How well do you know your partner?

When police caught up with Felista Wanjiru, widow of slain gangster Simon Matheri Ikere a few years ago, she claimed that she did not know her husband was a criminal until two weeks prior to his death.

The late Matheri’s pictures had been widely circulated by the police in the media in an effort to capture him but she only saw them two weeks before he was shot dead, or she so claimed.

Even then, she had to deal with the shock of realising she had been living with a notorious criminal.

Wanjiru said at the time that they had been married for two years and she knew her husband only as Matheru and believed he earned a living as a taxi driver which is what he had told her during their one-month courtship.

She was eight months pregnant on that fateful day, 20th February 2007, when policemen surrounded their house and her husband was asked to surrender. There were six children in the house all of them from their previous marriages. The child she was expecting was to be her first with Matheri.

According to Wanjiru, for the two years they lived as man and wife, she never knew his full names, as he never let her see any of his personal documents.

Many women fall into the same predicament although luckily for them not all of them have such dramatic and traumatic endings.

Women are usually quick to volunteer information about themselves and their families to a man they think will play a significant role in their lives. Not so men who have generally been made to think that women are drawn to mystery and so the little they reveal about themselves, the better for their relationship.

The line gets hazy especially when a woman cannot tell whether the man courting her has nothing to hide and is just playing with her mind or if he is really hiding something.

Instances of women who discover quite late in a relationship that the men they are dating are married are all too common nowadays. It is embarrassing, to plan a wedding and even get to the venue of the ceremony only to discover that the man you are about to pledge your love and life to has not only another wife but children as well.

Often, people will wonder how gullible a woman can be not to sense that there’s something that doesn’t add up about her man. The funny thing is that it is mostly women who will find themselves in such a situation.

It’s very rare to hear of a man being taken for such a ride.

“A man may not initially know that the woman he is interested in has a child or children out of wedlock and whether she was married before or not but it will take him long to find out if he’s genuinely interested in you,” says Dr Chris Hart, a psychologist and relationship expert.

Understandably, anyone who has something to hide about his background, especially if he is a criminal, will not go around telling their girlfriends what they do for a living but it is upon the woman to find out as much as she can about the man she is interested in.

Saying you didn’t know this or that about your partner when things finally come apart is simply not a valid excuse.

Maria Hassan, is a young woman from Mombasa who went through a situation similar to Wanjiru’s.

Maria, who is 22, came to Nairobi for her college education early last year and went to live with her cousin in one of the city’s estates. Upon starting college, she met Steve, a handsome man whom she used to see while on her way to school.

They struck up a friendship that developed into something more serious in the next few months.

“He told me his full name, which I did not doubt as there was no reason for him to lie about his name…or so I thought.

She was to find out how wrong she was a few months later. Their relationship progressed very fast and before long, the two were spending most of their free time together.

The only thing that worried her a little was the fact that he never took her to his house. His excuse was that he was living with too many relatives and they would not have any privacy in his house.

After dating for six months, she got pregnant.

“I was apprehensive at first as I was aware I had not known Steve for too long,” she says, “But then he assured me he would take care of me and the baby. He even started talking about a wedding.”

True to his word, Steve took care of all the antenatal care expenses in the initial stages of the pregnancy. All this time, she had not met any of his friends or relatives. Maria continued to live in her ignorant bliss, looking forward to her baby’s arrival until CID officers traced her using mobile phone technology when she was five months pregnant.

“One day, I was called by someone who told me that he was Steve’s friend and that he had been asked by Steve to check on me as he would be running late,” Maria says.

She agreed to meet the caller as she had no reason to doubt his sincerity. She was also excited because she would finally get to meet one of his friends after six months of dating. She went and stood outside the ante-natal clinic, accompanied by her cousin.

“After a few minutes, five men, who she was later to learn were police officers, appeared and walked purposefully towards us,” she says.

They arrested both women and started interrogating them about Maria’s boyfriend. Apparently, they had traced her through his previous mobile phone number, which he had discarded. He had told Maria that the number had a problem and that is why he bought a new one.

They wanted to know the man’s whereabouts and who his friends were. That is when Maria realized that she had no idea as he had taken her to a lodging every time they needed time to themselves or he would come to her cousin’s house where she was staying.

All she knew about the man was that he lived in Ruiru and was a businessman.

The CID officers informed her that her boyfriend was a carjacker and had been on the run for a long time. They also informed her that he was a married man and they had just come from interrogating his wife.

“I was four months pregnant at the time and I could not believe what I was hearing,” Maria says.”

She has not seen the man since and she does not know where to start looking even if she were interested in finding him. At first the CID officers refused to believe her story and kept her in remand for a few days until they realized that she was a naïve and gullible girl.

“When they realised that I really did not know where my boyfriend lived or that he was married with children, they let me go.”

Maria learnt her lesson the hard way and went back to Coast immediately she finished her course to try and put together the broken pieces of her life.

Model and former Miss Commonwealth, Kate Wainaina believes that if a man does not introduce you to his family and friends and does not show you where he lives, then be knowing that he is taking you for a ride.

“You need to see how he relates with his family and friends to know what kind of character he is,” Wainaina says.

Dr Hart says that most women have the intuitive ability to tell when a man is married or even when he is involved in illegal activities. The problem, he says is that some women behave as if their very life depends on that relationship.

According to him, a new couple is supposed to disclose information to each other in a gradual, mutual manner.

“If you ask a man a reasonable question about himself that is not prying and he refuses to answer it, then you should be wary of him,” he says.

He should be able to tell you a little about himself, his family and friends but introducing you to these people is a different story altogether.

A well-meaning man “A man who is serious about your relationship will want to introduce you to his family a few months into the relationship without you asking for it,” he says.

A man who lies to you about where he lives or is not too keen to take you to his house or lies about his work place and his level of income should be avoided.

On the question of mystery, a well-meaning man will be completely open and will not withhold any information regarding himself, according to Dr Hart.

“Women ignore it when their intuition gives them the warning signals maybe because they are desperate to have someone in their lives,” Dr Hart says.

But it’s better to take your time and get to know the person you are dealing with either from himself or from your own background research. There is simply no way, a serious women will go out with a man for months without getting an inkling about his background.

When you probe women who fall into such a trap, you will always find that the warning signs were there all along but they ignored them because they wanted the relationship so desperately.

Source: Daily Nation