“Trust no woman with your man. Many men are weak and always have an appetite for new servings.”

These are some of the phrases I heard from a long interview with Janet * regarding her love experiences in the last four years.

Janet turned 30 on Valentine’s Day (February 14) last year but unfortunately, it is also the day she  learnt that the man she had introduced to her family in 2008 would not marry her, after all.

“He invited me for lunch somewhere in Upper Hill and when I got there, I found my younger sister already sitting with him having a soft drink,” she says.

To say that she was surprised would be an understatement because she had thought this was her day with “her man”.

“I did not expect to be invited to sit down by my sister but I decided to downplay the whole setting because I did not want to spoil the day,” says Janet.

A seat had been reserved for her, on the right hand side of her man. Two months later, by the time Easter came round, it was no longer a secret that her younger sister, 27, was more often with her man than herself.

On two occasions, Janet found him already welcomed to the house they shared with the sister. In both instances, she (Janet) had invited the man only for him to come earlier than expected.

During the Easter festivities, she was left in no doubt that there was something fishy going on behind her back between her sister and her boyfriend.

Her other younger sister spilt the beans when she disclosed to Janet that she had been lied to that her man had gone to his rural home, yet he was in Naivasha.

After making inquiries, Janet  (and the informer sister) pieced together information that her man was actually in Naivasha, at a time their sister was also supposed to be in the lakeside town.

When Janet confronted her the following week on whether she had seen her man in Naivasha, the sister was furious.

“I was not in Naivasha to look out for any man. I had gone there to do my own things,” she retorted. She then decided to redirect her arsenal to her man, asking him if he had seen her sister in Naivasha.

“Is there anything wrong with me being with her? Can’t I have time with her and talk about many issues. I always tell you she is my great friend,” he said.

This turned out to be the turning point in the relationship. Though there was no “ugly incident”, it was apparent that her man was now going out with her sister who after the Easter escapades made it a point to avoid any discussion about the man.

“Any mention of him just made her move away She always insisted that she was not forcing anyone to be with her and that she had nothing against him,” says Janet.

Janet , who works as a civil servant in Nairobi confirms that her sister and the man have been together since last year.

Did she ever try to sort things out with both of them? I ask.

“There was no co-operation from either of them. While he never denied “being very good friends with her”, the sister never entertained any discussion on the matter. It is like she left me to sort out things with him,” says Janet. Reached on the telephone early this week, the man, now 33, disconnected the phone when we sought his comment.

“I am busy now and I do not want to talk about that,” he said curtly.

But later in the day, he called back and explained that he was yet to break any formal commitment to anyone. “But you were introduced to the family as Janet’s fiancé?” I reminded him.

“Look here. I am repeating that I have not broken any formal commitment with her (Janet)” he said.

“You see, it is not cast in stone that when you are introduced to a family, then you must marry that person. That does not mean you cannot change your mind, haven’t you seen these things, my friend?”

He continued on the phone. “Don’t you feel like you have let her down and exposed her to ridicule from her family members?”

I continued to which he quickly replied, “I am still with the family. I will marry from there.”Janet and her sister are yet to quarrel in public but recent happenings between them indicate they are pulling in different directions on many things.

“We no longer talk much. She has avoided me and last month, she refused to sleep in our rural home because I was also staying for the night, after a neighbour’s funeral,” explains Janet.

Like Janet, several women are finding themselves driven out of relationships by the closest people to them — their sisters. It normally starts as a harmless acquaintance between a man and a potential sister-in- law often engineered by the “happily hooked” sister.

Then it graduates into an ordinary friendship that can arise out of respect for the incoming man in the family before either he or the woman “notices” the other.

Depending on either, the matrix can change and turn things upside down against the girl who first nailed the man.Elizabeth*, 29, not only lost her man to her younger sister, he went ahead and married the said sister.

Several weekends ago, Elizabeth sought to explain to us in a social gathering in Nairobi West why her younger sister, 26, got married before her.

“She is actually living with a man who was supposed to marry me,” she started. Then she laid bare the script; When Elizabeth graduated from a private university in 2005, she got a sales job at a multinational bank in Thika. There, she met Jimmy* who she was in college with but they were not friends

“Although both of us were doing a Bachelor of Commerce degree, we were just course mates. When we met in the bank, he was the only person who was familiar,” says Elizabeth.

Slowly, Elizabeth’s quest for direction and advice from Jimmy in her new place of work led to a relationship and by end of the year (2006) they were so much into each other that they were talking of living together.

While Jimmy lived in Thika, Elizabeth lived in Juja where her younger sister visited frequently. The sister was a final year student at Kenyatta University at the time.

“I would meet her with my fiancé several times, especially on weekends when both would come to my place,” Elizabeth says as she tries to piece together the beginning of the end of her love life with the banker. Sometime in 2007, Elizabeth got wind that her man was seen at the university the previous weekend from one of her sisters’ friends who wondered where she was.

“She innocently asked me why I missed the Saturday treat they got from Jimmy. She went ahead to say how they had missed me,” Elizabeth confides.

Her boyfriend downplayed the issue when she called him later that evening saying the outing was not planned but something that just came up when he had passed by the university. He had been accompanied by another gentleman.

“He tried to convince me it was not pre- arranged. He even said if he had something fishy up his sleeve, he would not have been accompanied. I did not want to read mischief into it at that time,” she says.

Her fears were further allayed by the sister who said there were several people in the party. “They just came and we asked them out. They did not object,” the sister said.

Today, Elizabeth admits she might have ignored the tell tale signs that she was losing Jimmy’s attention to her more aggressive sister.

Within months, I realized that I had slowly lost grip of the man and he easily warmed his way into her heart,” she reveals.

But she did not take matters lying down. She confronted her sister about the issue when they met at their rural home in Molo when they went to vote during the general elections.

“We ended up having a scuffle and my mother was distraught. She tried to dig out what the problem was but neither of us was ready to open up,” says Elizabeth.

After the elections, it became hard for the two sisters to go back to Nairobi due to the violence that erupted in most parts of the country. These were the hardest seven days the two sisters had lived together through, according to Elizabeth.

“There was a lot of tension between us  and we did not speak to each other,” she admits. But their mother, a former primary school teacher and counsellor, could not tolerate what was going on. One day she called both sisters and categorically stated that she was “getting fed up of grown-up women who were behaving like little girls”.

“She was furious. But it was hard for me to discuss such a matter with her,” Elizabeth says. It was a big relief when the roads opened up and they were able to go back to Nairobi.

For some months, her attempts to dig up what was happening confirmed that the two were meeting regularly. When she threatened to walk out of the relationship, a telling answer awaited her.

“It is up to you to decide. I have no problem with your sister,” the man told her. She went down in sorrow but every time she asked him if he was dating her sister, his answers were always curt, “I do not see anything wrong with that.”

The next thing she heard was that her sister had moved in with her man. That was in early 2008. Luckily for Elizabeth, the bank she was working for in Thika recalled her to the headquarters in Nairobi around May 2008.

“It was a big relief because it I had started feeling awkward every time I bumped into Jimmy in the office.”

As for her sister, they are no longer on talking terms. The major concern that arises from this scenario is that each woman has had to sever close relationship with their blood sisters, because of a man.

So just how close should your sister be to the man who has eyed you? That could be the question young women will have to grapple with.

bmuiruri@nation.co.ke