Matrimonial Causes: Should Spouses Reveal Personal Secrets?

by Eromose Ileso

A friend’s wife once told him that he never speaks about any of his secrets. His reply was that he preferred it that way. While another friend told his wife to keep her secrets, while he keeps his after he was confronted by his wife that he doesn’t divulge certain information about his life.

These are just two instances in marriages were spouses have had heated exchanges about personal secrets. Most times, it is the wife that makes the move in this respect in inquiring about aspects of the man’s life she notices he doesn’t like talking about.

Ordinarily, secrets doesn’t have to be something sinister or uncouth here, but rather it could be an information that a spouse just wants to be remain hidden for whatever reasons.

The issue of secrets in marriages is embedded in the African culture, where in time past wives were not expected to ask certain questions of their husbands. 

At the time, multi-cultural marriages were not common, and there were instances were both spouses did not even meet before marriage, rather it was the families that made the arrangement for one to meet the other most times in the city. 

In such a culture, a wife seldom asked her husband certain questions. However, with the evolution of different cultures and the increased influence of Western values into several cultures, many wives are demanding to know more about aspects of their husband’s life that ordinarily a wife would not have thought of in time past.

These issues have ended up causing friction and fostered an atmosphere where trust is at a low ebb in marriages.  

Yet, both spouses have secrets they would like to remain hidden, as there are certain aspects of their life they know would lead to problems if there are any revelations in respect of that area. 

However, often times, it is the events that have happened during the marriage, not before both spouses met that often leads to issues. 

For instances, most husbands prefer to not to tell their wives what they are doing for their family, as a wife that lacks the requisite understanding could suddenly feel he is doing more for his family than even her family. While also there are husbands who also don’t reveal any aspect of their work life to their wife like details of their take home pay and any other deals they are into.

For all intents and purposes, it is the kind of wife a man has that determines what he tells her in a marriage. There are understanding wives that take every information the way it is without giving it strands of interpretations. 

For instance, a man entered into a business deal without telling his wife, but included as a partner, a friend and both friend’s wives are friends. Eventually when the business hit the rocks when they were duped, the friend who was brought in as a partner informed his wife about the turn of events, she in turn informed the wife of the other man who was not aware of what her husband was into, this issue caused a huge disagreement between that man and his wife. 

In this instance, the friend that told his wife about an information only he was disposed to opened the door for friction to develop in another marriage. In the first place, the man who chooses not to inform his wife about the business had his reasons.

For me, there are certain aspects of a man’s life that should be left to the man, as statistics have shown that when certain revelations reach one of the spouses it always ends up causing issues that if left unresolved could result in a separation.

A man worked for 35 years, and during that time, his wife never knew of the amount of his salary. But in that time, he took care of his wife and trained his children all of which had graduated from school. 

However, his wife of over thirty years had cause to stumble on a phone alert that revealed the amount of her husband’s pension. This revelation resulted in the woman to confront him that he had received huge salaries for years and she was not aware of it. She never considered that this was a man that took care of the family, and also trained the children. Rather in this respect the focus was on the amount of the salary that was not known to her, but not on what the man used the money for.

In Western cultures, this is often not the case, where both spouses know most things about themselves. However, in African cultures, it is often difficult to let a spouse know certain aspects of one’s life in order to avoid anything that could cause problems later on. This has led many spouses to leave some aspects of their lives untouched without revealing anything.

In Christian marriages especially during counseling sections, it is common place for the marriage counselor to tell couples that there shouldn’t be secrets in their marriages, this is not always the case as many have chose to use their discretion in dealing with such issues rather than following what was said in a counseling section.

From a biblical point of view, when Apostle Paul wrote of a man in 2nd Corinthians 12:3-4 who was caught up in the third heavens, and he heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. This could be term mysteries and secrets. Which in a nutshell portends that there could be aspects of life that should be left untouched. 

Some could say that this is different from having secrets in marriages, but the underlining point from there, is that not all things are met to be known which is why certain aspects of a couples life should remain a secret.

Going further, in the book of Genesis, an account about a couple was when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac that he got at an old age, he did not inform his wife Sarah about what God told him. And after he carried out that instruction, there is no account in the bible that Sarah ever heard of it. 

This particular account is instructive, because Abraham never informed Sarah of what was a key secret especially one that concerned their son which took decades for them to get. This means there are secrets in a marriage that couples could keep to avoid unnecessary friction. Because, concerning Abraham, Sarah wouldn't have allowed him to carry out that instruction because of how long it took for her to get Isaac. The natural human instinct of thinking as a human would have kicked in from her. Yet it was after Abraham's act of obedience that God's promise of generational blessing came.

