I was nineteen when I met him. He said he wanted to be a friend. I said, “Why not?” He called every day and visited sometimes on campus. One weekend he asked me to visit him in the house and I did. That was when he proposed to me. I asked, “But I thought you said we should be friends?” He said, “Yeah, we’ve been friends for a while now and I’d fallen for the kind of woman you are. You’re calm and well-mannered. If I get a woman like you, I will need no other in my life.”

He was older—twenty-eight or twenty-nine and was already working. You look at his room and see a person who takes himself seriously and the fact that he was mature than I was did the trick for me. I asked him, “You mean you don’t have anyone in your life?” He said, “The girl I had broke up with me some months ago and I’ve been single since.” I asked, “Why did she break up with you?” He mentioned incompatibility and different life’s direction as the reason.

I liked him. I’d grown attached to him since we became friends. There was no reason to pretend so I told him, “I love you too. Yes, I will be your girlfriend.”

It was beautiful the way we started. I had nothing to compare it with because he was my first ever serious boyfriend. Those I had before him were just lips relationship. We were young and were still learning the ways of love. The last person I called a boyfriend was when I was in SHS. We just loved the tag that came with it. The fact that people called us lovers. We didn’t have the space to explore anything. The farthest we went was him holding my hands one day when we walked on campus.

I didn’t know a lot and at some point, I was embarrassed about my naivety. He asked a lot of questions about things I’d done or not do. “Sex?” “No” “Kiss?” “No.” I hadn’t done most of the things he asked. One day in his room he tried to kiss. I raised my hand to my mouth to prevent him. He said, “Allow me to teach you.” I said, “I know about kisses. I had one that lasted for a second.” He said, “It should last more than a second.”

I gave him the chance. He asked me, “How does it feel?” I said, “It feels like the first time but longer.” He said, “This might as well be the first because the first wasn’t actually a kiss. What kiss lasts for only a second?” I said, “The one I had first.”

Everything I was doing with him was my first but he seemed so experienced he could predict my actions at any given time. That was the side of him I fell for the most. He seemed to know at any point what I was going to do. I love his maturity and the fact that he was always there for me. I didn’t resist anything. I was ready to go all the way with him. Whatever he wanted, I said yes.

Two years after dating him, there was nothing I didn’t know and nothing was my first. We had done everything lovers will do to claim that they’re lovers. For the past two years that I knew him and started dating him, I was always in his house on weekends.

Then the cracks began to show. I didn’t know how it started but at some point, he started using my past inexperience against me. He never stopped treating me like a child. He never took what I said and everything he said was final. He started accusing me of things that never existed. One night, I was with him when a guy I knew from campus called me. I didn’t want to talk in his presence so I didn’t pick the call. He started accusing me of having a boyfriend on campus. Every little thing, he would bring that guy in.

We were heading towards exams week and learning was getting intense. He knew my timetable and knew how close exams was but he came one Friday night asking me to follow him to his place. I said, “Naaa this is not a good idea. I have a paper on Monday. I can’t spend the weekend with you. How do I learn?” He said, “Can’t you learn while with me?” I said, “I know you. You won’t let me so let me stay here and learn. I don’t want to fail.”

He left angrily and later sent me a message, “Because of that boy you have on campus, you’ve started playing tricks with me. Stay with him. Don’t call me again.” That wasn’t the first time he was saying that so I ignored him. After exams, I went to his house and saw a woman’s hair on the bathing soap in the bathroom. It looked like a woman washed her hair in the bath. I asked him, “Who came here?” He said no one did. I drew his attention to the strands of hair covering the soap. After several minutes of denying the obvious truth he said, “If you won’t come here, there are others who are ready to be with me.”

I said, “Just because I didn’t come when you asked me, you went in for another woman?” He said, “What do you expect me to do?” I said nothing. I only picked my bag and left. He didn’t even try to stop me. I was on campus when he sent a long message telling me he was joking with me because he was hurt when I didn’t visit him over the weekend. I said, “You can’t joke away the hair I saw on the soap. There was a woman there and if that woman was comfortable enough to wash her hair in there then it means that wasn’t her first time there.” He asked, “So what are you saying?” I said, “I’m saying you should stick with that woman. I’m out.”

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His problem was, he always treated me as a child. He didn’t take my words seriously and didn’t see the urgency in the things I told him so even when I told him it was over, he thought it was one of those childish things. Until after a month that he realized I wasn’t joking. By that time, I’d moved on. When he came begging and making promises, I told him point blank that I wasn’t coming back. “I’d been disrespected for so long and I won’t let this one pass, especially when it involves another woman.”

I broke up with him in January this year and up to date, he calls every day asking us to be together again. He had accepted the fact that he was with a woman and had regretted his actions. The more I try to push him away the more he bounces back. So I thought, “Why not? A second chance wouldn’t be too much but it would only happen on the basis of certain assurances. The last time I asked him a simple question, “Why do you want to come back into my life?”

He said, “See all the things I have taught you, you think I will allow someone to come and enjoy it? You’re so good in everything now because I molded you to suit my wants and needs. Now that you’re perfect, I won’t allow anyone to come close.” I buried my cheeks in my palm thinking why someone will think that was a good enough reason to want someone back. When he realized I wasn’t buying that explanation, he started saying a lot of good things. Things he should have said right from the start.

Now I’m confused. I want to take the first thing he said as his sole reason and bounce him but honestly, he said a lot of good things too. He claims what he said at first was just a joke meant to soften the tension between us before saying the real reasons. I want to believe him but I want to also believe that the first thing he said was his real intentions. What should I do? Will I be wrong to let him go because of his first reason?

–Olivia    

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