Before I met my boyfriend, I’d convinced myself that relationships aren’t for me. I had failed in too many of them for me to draw that conclusion. “If at first, you don’t succeed,” They say, “Dust yourself up and try again” but for how long can one try at one thing and not succeed and yet keep trying? I was done. I wasn’t going to keep trying and keep breaking my heart again so I closed my heart up and called the guy who deals in heart beyond repairs. Maybe he could put my heart together for me but just when I was about to shut the door, this guy walked in and said, “No, not too fast. Can I have my chance?” I said no. He said, “Don’t be too harsh on me. I’m not like those guys who played with your heart. I will handle it with care. Just give it out to me and see what happens.”

The girl in me listened to him and said yes. That yes was a cautious yes. The kind of yes you say in your nose because you’re not too sure of it. But he continued making promises upon promises so I said to myself, “One last time won’t kill me. Who knows? He could be the one.” I gave it all away to him. My heart. I told myself I would give him a chance and see what he would do with it. Even when I wasn’t sure, I still trusted him to be the man he said he was.

I learned early enough that he wasn’t the calling type. He wouldn’t call until you do. At best, he would text you. I didn’t want it that way. I wanted a man who knows how to call his girl on the phone early in the morning when her voice is raspy and brand new. I wanted to hear his voice often so we talked about it. His inability to call. He said he will change and he did change in no time. “Maybe he is different after all.” I thought. He called as often as he could. If he didn’t call before work, he made sure to call after work. That was ok.

Financially, I’m ok. I landed my dream job two years ago and I’ve been doing just fine financially. I’m not the kind of girl who would run to a man and ask the world from him. I had what I needed and I was content but I had to know if the man I had was generous enough. He had a job that paid well too. So sometimes I would test his generosity by asking for things I don’t need. He came through almost all the time to prove that I could count on him if things ever got hard. He was passing all the love tests I was consciously putting his way and I was proud of him.

He is the kind of man who wouldn’t like to eat from outside. I mean, he likes home-cooked meals. Apart from that, he likes to see his women on all fours, cleaning, scrubbing, and turning old things around to make them look brand new. He believes in hand washing. I don’t know the kind of washing machine that disappointed him to the extent that he didn’t believe in machine wash again. I had washed for him anytime I visited on weekends. His place was almost always in a mess—heaps of unfolded laundry, dirt things here and there. He doesn’t have the kind of sense that pricked a man to keep his place clean so I do it for him. He would put everything in a mess and wait for me to clean it up for him.

During one of my visits, I met his sister and we got off on the wrong foot. Because of that encounter, I couldn’t visit him the following weekend. Because I couldn’t go there that weekend, he left everything, including his unfolded laundry there waiting for me to come and do it for him.

I go to school on weekends. This means my weekends’ schedule is airtight. I have online lectures starting from 7:30am to 5:00pm on Saturdays. My Sunday lectures are face to face and they start from 12:00 noon to 6:30pm. Yet my boyfriend demands that I cook for him on weekends. Relationships are about compromise, right? To prove myself as worthy wife material, I obliged his demands and cooked for him while I take my online classes. Because of his happiness, I was always making compromises here and there. Cooking for him on Weekends wasn’t enough for him. He started requesting my presence in his house every weekend. I felt he was asking for more than I could do so I took a break for a while.

But I visited him recently and I realized, his place was well kept. The floors were mopped so clean, I could see my reflection on the tiles. The bed was neatly made. His laundry was folded and put away. His fridge was stocked with a variety of home-cooked dishes. I knew there was no way he would do any of it himself. I didn’t want to open a can of worms, by asking questions I wasn’t ready to know the answer to, so I kept my mouth shut.

During one of our late-night phone conversations, he said “I have seen that you don’t like efie edwuma. Doing house chores is not your thing and as a woman, I expected you to do better than that.”

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Okay, this seems like an ambush so I asked, “What do you mean? If you say I don’t like house chores what exactly are you trying to communicate? What kind of chores do you expect me to do that I’m not doing?” He answered “Oh you know already. I don’t have to enumerate them. You don’t clean my place. You have never scrubbed my bathroom. I mean those little—little things a woman is expected to do for her boyfriend to prove love and to prove herself as marriage material. Just so you know, I have women who are willing to do these things for me but you are here and treating me anyhow.”

For days, I couldn’t stop thinking about our phone conversation. “Did he mean what he said? Or he was just trying to provoke a reaction?”

I needed answers. Answers he’s not ready to give. Sometimes I’m very specific, “Do you see a future with this relationship we are building?” He would put some vague words together just to escape the question. The whole thing and the changes surrounding this relationship are making me think a lot these days. Maybe I should cut my losses and move on. I can’t have him string me along only to choose someone else over me in the future. I will rather walk away now than be a second option.

I have my assumptions of what the truth is, but I wish he would just call a spade a spade so we both know where we stand. We’ve been together for fourteen months. That should mean something, shouldn’t it? I need to know what he’s thinking so I can make a decision but currently, he gives me no clue and that hurts.

What should I do to get him to say what is on his mind?

The way my relationship life had been swinging to and fro without any good results, maybe I should stop dating African men and try another race and see what comes of it. I’m getting tired of African men and their wahala.

—Maame

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