After a small but deeply unsettling discovery, author Ann Turner wonders just how well you can ever know another person...
How well can you know someone?
I’ve always thought that I could read my partner of twenty years like a map. I keep no secrets and felt comfortably assured that was reciprocated. In the past I haven’t been as perceptive as I thought, and this should have acted as a warning.
In my twenties, my colleague Michael was my best friend. He was supportive, and always there when I needed him. We'd stay up talking, confiding everything. When Michael met his wife-to-be, I was thrilled. Jenny was bright, with a quick humour and a warm heart that matched Michael's. After they married and Jenny became pregnant, I was so pleased for them. Until one day, Michael and I had lunch on a sparkling spring day and he told me that he was having an affair. Horrified, I said he must stop. He then confessed he'd had several affairs with married women he hadn't told me about. I couldn't believe my ears. I was very worried for Jenny.
Should I tell her? I didn’t think that was my business – but I did feel strongly that it was my duty to get Michael to tell her, and to commit to not being unfaithful again. But Michael didn't confess; he ran away, and stopped talking to all his friends, including me. At first I'd still see him at work. We'd pass in corridors, see each other in meetings, and he'd pretend we barely knew each other. And then he left work too. In spite of Jenny trying to contact him after their gorgeous little girl was born, he refused to see his daughter for the first years of her life, and after that only sporadically. How wrong I'd been about him. How little I really knew Michael, after all.
There's a shadow in me, a doubt. Secrets don't have to be big: small ones can cut deeply, like a sliver of glass.
Years later, I discovered my own partner had a secret. I was rummaging around our shed for gardening gloves when I found, tucked away in a dimly-lit corner, a beautiful little oil painting of the sea. What was it doing there? I’d never seen it before. Turning it over, slipped into its frame, was a card. From the ex-girlfriend of many years before, Fiona, wishing happy birthday, with kisses.
I supposed she had given it before we met, but I was concerned that it was hidden. I looked again at the front. The artist had signed the date – 2013. Only three years ago. Churning with shock, I rang Jenny, now a dear friend. She came
straight over, we walked around the park, me crying, she giving advice.
I found I wasn't up to a direct confrontation, I felt too raw and vulnerable. Instead, I hung the painting in our family room, near our dining table, where it fitted perfectly with our other landscape art. A chill ran through me – had Fiona been to our place, to know our taste so well? Two days later my partner noticed the painting, and froze. I asked what was wrong? Nothing... After dinner there was a visit to the shed.
I was washing the dishes when the altercation began. My partner had been seeing Fiona, but promised that it was just as a friend. They were both historians – it was logical their paths crossed, but not wanting to upset me, I had been kept in the dark. I wasn’t fond of Fiona, a game-player who had tried to inveigle her way into our relationship when we first met, with odd invitations. She was peculiar, and deceptive. I was distraught that deception had spread. The painting was taken off the wall, with an apology. It went back to the shed where it was quickly lost amongst the mess and detritus of our lives that inevitably ends up there. I've always trusted my partner. Did I believe it was only friendship between them? I wanted to keep trusting – I had to keep trusting.
But there's a shadow in me, a doubt. Secrets don't have to be big: small ones can cut deeply, like a sliver of glass. I wish I'd never found the painting, because sometimes now I look and wonder: how well do I know my partner? I hope better than I knew Michael.
When we look into their eyes, hear their words, do we ever really know what's going on inside another person, or is there something unreachable in us all?
Ann's book The Lost Swimmer is published by Simon & Schuster and is available now from Amazon.
By Ann Turner
Twitter: @Gransnet
We've been married since 1972, like most couples, had our up's and downs, but infidelity has never came into it.
Wise words M0nica, one should never implicitly trust the skill of reading another person like a book, if only we could, but there are far too many variables, people are more like incomplete jigsaw puzzles, far better to spend time trying to figure out ourselves than to become complacent in the premise of unreservedly knowing another ! 
I found my ex's affair with my friend was unforgiveable and it changed my life for ever.
I looked at him wondering 'Who are you really?' Had he meant anything he'd said in all those years or was it all a big lie? When did the lies begin? I did not recognise the man I had loved all those years.
He then morphed into a total stranger and we divorced.
For anyone going through this heartbreaking situation 
.
About a week ago,my DP and I had an argument about something relatively minor that quickly escalated into something much bigger. The initial issue was that I was in the bathroom,brushing my teeth,when he wanted to get in there to shave before going to a job centre appointment. I apologised,but also got a bit narky,saying that 5 minutes was not going to make him late (he always allows more than enough time to get ready). Within seconds,we were shouting at each other and then he said ' You don't really know me. You know nothing about me'. He refused to explain just what he meant by this remark. We have been together 3 and a half years,so I thought I knew him pretty well. Well it ended up with me slamming the door on him as he left. He disappeared,didn't come back that night,but text me saying he was staying at his cousin's. Said he wasn't coming back until I apologised.
I said 'OK,I didn't want him back until he explained what he meant by that remark,that I know nothing about him'. First,he denied having said it,then when I persisted,he back-tracked and said it was 'a throwaway remark',he meant it in relation to the argument,that I didn't know his character,that he liked to get ready in plenty of time. I don't know what to think. He came back after staying away 3 nights,saying he loved me and missed me,but still wouldn't enlarge on his remark,despite me trying to get him to talk about it. Just says he has explained what he meant,end of matter. But I am not happy with this. AIBU thinking there was more to it than what he says?
I agree and I feel sad for people who have not had that comfort in their lives.. DH drives me bonkers at times (Eg currently 
) as I'm sure I do him, but I know he's there for me come what may!
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