Busola Idowu: Is Being with a New Boo the Time to Divulge All Your ‘EX-Files’?

My friend, Isanah got caught up in a bit of a fix recently and is the unwilling participant in today’s article. She had gone window shopping to let off some wedding preparation steam at the new Jabi Lake shopping mall in Abuja recently, accompanied by her fiancé (their wedding was a couple of days away). As soon as they stepped into the first shop, her hubby accidentally bumped into a young man at the door who happened to be her last boyfriend, actually, fiancé (let us call him Wole). She was torn as to how exactly to introduce them mainly because she had not given her betrothed the download as to what went down with Wole or in fact any of her previous relationships. All she told him was that she dated dash (-) number of guys, it ended and now she is head over heels in love with him (Steve her fiancé). She hurriedly introduced Wole as an old friend, and manoeuvred Steve to some other store. It was all she could do not to fly out of the Mall; but to avoid suspicion, she had to play cool.

There were two reasons she’d acted dodgy. One, she and Wole had dated for over five years and were infact engaged before they broke up. Secondly, he had a very insensitive-to-circumstances mouth, which might have started running in an attempt to re-establish familiarity and definitely would have eventually cobalised her with Steve.

When she brought up the topic at her bachelorette party, we were caught up in two camps. Some thought she handled it great, while others were of the view that she would have avoided all the guilty tactics if only she had been open from the start as to the status of her previous relationships.

Bola, our other married friend championed this argument. She claimed she had divulged all necessary ex-files to her hubby before the wedding. Not precise details as to what exactly transpired in its entirety, but names, locations, brief summary of the relationship etc. The idea is that anywhere they eventually encounter those guys she could comfortably introduce him to her hubby as ‘that James I told you about’ or ‘the Ken from Maitama.

The issue is not that having a previous relationship is wrong because of course, you are a product of your past and even if such ended negatively, the era is done and dusted. Proponents of this school of thought believe that there is a need to properly divulge important information in one’s romantic history to your spouse (engaged or married).

Full disclosure also saves you from diabolic mutual frenemies who might want to disclose unsolicited information to le hubs of your past history. However this policy can only be effectively practiced when the ex files do not exceed a certain number of pages lines and you know you have an emotionally balanced spouse.

We left the party without reaching consensus except that to each her own. What is your guiding policy on disclosure and how detailed should it be? What side of the divide do you fall? What constitutes T.M.I in this case and how can you properly manage the situation where you opted out of full disclosure?

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