Every week, Zikoko spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between.
What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way.
Farida*, 34, moved into her older brother’s home at 29 to get her footing in a new city. What she didn’t expect was to fall into something with his wife.
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Farida, I’m 34, and I work in communications. I grew up in Abuja, but I’ve been in Germany for about two years now. It still surprises me sometimes when I say that out loud. Germany. Like, of all the places.
What was your family like growing up?
My parents were comfortable; we weren’t rolling in it, but we genuinely never lacked. We travelled, I went to good schools, life was fine. They had three of us: my older sister Zainab*, who’s 47 now; my brother Idris*, who’s 45; and me, the baby. There are sixteen years between Idris and I, which sounds like a lot, and it is, but it also means he always felt more like a second parent than a brother. In the best way, sha. He was never overbearing. He just showed up for me, financially, emotionally, whatever it was. When I needed school fees topped up, or I had a problem I didn’t want to bring to our parents, he was the one.
And your parents?
They passed within a couple of years of each other. My mum first, then my dad. I was in my early twenties when it happened. It was one of the hardest periods of my life, obviously. Idris stepped up even more after that. He made sure I knew I wasn’t alone. Zainab has always kind of lived in her own world. She loves us, but she’s not really the present type, never really around. So it was mostly Idris. The estate and everything they left behind were distributed among the three of us. I still have the family house in Abuja. I haven’t sold it. I don’t think I ever will.
So you and your brother were very close. It must have been nice.
Very. And the age gap, as I said, meant things between us were never strained the way sibling relationships with smaller gaps can get. I wasn’t competing with him for anything. He wasn’t trying to one-up me. It was just easy. He adored me, and I adored him, and it was one of those things I always just assumed would remain constant.
What happened?
I’d gotten a new job in Lagos. It was good with the best pay in my life at that time. I’d been going back and forth on it, though; I had a whole life in Abuja, my routines, my friends, but ultimately, the opportunity made sense. Idris was in Lagos with his wife, and his house wasn’t far from my office, so when I mentioned I was looking at places, he didn’t let me finish the sentence. He said I had five years with him if I wanted them, and even after that, I was welcome. That is just who he is.
This was a good thing, right?
Yes, and I was grateful. Rent in Lagos is diabolical. But I was also a bit apprehensive.
Why?
I had not really spent much time with his wife. After they got married, I visited here and there, birthdays, things like that, but I was never one of those sisters-in-law who’s always in her brother’s house. Part of it was practical; I had my own life in Abuja. But honestly, part of it was Atinuke.*
There was something about her that always made me a little… I want to say ‘uncomfortable,’ but that’s not quite right either. She just unsettled me in a way I couldn’t name. She’s half Yoruba, half German, grew up a lot in Germany, very composed, very internal. She wasn’t warm in the way I was used to women showing warmth. She was just… still. And it used to read as coldness to me, and I just assumed we’d never really click. She’s also only four years older than me, at the time, 33 to my 29, which always felt a bit strange when I thought about it too hard. So I kept my visits short.
And when you moved in?
I basically set up my own little world. They had a boys’ quarters that was actually a proper self-contained apartment, its own entrance, its own kitchen, everything. I took that. So I was on the property, but I wasn’t in their faces, and they weren’t in mine. I saw Idris pretty much daily. A quick check-in, sometimes dinner, sometimes we’d just sit and talk. Atinuke, I barely saw. Which suited me, honestly.
So what changed?
Idris, ironically. He noticed that his wife and his sister basically coexisted without speaking, and it bothered him. He’s one of those people who needs the people he loves to love each other. So he started engineering small things, “Atinuke is going to the market, go with her.” “The two of you should go and see this new place.” You know how it is. He wasn’t even subtle about it.
At first, I went along to keep him happy and kept my internal distance. But Atinuke, when you actually talk to her, she’s funny. She’ll say something with a completely straight face, and it’ll take you a few seconds to realise she just said something hilarious. And she was genuinely curious about me, not just a necessary talk. She asked real questions. She actually listened. I started looking forward to being around each other.
