Because of busy schedules, we normally hired domestic assistants to help with the house and to always have someone home when we were out. The challenge we had with most of them was how they slowly grew into laziness.

Once we had a house help who started acting strange when I was home. She tried to tempt me. Skimpy clothes. Walking out in just a towel. Showing more than necessary. Then one day, it stopped. I knew my wife had handled it.

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And that is because of who my wife is. She has low tolerance for indecency as well as many other things.

She is a private person. As private as a cat. You do not see cats mating. You rarely catch them doing their business, and when you do, they cover every trace. That is my wife. She has been that way for as long as I have known her, and adjusting in the first years of our marriage was not easy.

As a newly married man, I wanted to share my body with her, but she was very protective of hers. She did not dress in front of me. She would not bathe with me. Even after bathing, she wrapped herself fully like a monk before stepping out of the bathroom.

Slowly, we built our own version of intimacy around her boundaries, and it required a lot of compromise from me. Everything happened at night, in the dark, lights off, her half dressed. If I tried to hold her a certain way, she would pull back and say, “Do not hold me like that. Your skin is touching me too much.” There was always a limit. A line I could never cross.

It is frustrating. I struggled. I wanted more than she gave. I wanted her fully. To see her in light and in darkness. To feel her, not just go through the motions. But I convinced myself this is who she is, and I had to respect it.

Beyond our bedroom, she carried that same sense of decency into the way she ran the house. She was strict about dressing. No loose behavior. No unnecessary exposure. Especially with the house helps.

Recently, we hired a male domestic assistant, and since his arrival, things in my house have changed. Changes that feel wrong.

A few days after his arrival, I observed how my wife’s dressing style drastically remodelled.

For starters, She started wearing sleeveless clothes. She’s stopped wearing a bra around the house more often than not. Then it became more.

She now wears fitted clothes at home, clothes that follow every line of her body. Her towel are shorter when she comes out of the bathroom, or even when she is going in. The bathroom door is no longer closed when she bathes. It is either slightly open. Just enough for a passing glance. Enough for someone in the house to see.

And it is not just me anymore. This whole theatrics is not for me. The help is here too.

So, I bought her bigger towels and comfortable home clothes, things that fit the way she used to be. I left them where she would see them. She saw them, but said nothing. She did not touch them.

The dressing is not even the whole story. My wife now notices the house help more than she notices me. Whether he has eaten. Whether he is comfortable. Whether he needs anything. Me, she does not ask. What used to come my way now goes to him.

“Have you eaten?”

“Come and watch TV inside.”

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“Take whatever you want from the fridge.”

I want to trust my wife. I truly do. But my mind is no longer quiet. It is full of questions I cannot answer and thoughts I do not want to have. A feeling I cannot shake.

My wife of ten years, who was too private to undress in front of her own husband, now dresses as if she wants to be seen by a house help.

The man himself has done nothing wrong. He is, in fact, the best help we have ever had. But my peace left with whatever changed in this house and in my head. I am now considering letting him go. Not for anything he has done, but for what his presence has stirred.

If the roles were reversed, my wife would have sent that maid away without hesitation. No explanation.

Now it is my turn to decide.

—Richmond

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