? The man’s wife (since their marital woes started) was finding herself drawn to other men. Sex was not yet involved. The feelings she said, were possibly her psychological ways of feeling attractive and wholesome, through her own husband’s temper tantrums, verbal and emotional abuses.

I was asked to look at both sides objectively…honestly, I was stumped.

I don’t have a husband but I do know that telling my husband that I am feeling emotionally drawn to other men is a deal breaker. But then, some other people may disagree. Someone may say that talking about it helps the feelings to be addressed. In this, I ask about the personality of the person being told…would that raise distrust that can never be quelled even if the couple are able to move past the situation.

My aunt I must state is not the first woman who has said that husbands are not told everything as they will use those same things against you. Meanwhile, some argue, husbands don’t tell their wives everything. For example, how many husbands actually tell their wives how much they earn monthly or even how they spend their money…since most of them know exactly how much their wives make and how they spend it…to the latter?

Is it even possible that anyone tells another every single thought that passes through his or her head? There are the crude, the kind, the trivial, the necessary, the urgent and…you get the idea. Mouthing off on every one of them is senseless and doesn’t make you a good person to yourself or your spouse in my opinion. Bottom line, I believe that communication is good for all relationships otherwise, it stagnates and dies off. On the other hand though, I believe that I am better off not saying something that could potentially damage my marriage, to my spouse- especially if it is one that I haven’t acted on.

To clarify the last statement, confession is different from a probability. Probability isn’t hurtful in itself until acted on. Well, no man is an oasis of knowledge so, what do you think of this?

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Adaobi Okwy blogs at www.adaobiokwy.com and tweets from @adaobiokwy.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.