When did you notice something was shifting?
I think I started noticing things before I let myself admit what I was noticing. It was the smallest things. The way she’d look at me for a second too long. A hand on my shoulder when she walked past. When I talked, she was fully, entirely facing me. I’d feel something and immediately talk myself out of it. Like, this is your brother’s wife. This is your brother’s wife. I said it to myself like a prayer.
But the feelings were growing with or without my permission.
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What happened?
We’d gone out, just the two of us, Idris had something work-related, and we ended up back at the house late. We’d had drinks, we were laughing about something, the whole energy was loose and warm, and then we were just… closer than we’d been before. And she kissed me. Or I kissed her. Honestly, I couldn’t tell who moved first, and I’ve thought about it many times. But it happened. It was one of those things where she was the only thing that mattered in that moment.
And then I remembered where I was. Who I was in that house. I pulled away and went to my room and sat on the floor, and just breathed. My heart was going crazy.
What were you feeling?
Pure chaos. There was no version of that moment that was okay. She was married to my brother. My brother, who opened his home to me. I also, and this is the part I hadn’t really sat with, I’d never been with a woman before. I’d never really let myself think about it. So now I’m dealing with both things at the same time. What just happened, and what does this mean about me? It was a lot to be on the floor at midnight.
Had you ever had feelings for a woman before?
I think… yes? In the vague, unexamined way, where you notice someone and don’t interrogate the noticing. I went to a girls’ boarding school, and there were crushes that I filed away as “close friendships” in my head. I liked boys, too. I dated boys, so I just never really pushed on it. Nigeria, you know. You don’t push on things you don’t have to push on.
After that night, what happened between you two?
We avoided each other. She seemed to want to pretend it didn’t happen as much as I did, and that helped, briefly. But then Idris planned a whole family Sunday outing, his idea, obviously, and suddenly we’re in public together, sitting next to each other, and she looks at me and just… the whole thing comes back. We started talking again that day. And she told me, directly, plainly, that she was gay.
How did she explain being married to your brother?
She said Idris was a good man. That she loved him, genuinely, just not in that way. In Nigeria, you find a good man, and you build something safe. She wasn’t the first person to make that calculation, and she knew it. He knew it, too, she said, and they had an arrangement she didn’t get into too much detail about, but the word she used was ” an understanding.” She said she’d never acted on anything since they got married. That was the first time in ten years that she’d felt something she couldn’t manage from a distance.
That’s a lot of information to receive.
It really was. I sat with it for weeks. I wasn’t naive; I knew marriages like hers existed, I’d heard of them. But to be in it, to be the one being told this by my brother’s wife in his house while he’s inside cooking, it was surreal. And I was still trying to figure out my own feelings about women, about her, about what I actually wanted. I kept going back and forth. Days when I avoided her completely. Days when I’d find a reason to knock on the main house just to see her.
What happened next?
We…started an affair months after that first kiss. I resisted for longer than people probably expect. Not out of indifference, but because I could see clearly what it would cost. I knew what I was standing in front of. Eventually, I stopped fighting it. We continued our secret relationship for years.
What did those years actually look like?
Normal, on the surface. That’s the part that’s hard to explain. We had inside jokes. We’d cook together sometimes when Idris was travelling. She started telling me more about Germany, not just the country but how she’d grown up, what she missed about it, what she didn’t. There were days it felt like the most natural thing in the world, and then Idris would walk into a room, and that thing would crash back down on me. Guilt is like an unwanted companion that never fucking leaves. You almost get used to carrying it, and then something reminds you of its weight, and you feel it all over again.
For how long did it go on?
Two and a half years, almost three. And this was all in his house. I want to be clear about that because I don’t think I should dress it up. It was in his house, under his roof, while he was doing nothing but being good to both of us. That’s the part that stays with me.
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Did Idris really have no idea?