In a nutshell, it is the man where it concerns him and the wife where it concerns her, that should determine what secret to reveal and which to keep. Some are met to be kept. But bad secrets eventually find a way out, which is why it must be a secret that is unscarred. The purport of this, is that there would always be secrets in marriages, and it could be an important tool to maintain a certain balance.

Toothpaste row in Marriage Breakup

by Eromose Ileso

It is no longer news that marriages in Nigeria are collapsing like a pack of cards. The ratio of divorce has increased like the regular storms finding expression in the Pacific. 

A couple of years ago, you would seldom find matrimonial cases on cause list of matters in States High Court, but with the changing times, our High Courts and Customary Courts have a bevy of matrimonial cases at their disposal. 

While the reason(s) for the collapse of most marriages vary according to the parties on a case by case basis, in most instance, an inability to tolerate the other party is a prominent factor in most breakup. 

The culture where would be couples spend so much time, energy and resources preparing for a wedding, while neglecting the most important aspect which is the marriage has become prevalent.

Yet, you cannot rule out the fact that most of the things that have caused the breakup of marriages are at best trivial issues borne out of the inability of one or two of the parties to exercise restraint. 

Though what is trivial varies according to the character of an individual.

Ordinarily, it is virtually impossible for something as trivial as an inanimate object, toothpaste to end a living institution of a marriage. While on the other hand, cases abound where it has indeed led to the breakup of a marriage, and at other times, it has almost led to the breakup of a marriage.

This was how a row over toothpaste led to the breakup of a marriage.

There are people that prefer to press the rear of a tube when putting a paste on their toothbrush, while other people prefer to press the tube of the paste from anywhere, whether it’s the rear, middle or at the top.

In this particular case, the husband prefers to press his from the rear of the tube, while his wife does hers from anywhere in the tube. So on this fateful day, he complained that his wife was always fond of pressing the tube anywhere as it makes the tube undulant, her reply was that whether there was anything wrong with it, the response of the man's wife seem to exacerbate the situation which led the man to slap his wife, and the woman retaliated by slapping her husband back. 

The man's response was to beat his wife black and blue, which led to a swollen face and several bruises all over her body.

She packed her baggages and went to her parent's house. Her father's response was that a wife should not leave her husband's house just like that, he sent her back, but the woman's mother did not take the assault on her daughter likely, so he got her daughter's husband arrested. 

When he eventually got out of jail, he simply told his wife that since his mother-in-law arrested him, his wife should leave his house, and go and stay with her mother. Just like that, the simple act of how to use a toothpaste led to the breakup of their marriage, and to this day they are still separated.

There are people that would have reacted differently to such a situation. Obviously, no parent would take the assault on their daughter likely, especially when you take into consideration that one hit could lead to the demise of a person, cases abound where this has happened. So it is understandable that the mother-in-law got her son-in-law arrested, and the response of the man was to send his wife away after he got bail.

It is out of place for a man to hit his wife no matter what, the man obviously should have exercised restraint instead of beating up his wife over the use of a toothpaste, when just buying another one for himself would have solved the situation of whether pressing the tube of the paste from a particular position is acceptable to him or not.

It was this solution that a clergy proffered when he preached on a particular Sunday morning in church. In his congregation there was a couple that was going through the same situation of a where and where not to press the tube of a toothpaste, they were having the same issues that the couple above have had, the clergy simply said, instead of arguing over such a thing, while not you (the man) buy another one for yourself, 'is it not just a toothpaste' he said.

Certainly the easy way out in such situation would be to simply buy another toothpaste to avoid arguments, as there are habits which some persons exhibit inadvertently that you cannot change. It just sticks, there are some that leaves the lid of a toothpaste open after using it, and they also press it from anywhere, it is not as if it is deliberate or an act met to offend the other party, it just an act that has become innate in them that you cannot be changed.

Bishop (Mrs.) Peace Okonkwo of TREM, mentioned at the 2015 National Women's Conference of New Covenant Gospel Church that though, she has been married for almost 40 years, she is the kind of person that likes to press the tube of a toothpaste from anywhere, but her husband has learnt to live with it, though he was initially at variance with it. Yet it is little things as this that has led to the breakup of marriages and heated arguments amongst young couples.

On the issue of one of the couples getting their own toothpaste to use, some would say since an husband and wife are one, majority of the things they use should be one, that they should use the same toothpaste. 

In hindsight, it is better to toll the path of wisdom to avoid a larger problem, and get another toothpaste in such a scenario, if any of the couple cannot cope with such a situation, as "Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established:" (Proverbs 24:3).