I met Josh three days before his birthday. We talked a little and said goodbye. We parted while tapping each other’s contacts on our phones. On his birthday, I knocked on his door in the evening. When he came out I gave him the present in my hand and wished him a happy birthday.

“I didn’t think you’d do this. Thank you very much,” he said. I responded, “I’m glad it worked. I wanted to surprise you.”

He wanted us to go out that night but I told him I was returning from work and didn’t feel fresh enough to go out on a birthday date. He insisted. I told him we could do it another time.

When the ‘another time’ wasn’t coming early enough, he kept calling, texting and coming to my place to ask when it would be ‘another time.’ We agreed on a date and that evening on the date, he proposed to me, looking away as if he didn’t want me to see the truth in his eyes.

I was ready for love, not just love but purposeful love. I was looking for something that was built to last. I was twenty-nine going to the territories of the dreaded thirties. I didn’t have time to waste so I told him what I wanted from a relationship with him.

“I’m ready but we can’t date forever. A year later, we should be at a place where decisions can be made and where the compass of our relationship would be pointing at home.”

He agreed that very evening. I still needed my let-me-think-about-it moment so I took days before saying yes to a relationship.

Josh was easy to love. He didn’t come with any rules or any complications. He came like, “Here I all am. Love me.” I told him how he made things easier and how he made his love for me shown in the little things he did.

He would come to my place and leave a gift for me. He knew I wasn’t home but he would still come around, leave it with anybody he saw around. When I got it, I went over the moon. They were not big things. Little but thoughtful things. If I talked about toffees twice in a conversation, the next day he would get me a toffee. I remember telling him I was too tired one day. On Saturday he came around; “You said you were tired. Let me do your work for you.”

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It was funny and sweet the way he sat and washed my clothes, cleaned the bath and later cooked a horrible meal for us. I loved the gesture so much that the taste of the food didn’t matter. I savoured it before swallowing while looking at him and thinking about how blessed I was.

He went quiet one day and it took him days to open up to me. I had to beg him, spend a night at his place so I could get under his skin and open him up. The silence was sponsored by financial troubles. He needed money to pay off an impending trouble. All night, we talked about the mistake and how he allowed himself to be used as a scapegoat. We didn’t blink. Our souls were alive and our minds wandered into the forest looking for where to raise the money.

“I will give you half of the money,” I told him. “So you raise the half from somewhere else. You wouldn’t need to pay mine quickly because I’m with you. We’ll combine our efforts to pay off the other half so you can have your freedom.”

It was all I had in my account. GHC10,000. I scrapped everything and gave it to him. Not too long afterwards, he settled the debt and was able to get his smile back but the colour of our relationship got faded. At first, I didn’t want to think about it too much. I left it in the hands of time to deal with it.

We were able to pay off the debt. I thought that would bring a shade of colour back into our relationship. It didn’t. He was still being distant. The little thoughtful things he did to make me love him, he stopped doing them. It got to a point it was very hard for me to get his attention. We needed to talk about it so we did.

“How can I buy you gifts when I owe you?”

“So you’ll let my birthday pass away without a sound because you owe me money? Not even a chocolate?”

Everything he didn’t do was because he owed me money but I never asked him to pay back my money. There were no timelines or reminders. I knew he owed me and he was going to pay up at some point. It didn’t even come up in our conversations until he decided to bring it up as an excuse.

“Why didn’t you call when you said you’d call?”

“I forgot ooo. These days I forget easily because I’m owing.”

“Why are you quiet?”

“I’m thinking of what to do to pay back the money I owe you.”

After saying all this, he hasn’t paid a penny after several months of owing me.

We had an agreement right from the start of our relationship. That after one year, we should be able to tell where the relationship was going. We had dated for almost two years. We had only talked about marriage in passing but nothing concrete. I brought the discussion back to the table and he told me, “My mind is not on marriage at all. How can I think about marriage when I owe you this much? Where am I going to get the money?”

In a way, my own money has become a stumbling block to everything that made me happy in my relationship. Now it’s the reason the man I love doesn’t have marriage in mind. To be honest with you, I’ve saved my way back to where I used to be. It’s money I can let go easily but I want him to pay back for me to know his commitment to issues about money. Honestly speaking, if he started paying GHC500 every month, which I know he can, by now he would have gotten somewhere.

I’m not saying he should marry me by all means. I love him. I love who we used to be before this. I love the Josh who came home to wash for me because I was tired. I miss the Josh who brought little gifts home for me to know he was thinking about me. Sometimes I want to write off the loan and see if that sparkly Josh would come back but the question is, what if he doesn’t come back?

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That’s my dilemma, to let him pay or to write it off. Sometimes, I also feel he’s using all those antics to let me forget about the money. He’s manipulating me to let go of the money. It’s not working because he’s overdoing it and it’s ringing the caution bell for me. What do you also think? Should I risk my money to have the man I love back or I should let it hang around his neck until he pays? Please advise.

— Eno

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