Couples should be connected and not attached - Okyeame Kwame clarifies 'cheating' comment

Okyeame Kwame has clarified statements he made about the concept of cheating during a conversation.

According to him, words have spirits, and the words we use can impact our relationships. In his view, dependence on a partner can lead to negative consequences in case of betrayal.

Okyeame Kwame began trending on October 16, when an excerpt from a yet-to-be-released podcast showed him wondering why the act of sleeping with other people aside from one’s partner is tagged as cheating.

He was quoted saying, “As stupid as it sounds, our society has created a certain mindset that if your partner goes to sleep with another person, that is not you, your partner has cheated. How am I cheating on you? I am not using your body.”

His comments led to massive backlash from netizens, with some questioning the motivation behind his statement. Others felt his words were taken out of context.

In an interview with Peace FM on October 20, Okyeame Kwame clarified his stance, stating that he was rather encouraging the idea of being independent in a relationship rather than being overly attached.

“Every word has a spirit behind it so if you use words like 'he has cheated on me,' it means you are depending on the person and you will bear the consequences of the action the person takes.

"So if we are in a relationship, we need to learn to be parallel instead of being attached because if your girlfriend or wife goes to sleep with someone else, if you think about it, you weren't the one who cheated...if you're my wife and you cheat, how does that disgrace me? You have disgraced yourself.

"If we begin to look at life like that, it gets to the point where we separate ourselves from others,” he said.

Okyeame Kwame illustrated his point with a story about a man who went into depression when his daughter got pregnant at a young age before marriage.

According to him, the man's emotional attachment to his daughter resulted in his inability to distinguish between physical and psychological pain.

He thus called for partners to be “connected” rather than being attached to avoid painful heartbreaks.

“Immediately you start to think about certain things, then the consequences come to you. So if we are in a relationship and we don't want our hearts to be broken, we separate ourselves physically from our partners.

"We get connected and not attached. If you cheat, you have cheated yourself out of my trust but you don't cheat on me. You cannot cheat on me. You cheat yourself.

"Does it make sense that somebody does something and you get your heart broken instead? When that happens, you can't go to work, think or eat, because of somebody else,” he quizzed.

He argued that certain societal concepts like possession should be reconsidered. While he might say "my wife" in conversation, he emphasized that, in his mind, he viewed his spouse as an independent, thinking adult. Therefore, if she made a decision, he did not consider himself responsible for her actions.

“We need to look at some of the concepts in our society such as possession...I say "my wife" for the purposes of conversation but in my head, it is "a wife". It is Okyeame Kwame's wife, however, I am not attached to what she does because she is a complete individual, a reasoning adult so if she decides to do something, I am not responsible for that,” he said.

ID/SARA

Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.