How to Handle It, when your man have a Secret Life

You think you know your man very well; and then he goes ahead and surprises you and proves you wrong. They very realization that your partner has some secrets or has been deceiving you all along can be extremely devastating. Of course, eventually, there comes a point in life when you figure out that you have had enough of the deceit. How? Here are some tips to know the signs to look out for and how to handle it too.

Staying uninformed and uninterested in the family finance is detrimental to your interests. You need to have a basic idea of the kind of money that is coming home, its source and the expenditure bracket too.

Without this knowledge, hiding assets will be a piece of cake for your partner and it will be a tough task to untangle yourself from any financial mess he makes.

Be an active participant right from the beginning in all the financial affairs at home. Income and assets, expenses and liabilities, tax returns – you have a right to know about everything.

Imagine this. You are happily married to your high school sweetheart, going strong for 10 years. You have a sudden windfall and you have no clue where it came from. You may be anxious at first but then you get used to the good life. However, happiness soon gives way to anxiety, leading to suspicious and confrontations. But it is not always necessary that your partner will spill the beans the first time you ask him.

According to news paper reports, when the recently arrested cricketer Ajit Chandila brought large sums of money home, his perplexed wife is supposed to have asked him where it was coming from. Reportedly, she was snubbed and asked to shut up and he is still under a cloud of suspicion for alleged spot-fixing. So, if you suspect your partner is swindling / siphoning money, gambling or engaging in other financial dirty tricks, please beware.

Defensive behavior: Any questions you ask that are even remotely related to finances puts him on guard. He may suddenly become secretive, defensive or controlling about money.

Sudden increase / decrease in salary: He hasn’t got a promotion or an enormous raise at work. Then where is he getting all the big bucks from?

Imaginary employees: You are already in the throes of a divorce and your businessman husband comes up with imaginary names of employees that don’t even exist. Well, he may be doing this to dress up his account books to make his business appear of lesser value. With this, he may avoid paying a lot of alimony.

Discontinuation of financial statements: Be on guard when bank statements and other financial statements stop coming to your home address. Probably, they are being diverted to some other place. Contact your bank and make sure you receive your copies regularly, so you are on alert about any strange activities.

Once you get to know the whole truth or once he confesses, you can choose to either divorce him or try to work things out. Of course, this is easier said than done, but your first concern should be looking out for yourself and your children, if any.

If you decide to give him another chance, couples’ therapy is a good way to go. Joint counseling sessions will help you really talk to each other instead of talking at each other. And of course, he has to choose. He can either be with you or the other woman, never both.

You also need to understand that afte3r this, trusting your partner will be the most difficult task you will ever have endured, and you should do it only if you are very sure of it. If push comes to shove and he begins the blame game or turns violent, better to see a lawyer.

It happened all of a sudden one day. You were busy dusting away at his workstation when you came across his mistakenly left-open and stumbled upon information you wish you hadn’t, or maybe, you wish you had long before.

Bawdy online chats with unfamiliar women, obscene pictures or even pictures of an unknown family which include him but not you, sentimental emails and the like should really tell you the true story. In short, one moment you are blissfully married to the most devoted guy on planet Earth and the next, you wish you’d never met him. Don’t shrug it away; you need to get to the bottom of it. Don’t give free rein to these issues by choosing to keep mum.

Take the case of Tiger Woods. Or closer home, iGATE ex-CEO Phaneesh Murthy. The extensive media attention that these two men got ensures that every married woman gets her guard up. It’s not just your spouse’s extramarital affair that you need to watch out for but a marriage outside of your marriage!!

• Your partner is overly protective of his cell phone
• His mood fluctuates frequently and you find you are better off not talking to each other.
• His dressing sense has undergone a sea change and you are not the reason for it.
• He has started staying out late night or all night
• He isn’t concerned in being intimate with you anymore.
• You find restaurant bills for dinner you never had with him or gifts you didn’t receive from him.

No matter what the addiction, drugs, alcohol or pornography, no good can come of doing something to the point of being addicted to it.

Your partner will try to assure you he’s not addicted and it’s just a passing fancy. You may take him on his word but also remember to trust your own instincts.

After all, he has consciously chosen to keep this part of his life secret from you, and that is never a good sign.

Being addicted to pornography takes the charm away from you intimate relationship with your partner. He may not seem into the moment when you are making love, or he may be uncharacteristically aggressive. Either way, these reasons are enough for you to panic. Your partner may also start nitpicking on your appearance, stonewall your attempts to get him to talk, or just stop being social. If your partner spends an insane amount of time over the internet, claiming to be ‘innocently browsing’, instead of just being with you, you have reason enough to have the ‘talk’.

Has your partner been making extra rounds to the hospital or the clinic to get himself checked or for frequent tests? Does it make you wonder if these regular trips are just so he could be prescribed some pills? Of course, he will rebuke you if you suggest that, but it is quite possible he’s addicted to painkillers and you are the one who will have to clean up after him. Even if your partner is addicted to prescription drugs, understand that no drug is completely safe for the body.

Alcohol addiction is the most notorious of all and affects more families than we can imagine. Substance abuse not only plays havoc with the abuser’s own health, but also the well-being of his entire family. Trying to live with your partner’s addiction can be mentally and physically drawing. He may not drink at home in a half-hearted attempt to keep his family away from this side of his life, but it never works out. Walking away may seem to be a better option but leaving a loved one alone during such a phase is difficult and not a chosen option.

• Encourage your partner to seek help.
• Talk to someone in the family, a therapist or a counselor.
• In case of alcoholism, look for organizations like Alcoholics anonymous (AA) which provide 12-step programmes for addicts and their families
• Look into detox clinics and rehabilitation centers
• Plan an intervention with family members and close friends in attendance.
• Offer your emotional support but do not be vulnerable to his pleas or improper behavior.

• Know for a fact that you are not obliged to stick around if your partner gets abusive. Maintaining personal safety is of utmost importance.
• It is not your job to provide enough sex so he stops looking at porn. You don’t have to compete with porn.
• If you have been falling frequently ill trying to handle the chaos he has created, you have every excuse to leave.
• If things get worse, be prepared to report your partner’s illegal and / or abusive behavior to civil authorities.
• You can ask your partner to leave the home and not return until he’s weaned of his addiction.