When I was in my first year of SHS, I started dating for the first time in my life. We met on Facebook; we were just friends who were chatting and liking each other’s posts. It wasn’t anything serious until it became something serious. Then he proposed to me. The idea of accepting the proposal of someone I had met online without seeing them didn’t sit well with me. “How can I accept your proposal when I haven’t even seen you?” I asked him. “What if you’re a woman pretending to be a man?”

He laughed it off and said he wasn’t. “Why would I lie to you?” He started sending me pictures. Even then, I still had my doubts. But every picture came with reassurance, and I let my guard down. I decided to give it a try. I accepted being his girlfriend and sent him my WhatsApp number.

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From then on, everything became routine. Like clockwork, we would text every day. Under the shadows of my blanket at night, I would whisper into my phone and talk to him. We got to know each other. When the WAEC results were released, he passed his exams and was preparing to enter tertiary school. Every step of the process, he kept me informed. He told me how the applications were going, the course he wanted to study, the hall he hoped to get into, and even the things he went to the market with his mother to buy in preparation for school. I knew everything, right down to the smallest details.

The thing was that I was afraid that once my boyfriend got to campus and met all the beautiful, sophisticated girls there, he would change. It was a fear I nursed quietly, one that broke my heart a little each day. And, true to my fears, he did change.

He stopped texting regularly. He barely responded to my messages. He only texted whenever he felt like it. I brushed it aside and convinced myself that he was just busy and stressed because of school. At one point, I asked him directly.

“Do you still want to continue this relationship or not?” He replied that he wanted to continue.

That answer gave me some comfort before I returned to the boarding house. But I would spend months in school only to come back to an empty phone. No texts. No calls. Sometimes, I would just ask him what he was doing with me, and then he would get angry, fuming.

Some months ago, I questioned him about his love for me, whether he was in it for love or if he was just preparing to take my green card away from me. He did that thing where you see the message and pretend it doesn’t exist. One day, I posted a video of myself on my WhatsApp status, and he replied, “Eii, you’ll be sweet paa oo.”

Another time, I posted another video of myself dancing. I had done a bit of waist movement and shaken my bumbum. He replied, “You can ride oo.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, so I asked him. He replied, “Lol.” I am sort of inquisitive, so I wanted him to tell me what he meant by that statement, and he didn’t mind me.

Out of curiosity, I searched for the meaning myself, and when I understood the sexual implication behind it, I replied to his text “Eii, you’re bad o,” followed by a laughing emoji.

He suddenly got angry and told me to block him and delete his number because I had insulted him. I didn’t know he would take it that way, so I pleaded with him. He didn’t give me a listening ear.

After ignoring me, he sent me a long message saying that he didn’t like the careless way I spoke to him. He wants to be accorded respect and all, so my comments made him feel disrespected. I apologized again.

First of all, I want to know: Was my reply to his comments really that bad to get him so riled up?

I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone

Recently, he has started texting again and asking about my health. I usually give short replies and leave. Sometimes I don’t reply at all. Sometimes I answer him directly without trying to continue the conversation.

I live with my dad, but I don’t even know how to tell him what’s going on—that my heart has been broken by some boy, or man, and all of that. Or how to even broach the topic with him, so that he helps me deal with it.

My dad is my only surviving parent, and it should be very easy to go to him and tell him this, but I don’t know how to do it. That’s why I am here. Am I overreacting, me ignoring him, me calling things off quietly? Or are my feelings valid? He doesn’t have to put those profane markers on me, as if that’s all I am in this life.

— Jenny

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