Having that background where loyalty, above all else, reigned supreme, how on earth did I end up with the most traitorous, backstabbing and deceitful man as a partner for 17 years? – Spear

 

During the days of  Kabataang Makabayan (an underground left-wing youth organization) in the early 1980s, when your very membership to such organizations could mean imprisonment or salvaging,  it was crucial to recruit people based on their loyalty to the cause and devotion to the movement. I remember being background-checked and tested when I submitted myself for membership at one of those groups. I passed it with flying colors, and went on to organize a legal front organization in the College of the Holy Spirit, after which it became my turn to do background checking on who should be enlisted to join the UG (underground) movement.

Unbeknownst to some of my schoolmates, I was actually examining them like scientific specimens while socializing with them. What are their parents’ jobs, where do they live and what do they think about poverty and the government, what are they loyal to? Those who had singular devotion to a school activity or student campaign were easy to spot but not necessarily easy to recruit. Those who were fence sitters with ambivalent feelings towards change being bandied about by the groups that I belonged to, I did not even consider enlisting.

Loyalty was top of mind. Will this person have my back if I get into trouble with the military? Will she disclose the hide-outs of our political officers if she gets abducted? Our lives and safety were hinged on secrecy and the loyalty of fellow members – this was not a drill – it was real, scary times that we lived in then.

Having that background where loyalty, above all else reigned supreme, how on earth did I end up with the most traitorous, backstabbing and deceitful man as a partner for 17 years?

You see, two years after my marriage collapsed in 1998, I had a love affair with somebody whom we shall call Luke.

We were madly in love with each other and we got on well like a house on fire. We both had the same sense of humor and we could talk all night about shallow and profound issues like there was no tomorrow. He introduced me to the sublime melody and words of Leonard Cohen and the universality of Pink Floyd songs.

When we snuggle, it was like coming home – it’s as if stars aligned for our two bodies to entwine. Physiologically and in all other aspects except in the matter of faith, we were meant for each other (or so I thought). At last, I have found my man, my match, my partner and my kindred spirit. We were happy.

We decided to live together in 2004 and mutually invested in a big house in Merville, Paranaque.

Apart from a few bumps which I ignored, we lived like normal couples do. There were telltale signs of disloyalty but they were too trivial compared to the partnership which I valued.

In 2013, we were elected as directors for a club in Paranaque.  I became, in the annals of the club’s history, the first female president in its 100 years of existence. Unfortunately, the club was being hit left and right with legal problems and was fighting for its very existence.

One day, the club’s admin staff called my attention to the unusual purchases the club had been making from the company of a female member of the board of directors. The purchases for LED lights were not only mounting, but apparently, competitive quotations were not sought prior to the procurements as there was a directive from another director not to seek any.

Janice, the assistant, further mentioned that the prices of the products were twice those of other suppliers. It was an apples to apples comparison and there was no doubt that the club was being ripped off hook, line and sinker.

Over all, the club accumulated over PHP 500,000 worth of lighting system from the director’s company at a time when every peso was a prisoner. We were fighting a legal war that was costing the club millions in legal fees, the transition from its current lights to LED was not a priority.

I wrote to the five-member board asking them to check the irregular procurement. The board consisted of my partner, myself, the director who sold the lights (let’s call her Siony) and two others.

Siony sought to confuse the board with technicalities about LED lightings and even offered to investigate the other supplier’s quotations. Even as the “suggestion” was laughable, I merely told the board that she should inhibit herself from the issue due to an obvious conflict of interest.

Luke and I discussed this at home and to my surprise, he found nothing irregular in the transactions – even defending the indefensible, an act I found a tad twisted since Siony herself admitted that her price was double and her warranty was for one year only vis-à-vis three years by the other supplier.

All the while, everything that I discussed with Luke at home was being shared with Siony. He was also defending her in the email exchanges with the Board of Directors much to the surprise of everyone– emboldening her to go on attack mode outside the issue at hand.

This became a sore topic at home. It was very clear that he was on Siony’s side, and every night for two months, I was subjected to intense verbal abuse from Luke – he defending the morally-corrupting Siony at the same time putting me down.

Finally, in the heat of one of our arguments, he admitted that he was a financial partner of the lighting company that Siony works for. He also admitted writing the responses of Siony to my emails to the board – as her English vocabulary was limited. Can you imagine my horror upon realizing these things?

Not only was this highly irregular for two directors with interests in the company to supply the club with products without competitive quotes, this was a very disloyal act done in a very public manner.

Bizarre as it seemed, Luke appeared to be oblivious to the pain he was causing me at home and to the embarrassment he was causing himself in the club. Not only did he become the stranger on the other side of the bed, but I was also sleeping with the enemy.

I eventually decided to resign from the directorship only after I got the board to stop buying from Siony’s company.

As for the relationship, Luke killed it. It was never the same again after this incident and the events that followed are better left off unsaid as the cruelty of Luke was unimaginable.

A partnership, even without vows, involves some form of loyalty from both parties. When you enter a relationship, it goes without saying that you commit to support each other especially in the most trying times. And that specially holds true when the relationship is rendered tenuous because of certain issues that might come between the couple.

Loyalty is one of the hallmarks of a decent human being and remains to be the most endearing and attractive traits of a man. Unfortunately, I got involved with someone who has no idea of what loyalty means.

I eventually left Luke after three years of hell. I left a lying, abusive, cheating and manipulative man who was intimate with somebody else by telling her everything that happens in our relationship. As they say, intimacy is not just touching someone, it is who you text everyday and who you call/see every chance you get. Luke was such with Siony, not just for business matters but for what goes on in with her life, not to mention that things that Luke tells her about our relationship as well.

I should have known better when I saw telling signs of the kind of person he was, disloyalty being one of them. A partner does not rejoice over your down turns – but Luke did.  It is quite hard to comprehend how unmanly, vicious and savage he had become just as he got older. He has no comprehension of what loyalty means but he mastered the art of inflicting optimum emotional and psychological damage on me.

Recently, he sent me an email as if saying that he had an epiphany – that I am his kindred spirit and that we should try again as couple and travel the world so I could see places I have never been to.

I have adapted a no-contact policy with the disloyal man and have moved on.

What would you have done?