He was busy pursuing me and I was busy saying no to him. He would call in the morning and call in the afternoon and in the evening call me on video. He said, “Don’t you see the intentions of my heart through my efforts? I call every day. I make sure I know about your day and I try my best to show care. If it’s not love what would make me do all these things?” I told him, “You’re not doing anything different from all the guys who pursued me in the past. Some even brought roses in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, grace in the evening. But in the end what happened? If the first guy who pursued me like you are doing stayed, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” 

The kind of conversation we had plunged us into our past. I told him everything. The guys I’ve dated. What they did to me and how we broke up. I told him about the guy who introduced me to his mother but later walked away right after sex. I told him about the guy who took me to new places every weekend. The guy who promised to buy me a car. He took me to a showroom to select the car I wanted. He promised to get it for me the following month. It was that same week that I found out that he was a married man. I told him about my previous boss. How he pursued me and even threatened to sack me if I said no. I said yes and a year later he got married to his girlfriend from abroad.

I told him, “You see why what you’re doing doesn’t move me? It’s not your fault. It’s me who had been through a lot. It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your effort. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you. All I’m asking for is a space for me to heal first. I have a scab covering my wounds. If I play with it now, it would go off and I would bleed again. I don’t want to bleed on you. So give me space. Give me time. I’m not asking for a lot. Just the environment for me to grow out of these experiences so I can love truly again.”

He understood me and stayed friends. He was always there, giving me motivation and urging me to face life with my best foot. He gained my trust so I told him everything about me. When it got to the point I realized I would say yes to him, I opened up wholly for him to know where I’d been so he doesn’t take me there again. One day he asked me, “So all these men you spoke about, did you sleep with all of them?” I said, “It doesn’t matter anymore. They are no longer in my life. I don’t want to think about who I slept with and who I didn’t. It changes the taste in my mouth so let’s not talk about it.”

Eventually, I said yes to him. I remember how happy it made him and how happier I was to have him. There was something different about him. Apart from his consistency of trying all the time, there was something genuine about him. My intuition had been wrong before but I trusted my gut about him because he looked sincere. 

Two months later, he told me, “There’s a request I want to make from you. Please don’t get me wrong. It’s for the best. It settles my mind and gives me the confidence to go all in.” I told him to shoot and he said, “I want us to have an HIV test. We are new to each other. It’s best we know our status before anything happens. I told him, “That’s nothing to be angry about? Let’s do it.” He bought the self-test kit and we did the test. We were both negative. He wasn’t sure so he asked that we do it in the hospital. We went and had it done. The result was still negative.”

I asked him, “Are you happy now?” He said, “Both of us should be happy. We are clean to go.” 

After the test, nothing happened between us. I felt he was playing it safe. I liked it. It gave me time and space to access the orientation of the relationship before things go deeper. Three months later, he called for another test; “You know it’s good to test again after three months, right? Just to be sure that nothing had manifested after our first test.” Again we went to the hospital and got it done. Again we were negative. I thought we needed a conversation so I asked him, “Is it about me? Is it a case of mistrust? I just want to know the root cause of these series of tests so I know where to tackle it from.”

“It’s not about trust. I trust you. If I don’t trust you, I wouldn’t have come for you in the first place. Both of us had come from different places. Looking at all the men you mentioned, it’s just right that we know each other’s status before anything else.”

“Looking at all the men you mentioned…” That’s the only phrase that caught my attention. It meant my past had rubbed him the wrong way and he was looking for a way to ensure that I was clean before anything else. It also tied in perfectly with the question he asked me six paragraphs ago. About my body count. I asked him, “So it’s about my past right? You think I slept with too many men, right. I could be the one carrying it, right?” He retorted, “No. Not at all. I also did the test? That should tell you that it’s not about you but about us.” I formed the first bad impression of him. “He’s a man who would use my past against me. I ought to be careful when talking about the past.” 

From there, things flowed better between us. We had our first kiss and had our first shuperu. In my mind, everything was going to change after that. I didn’t know the kind of change to expect. I felt it could get worse because we’ve had shuperu. I also felt it could get better because he trusted me enough to have shuperu with me. Actually, nothing changed. He was still the man I met.  He was calling morning, afternoon, and evening. He was the man who told me about his future and how much he loved me. He made a lot of promises and even fixed a date for our wedding. “If everything goes according to plan, we should be married a year and a half from now.”

I’ve heard all that before so I didn’t hold my breath. A few weeks after the Shuperu, we were in his house watching TV when he brought out the self-test kit again. He said, “It’s time to check.” I asked, “Time to check what? I thought we’d gone past this stage long ago?” He said calmly, “Yeah we have but there’s nothing wrong with checking once in a while. You know, anything at all can happen.” I didn’t protest. He did it. We were both clean. So it became a consistent affair. Every now and then, he would call for it and we’ll do it. It was like our favorite food. Our staple. He could come to my house at dawn and test me. I would close from church and see him at the entrance with the test kit. I would sleep at night and he would enter my dreams with the kit. 

It was getting frustrating. I told him, “You’re such a nice man. There’s no promise you haven’t delivered. You treat me well and make me feel part of your world. How long have we dated? A year? You haven’t changed. Men I’ve met changed right from the beginning but your goodness had been consistent from day one. It’s the reason I’m bearing with all these tests. It’s annoying. It makes me feel like you met me on the street whoring so you can’t trust my blood to be pure. It brings a lot of bad feelings to my spirit. I would have walked away long ago had it not been the kind of man you are but I’m telling you this today, the next time you bring this thing out again in my presence, I would walk out of the door and not look back. Trust me, I’m that girl.”

The warning worked but guess what stopped, shuperu. He stopped kissing and everything that had to do with intimacy. It didn’t bother me because he didn’t change as a man. He was still kind and sweet and caring. He was the last person I spoke with before I went to sleep. He was the first person I spoke with even before the sun rose up in the skies. 

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He proposed marriage and I said yes. We’ve met my parents and had gotten the list. Since last year November, we’ve been in the market, trying to buy all the things we need for our wedding. We haven’t fixed a date yet but I believe we should be married before we get to the middle of the year. Not too long ago, he brought the testing issue again. “Before we finally get married, I think we would have to do a test. This is not one of those random tests. This is the final test before we get to the altar.” I asked him, “And after that what happens? Three months after marriage, we would do it again? And then when I come out of the toilet, you’ll test me again? Test before I sleep and test when I wake up?” He screamed, “Why are you exaggerating? Do you have problems with that? If that’s the only thing that would bring trust in our relationship, won’t you do it?”

“How many times do you want to confirm trust? If it’s about trust then I wouldn’t be surprised you would call for a DNA test after the birth of each child.”

“That’s also a possibility but it has nothing to do with trust.”

“If you’re marrying me to subject me to a daily dose of tests, then we would have problems. I won’t give you that chance so we better not go any further. What I told you the last time still holds. It disgraces me and makes me feel so small and cheap. If that’s your game plan, let’s drop everything on the floor and run.”

I can see unhappiness in his demeanor. He wants what he wants but I won subject myself to all those silly tests just because it’s what he wants. Honestly, I’m even having a rethink of the whole marriage thing. Somedays I want to walk out. Sometimes I want to believe that he would do the right thing after marriage. I’m confused. I don’t really know what to do. Would it be so extreme If I walk out at this stage? I can do everything to extract a promise from him. A promise that he won’t do it once we are married but can I trust such a promise? It’s a marriage we are talking about here. I’ve endured a lot of bad relationships. I don’t want to endure the same in my marriage. What do you suggest I do? 

—Kate

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