He noticed something had changed between us, in that we were suddenly close, but he read it as the thing he’d wanted: his wife and his sister finally bonding. It made him happy. That made it worse, you know. He was actively grateful that we were getting along. I’d catch him looking pleased, and I’d want to disappear into the floor.
Did he eventually find out?
Yes.
How?
My sister, Zainab. She came to visit once, not a long trip, just passing through Lagos, and she saw us in a moment. Nothing explicit, but she knew. My sister has always been perceptive. She didn’t say anything to me in front of Atinuke; she just went quiet. Later, she found me alone and told me I needed to end it immediately. That she would not watch me destroy Idris’s life. I didn’t listen. I should have listened.
I think she debated it for a while before she told him. But eventually she told him.
What happened when he found out?
I don’t want to be dramatic, but it was the worst day of my life. Idris is not a shouting person. He’s measured, always. So there was no big explosion. It was quieter and worse than that. He looked at me like I was someone he didn’t know. He didn’t want to believe it at first; there was a whole lot of denial, but he knew his wife’s sexual orientation, and when he looked at me, I could not lie. I saw his heart break. It was like he was looking at a stranger who had been wearing my face. That image hasn’t left me.
He asked me to leave the house that same day. I went to a hotel. Atinuke and I didn’t speak for months after that. She and Idris separated and then eventually divorced. Zainab stopped answering my calls. I went back to Abuja and just…floated for a while.
Tell me more about that period. The fallout.
I was so alone. Not just loneliness, I’ve been lonely before, but like something structural had been removed. Idris had been the person I called for everything, big and small, my whole life. And now I couldn’t call him. Zainab had made her choice clear. Friends knew something had happened, but not what, because how do you explain that? The family house in Abuja suddenly felt like a place I was haunting rather than living in. I’d walk through it and just feel the absence of everyone who was supposed to be in my life.
I wasn’t eating well. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was going to work and coming home and sitting in silence, and trying to figure out who I even was outside of this thing I’d done and the people I’d lost. There was also, underneath all of it, still this question about myself that I hadn’t fully answered. Who I was, what I wanted, whether any of it had been real or just a terrible mistake. I was 31 and besides savings, starting from nothing in a way I hadn’t been since my parents died.
That must have felt impossible to deal with. I am sorry.
Thank you.
What happened next? Did things change?
Yes. Maybe 9/10ish months later, Atinuke called me. I didn’t pick up the first time, or the second. The third time I did, and we just sat on the phone in silence for a while before either of us said anything. After that, we started talking regularly, mostly late at night when we’d both given up on sleeping. She was in Germany by then, back with her family there. We talked for months like that before we saw each other in person. She came back to Nigeria for something, family business on her Yoruba side, and we met. That was the first time I’d seen her since everything fell apart. We sat in a restaurant for four hours. I think we both knew by the end of it. She was meant for me and I for her.
And your family?
They’re not talking to me. Idris, Zainab and the extended people who found out. None of them. It’s been three years. I still send Idris messages sometimes. Not asking for forgiveness exactly, I think I’ve accepted that’s not something I get to ask for on my own timeline, if ever. More, just keeping the line open from my end. Letting him know I’m still his sister, even if he’s not ready to let me be. He never replies. I don’t even know if he reads them. Someone told me recently that he’s been spending a lot of time in Dubai and that he has a friend there he’s very close to. I don’t ask too many questions. I just hope he’s okay. I hope he’s happy, actually happy, in whatever way works for him.
Do you regret it?
I regret how it happened completely. I regret the betrayal, I regret the years I spent in that house, lying by omission to a man who only ever loved me. I don’t think I regret her or what we have now. And those two things live together in me very uncomfortably.
What do you want people to take from this?
I’m not sure I want anything specific. I’m not here to be a cautionary tale, and I’m not here to be defended either. I just wanted to say it out loud and in full. Because I’ve been carrying it quietly for a long time, and quiet was starting to feel like its own kind of lie.
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*Names have been changed.
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