I am twenty-four and he is twenty-seven. We met in school. He was my senior but for some reason, he had to return to school and join my class when we got to SHS3. I was one of the few people who tried to get to know him when he joined us. And it didn’t take time for us to become good friends. We spent a lot of time together and it was always fun. As our friendship progressed, we got to a point where we developed feelings for each other. I didn’t say anything but it was very clear in my actions. I also saw it in his actions. Later he told me, “I feel like our friendship has peaked. We should take things to the next level and try a relationship. What do you think?” I said, “I feel the same way too. Let’s give love a chance and see how it goes.” So we started dating. 

The beginning of our relationship was very rosy. I loved him with everything in me even though he had nothing. I believed in him, supported him, and fed him when he had nothing to eat. I did his laundry and cooked for him most of the time. He didn’t have to ask me to do them for him, I just did it for love. A few months after we completed school, I got pregnant and we decided to keep it. By God’s grace, everything went well with the pregnancy and I delivered a beautiful baby girl. 

After the baby arrived, my boyfriend proposed, “Now that we have a child together, we should hurry up and get married.” I didn’t think we were ready, especially me, because I was only nineteen years old then. So I told him, “I don’t think marriage is the best thing for us right now. We are both not financially stable so it will be difficult. Right now, we love each other so let’s just be together and focus our energy on building ourselves financially. When things get better we can get married.” He didn’t seem pleased by my response but he accepted it.

As time went on, our efforts to do well financially kept failing and we just kept doing worse. His mother had a food business and she had asked me to work with her but I didn’t want to. However, with the way our finances kept declining, I took the job with his mother. Working in the food business while taking care of a baby was no easy feat. I barely had time for myself and the baby, so I could no longer do certain things for Edward. Although I spent a lot of time at his house helping his mother cook, I wasn’t able to cook for him or do his laundry, and all the other chores I was doing for him. He wasn’t happy about it and so he started complaining. I listened to him and did his laundry occasionally but he still wasn’t satisfied with it. 

One day he started complaining again, “Mata, my laundry basket is full. When are you going to take care of it? And I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in a while, when are you going to remedy that?” I had had a very tedious day and my patience was low so I snapped at him, “What are you doing with your time that you can’t do your own laundry? Even if you don’t know how to cook, is this not the time to learn it? How can you be so lazy?” He expressed his displeasure at my response and we ended up arguing.

Along the line, the exhaustion wore me out and I fell ill. After I recovered, I decided to quit the job and find something less stressful to do. When Edward saw that I was no longer working for his mother, he started insisting that I cook for him and do his laundry again. I got angry and we often fought about it. I just wanted him to make the effort and do these things for himself. But he believed it was my job to do them and not his. The more we fought, the less we spoke to each other. As if that wasn’t enough, he joined Jehovah’s Witness Church and became worse in his attitude. We couldn’t agree on simple things anymore because of his newfound doctrines. He tried to impose them on me but I rejected them and it led to a breakup. Later, he apologized and we got back together, only to break up again because he insisted I had to attend his church. We got back together again but we kept fighting about little things that we didn’t use to fight about. This continued until one day I woke up and realized that we had completely drifted apart.

Unbeknownst to me, he had gotten himself another girlfriend and they were parading their relationship all over town. I found out when I called him one day and he accidentally answered the call. For two hours I was on the phone listening to his conversation with the girl. He spoke about how much he loved her and how eager he was to marry her. When I confronted him later he told me, “Nothing happened between us. She only comes around to help me with the chores you’ve refused to do for me.” That made me angry, “So your reaction to me not doing your chores is getting another woman to do them? With this attitude, I don’t think I can marry you. I want to be with a man who will help me in the home when I am not able to do certain things. And you’ve proven to me that you are not that man. I think this relationship has run its course, goodbye.” 

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After the breakup, I tried to keep myself together but the first time I saw the two of them together, I fell apart. I cried until my mum found out what happened. After I told her everything that had been going on, she told his mother. His mother called to confirm the story. Both our families were displeased at the turn of events. They tried to get us to work out our issues for the sake of our baby but Edward said, “No, I have moved on. I  am even getting ready to perform my girlfriend’s knocking rites.” Later he came to tell me, “I won’t go ahead and perform the other lady’s knocking rites if you promise to do everything I expect of you.” I wasn’t ready to compromise on my values so I ignored him. 

At some point, we met to exchange some information about our daughter, and we ended up talking about ourselves. He apologized for hurting me and expressed interest in wanting to work things out.  He has fixed a date for the other lady’s knocking rites but he is willing to cancel it. He just doesn’t know how to go about it without disrespecting the lady’s family. Honestly, I still love him and I am willing to work things out, especially for our daughter’s sake but the situation has gotten messy so I don’t know if I should take him back. I’m also considering the differences in our belief systems and it just makes the idea of him unappealing.

Please advise me, should I move on and let him marry the other girl? Or should I give our relationship another try? We were together for seven years.

—Mata. p

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