Kenyan women cry foul as their male lovers cheat on them with fellow men

Considering Kenya is still relatively intolerant to homosexuality, to avoid stigma, gays and lesbians always suppress their sexuality and marry heterosexual partners.

But when the nagging itch to express their real sexuality strikes, they cheat on their partners with fellow homosexuals, making it difficult to be caught.

When this happens, some of the betrayed partners always have no clue on how to react or handle the situation. Much as they find the behavior odd, they just can't quite categorize it as cheating.

This trend is slowly but surely growing not just among boyfriends and girlfriends, but also among married couples, especially in urban places such as Nairobi. But for some strange reasons, more men than women are reported to be cheating on their partners with their homosexual partners.

We have a lot of cases of growing fear among women, who are now not just worried that their men cheat on them with other women, but also with fellow men.

Weeks ago, a strange complaint landed in this magazine's agony aunt email, asking for advice. The Nairobi-based reader had recently got the shock of his life when, three years into his marriage, he discovered that his wife is actually an active lesbian.

The perplexed reader couldn't wrap his mind around the weird revelation and wrote in, asking for assistance.

"All the girls night outs, late night parties and other functions that kept her out such as chama meetings turned out to be nothing but excuses to meet her lesbian lover," the reader complained in parts to the agony aunt.

The man said he always gave his wife permission to meet and hang out with her girlfriends, and cheating on him with another woman as the last thing he would have suspected.

Things seemed okay until at some point when he got suspicious of her activities, especially when she began spending way too much time with one of her female friends.

"It was until recently when I stumbled upon a strange WhatsApp chat about tastes and preferences they had for certain sex toys they co-owned that I became suspicious of the nature of the relationship the two had. It turned out my wife has a girlfriend with whom they seemed to have a blossoming romantic relationship," moaned the offended reader.

Crazy Monday nosed around and as it emerged, there are also a good number of men who are closet gays and cheat on their girlfriends and wives with fellow men.

Take, the case of a certain Veroh, for instance. When she met her immediate former ex-boyfriend, she knew she had hit the jackpot so to speak. The man, she said, was the full package.

A tall, dark and mature hunk and a perfect gentleman to boot. The two spent more time together, partying and travelling. They also bought each other gifts, visited one another and called it love.

"Being an upcoming singer, he used to take me out on Tuesday and Wednesday nights for karaoke. He was bloody romantic. At times, he would drag me to the stage and Michael Bolton the hell out of my night. It was fun," said Veroh.

In the spirit of being romantic and unpredictable, Veroh said she once decided to give her boyfriend a surprise visit on a weekend she had lied to him she would be out of town for a business meeting.

Seeing as she had the extra key to his house, she gently got in and, lo and behold, she found him deeply engrossed in the act with his boyfriend in the bedroom.

"The sights and sounds made me freeze in shock. I couldn't believe what I saw. It was him and one of his band members," said Veroh, adding that she was so disgusted that she banged the door with rage and left in a huff.

Weeks later after several ignored phone calls, an enraged Veroh said she eventually gained courage to talk to him. Sounding very remorseful, he tried to apologize, confessing his real sexual orientation. Unfortunately, all was in vain.

"He went on to explain how he had all along been a closet gay, fooling around with fellow men since when he was in high school, but was not comfortable revealing it for fear of rejection," said Veroh, adding that the shocking revelation disgraced and traumatized her so much that she has never shared with anyone, months after the break up.

"The fact that a man could cheat on me with another man was way too embarrassing to even tell friends," she said.

Seemingly, Veroh is not alone. A waiter at an Ethiopian restaurant in Nairobi, only identified as Alexa told this writer an almost similar ordeal she underwent a while back in the hands of a closet gay man.

She said they dated for close to two years, without the man giving slightest of hints that he was secretly homosexual.

"He was masculine and cocky as they come. There was absolutely nothing feminine about him. What's more, the union had all the hallmarks of a normal heterosexual relationship, with no slight hint of him being gay," she says.

"With time, he began behaving strangely. He would, for instance, lie about his whereabouts and what he was doing. So one evening, while in his house, I timed when he was in the bathroom and began snooping in his phone," says Alexa.

She says all she was expecting were text messages and call logs to and from other women he could have been cheating on her with. Strange as it may sound, she found inappropriate pictures of a man send to her boyfriend.

When the dirty details of his real sexual orientation were laid bare, he owned up and apologized for stringing her along for over two years.

Alexa says her ex argued that he had to have a heterosexual relationship to avoid blowing up his cover as a gay man for fear of being stigmatized