Cellphones make cheating easy

I can hardly remember what life was like before the cellphone era. I have a few flashbacks of writing a letter to a girlfriend or someone else's girlfriend and getting caught was rare. But come the cellphone era the ballgame has changed.

Some years ago there was a Victoria Falls businessman whose wife was playing the "hide the sausage game" (to borrow B Metro lingo there) with a local "nobody." That is what the husband called him because he did not see what his wife saw in that man. So when the wife was caught red-handed and faced the reality of a possible divorce which meant being kicked out of the matrimonial home with nothing, what did she do?

She swallowed her cellphone because the husband wanted to see the smses that had been sent by the "nobody." She managed to swallow the cellphone because the year was not 1996, 7 or 8. It was in the early 2000 when cellphone makers had taken to designing gadgets that were small. The smaller the cellphone, the more functions it had and the more expensive it was. Forget the Siemens C10 that came with Telecel "mango" lines. The woman swallowed the classic Nokia 3310 (the one that the movie Ali G in the House promoted). With the new cellphones and their new tech functions imagine if the "nobody" decided to call after the woman had swallowed the gadget on vibrator lol.

Nowadays cellphones and facebook have their own fair share of blame when it comes to infidelity. Someone told me this week that they were in a "we can touch each other but not our phones" relationship.

What this means is that even if one leaves her cellphone ringing with a boring tone you just have to leave it alone. There is a joke that goes like:

"There is a man who saved his small house's phone number as Battery Low. So when "Battery Low" called this other time when the man had gone to the toilet, his wife took the phone and put it on a charger because it was on vibrator and flashing "battery low."

From the stories one hears about cellphones and relationships I would understand if one finds their spouse hanging up suddenly when entering the room or erasing the history on the cellphone and becoming defensive when asked about it. You can add this behaviour to the following list of suspicions.

- Your spouse turns off his/her cellphone when it rings in your presence.
- Your spouse leaves the room to take cellphone calls.
- Your spouse becomes upset if you answer his/her cellphone.
- Your spouse becomes defensive if you ask about the above behaviours.

Most spouses engaged in an affair consider their cellphone to be a necessary part of keeping the affair going. It allows them to keep in touch with the other person at virtually all times. They can talk to their lover while driving to work, at work, driving home in the evenings. They can talk to them while shopping. Thanks to the cellphone, cheaters are now able to connect more deeply, more quickly.

However, there is a counter action that can be taken and it can force the cheater to behave like the Victoria Falls woman. From what I have been told:

- Check the cellphone history for incoming and outgoing calls.
- Check the cellphone for incoming and outgoing text messages.
- Check the contacts list for any names you are not familiar with (this is the most common one).
- Check the recent calls, missed calls and dialled calls for suspicious numbers.

A report carried by international news agency Cable News Network (CNN) last year revealed that Facebook has joined the bandwagon in aiding spouses to cheat.

It gave an example of an American man whose wife took sudden interest in the social networking site. But with time the woman started hiding her computer screen whenever her husband entered the room. To the husband's shock, the wife had reconnected with an old boyfriend on facebook.

CNN added that the more adults take to Facebook the more they try to hook up with their past. You can take it as a high school reunion only done online and nostalgia creeps in.

The same guy that CNN talks about started a website FacebookCheating.com. Imagine starting GtideCheaters.com if your girlfriend uses a G Tide phone to hook up with the undercover lover.

A divorce lawyer recently told me that last year she handled more than 10 cases and most of them had cellphones and the internet given as evidence for cheating.

Back to the Victoria Falls cellphone eater. Word is that the phone was removed through an operation days later.

Her friends told the reporter who wrote the story that she hoped the cellphone battery was going to be malfunctioning by the time it was taken out of her intestines.

To her surprise the phone's battery had been recharged. To make matters worse there were missed calls from the "nobody" and smses.

A guy who claims to be clever says he has two cellphones and the one he uses for cheating is unknown at home. He keeps it in his car or at times he leaves it at the office.

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Lenin Ndebele can be contacted at eclectic108@yahoo.co.uk