This is a throw away account because i’d rather he didn’t see this.
Some information, my boyfriend and I have been together for close to 3 years, He’s Congolese and I’m Australian. I have never given any negative thought to his culture/traditions but a few months ago, I can’t recollect how this conversation occured, he told me that he has “playful cousins” (that he isn’t actually related too) but whom he’s allowed to flirt with according to Congolese culture, which he informed me recently is called his “Bina”. He could see the obvious distaste in my face as he named a few of these girls, who are in his choir/ go to his church and I voiced how this “fake flirting” as he’s called it, makes me kinda uncomfortable.
Onto the reasons why this one “playful cousin” made me uneasy; My boyfriend and I share locations and one day while I was at work, he went somewhere and then just stopped responding to me, he then informed me HOURS later that he went out shopping with this girl and her brothers, and told me the reason he didn’t tell he was going out with them was because I forgot to tell him I was going out with my best friend the day previous. I’d also realised his phone always had notifications from that girl, and they’d message on Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp. Then my sneaking suspicion about this girl further grew when she called him in the car and he didn’t answer, but when I was walking back to the car with our food, he had her on call and was about to end it.
I always made snide comments bringing up her name, one day he showed me on camera to his best mate as soon as he facetimed and so I said, “I see, you showed my face basically just to say don’t mention \*girls name\*”, or I’d bring up how she’d always stalk my accounts or about her being his “girlfriend” since they like to “flirt”, he would laugh at me for being crazy and would tell me that they don’t “flirt” anymore since it makes me uncomfortable and because I don’t understand culture.
2 weeks ago, I slept at his house and looked through his phone when he went to sleep. First, I went through his call logs, to which I found out he would call this girl for 2-3 hours when he was telling me he wants to be alone. I then went through the girls best friends messages with my boyfriend where he called the girl I’m concerned about his “future” and her best friend was congratulating my boyfriend for buying everything for her and calling him “husband material”. I then went into “recently deleted messages” as the messages with the girl had been deleted and I’ll list what they said; they miss one another, they can’t wait to see and hug each other, asking if she wants to be picked up and go out, being mad that she said “goodnight” out of nowhere. There was most likely more as he had been deleting messages for about 3 months but I was furious and crying, told him to get me an uber home and that we’re over.
This is one of the messages he sent me:
” \*Girls name\* = Bina
Bina = playful cousin in Congo Culture
Deleted messages = Because you hate that part of my culture
3hr calls = helping her with her Ls
“Husband material” = playful joke
As a Congolese (mbembe) there’s some parts I hate about my culture but shawty ain’t gon sit here and call me names because I was literally just doing my culture.”
I’ve never said anything about hating any part of his culture, I told him that this makes me super uncomfortable and I don’t want him to flirt with anyone besides me but he’d rather do it behind my back than stop. I’ve looked up Bina in google, nothing comes up, or maybe I didn’t search hard enough. I asked one of my congolese friends who said, flirting with your “cousins” is a part of the culture but if my boyfriend and I had a conversation about how it makes me feel, he should’ve listened and that it’s not normal for them to hide their Bina from their significant other.
I even talked to the girl, to which she lied to me about who she was for 2.5 hours until my ?ex- boyfriend? got home from his outing with his uncle, basically she told me that I’m over-reacting and that he loves me and that he shouldn’t have hid her from me but that she’ll talk to him for me and that him and I should get back together.
I’ve seen him since, he’s still deleting messages with her and lying to me about deleting them. I even saw a snippet of a message from her on Instagram saying “\*crying emoji x3\* I lo…” he told me she was saying “I love this song” but he wouldn’t show me the message and called me psycho for wanting to see. Is it wrong that I can’t accept this part of his culture?
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