I dated Kojo for three years, and he embarrassed me in every way imaginable. My mother called him broke. She wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t mind.

He rarely spent money on me. Whenever he had any, he would first write out a list of his family members and carefully calculate how much to give each one. Then he would smile, satisfied with himself, and suggest we buy gobɛ. That was close to all I got, “Gob3.” Strange as it seemed, I stayed. I believed things would eventually get better for him.

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What I couldn’t accept, what quietly wore me down, was his habit of borrowing money from nearly everyone I introduced him to. It didn’t matter how much I respected the person. He would find a way to ask them. I once warned him not to approach my aunt after I introduced them. He did it anyway.

We broke up when I traveled abroad and the distance did what distance does. It was not the ending I wanted, but it happened because my family never approved of our relationship.

The painful irony is that both Kojo and his sister later found love in the very church I had introduced them to. They both got married there. I cried bitterly and had so many questions for God.

While abroad, I met another man who said he loved me. We dated for a year before I discovered he had quietly returned to Ghana to marry someone else, a girlfriend he had hidden from me the entire time. That heartbreak nearly destroyed me. I became physically ill from the pain and ended up in hospital.

About two years later, I met Joseph. We dated for a year, and just when conversations about marriage began, things fell apart again. I mentioned, casually, that I would love to have three bridesmaids at my wedding. Joseph called me greedy. He said I only wanted it because other women were doing the same. Not long after that, he left too.

Around that time, I was taking an online short course when a classmate sent me a private message asking to be friends. We talked, and eventually decided to meet. He drove about three hours to see me, and I hosted him at my home. We spent a few days together and became intimate, something that was entirely my choice. I had convinced myself he would eventually leave like all the others, and at the time, we hadn’t even defined what we were to each other.

When he proposed, I accepted. But even then, part of me was quietly waiting for the day he would walk away.

Instead, I found a man completely different from everyone I had dated before. During the three years, I asked to break up twice. Not because he had done anything wrong, but because I was terrified of being left first. So, I wanted to do the leaving.

Four years ago, he married me. We have children together. And on this fourth anniversary, I can say with my whole chest that I have no regrets. Not about hosting him, not about that first night, not about any of the unconventional choices that brought me to him.

Dating A Narcissist: Lessons From Heartbreak And Abuse

For all those years, through every heartbreak, I had held tightly to something I thought was virtue. And then the moment I finally let go, stopped performing, stopped protecting, stopped waiting to be abandoned, that was the moment my blessing walked through the door.

God has a sense of humour. And sometimes, His timing is very, very good.

Ironically, through all the men I once loved and trusted, I stayed a virgin. It was only after I stopped trying so hard to be “perfect” that I found the man who truly stayed.

—Afriyie

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