"Please check on the people you might think you are dating. These long holidays tend to have people paying lobolo and having lobolo paid for them."

These are the words of a common status update that a lot of people shared on social media streets.

It caused heartaches and heartbreaks to many, especially women who couldn't get hold of their significant others over the weekend - at a time when they needed them most.

The truth of the matter is that these tendencies of turning long weekends into wedding "surprises", is mostly practised by men.

Dear women, I am sure by now you are used to seeing pictures of your then boyfriends on social media platforms on Monday or Tuesday mornings after the long Easter weekend as newlyweds. Surprise?

You were subjected to a lot of persuading excuses why they didn't answer your calls.

These range from, "Babe, signal is bad at the bundus; sthandwa sam, I forgot my iPhone X charger in Pretoria, or Joburg, and people at home use old phones".

Or they might even have told you that the elders are having some serious talks with them (which was true, but not for the reasons you imagined), and they did not have time to talk to you.

But it turns out they were tying the knot. They got hitched and you got played.

Perhaps you should have insisted on that video call, and seen the family gathering. This could have eased your pain throughout the weekend. Your tears were going to be interpreted as a cry for, "When I remember what the Lord Jesus has done for me, I would never go back anymore".

Today, you realise that when it hit Thursday, you didn't just have to think of the death of Jesus, but that of your relationship too.

Unfortunately, the resurrection of Christ after three days in the grave didn't mean that of your relationship. It died for good, and your man rose up on Sunday morning as someone's husband.

As for Mandla, Sipho, Thabo and Nyiko, I think they need to be taken to court for emotionally stringing you along. I think you should sue him for asking for money from you to do everything but what he told you it was for.

He probably asked you to give him a grand (R1,000) just so he could get home (Limpopo, Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and especially KwaZulu-Natal).

You being a good girlfriend, you gave him the money, and helped him to successfully make it home in time for a wedding you knew nothing about.

This is probably not the only trip you sponsored for him. And your mind is right to make you believe that he has actually been taking many of those trips to see the one he wedded over the weekend.

Weep! Weep someone's daughter, weep. But like the woman scorned you are, you can't just let him get away with this.

Let me tell you what I think you should do.

Firstly, make sure he repays all the money he has been asking from you in the past year or so.

Secondly, if your detective skills can go as far as finding out how long he has been deceiving you, charge him for the period that you have been played for.

Ask for financial compensation.

Lastly, if you find out that you were actually the No 2 in this whole business, that the one he married came before you, then this is way beyond my imagination.

The whole thing of us lying as men and stringing other people along and getting married over the long weekends, while someone's daughter thinks we are their boyfriend, shows that we men are really trash.

It looks like these long weekends also tend to break a lot of hearts. If long weekends turned you into an unwilling and unknowing side-dish, we sympathise with you.

Chabalala is the founder of the Young Men Movement (YMM), an organisation that focuses on the reconstruction of the socialisation of boys to create a new cohort of men