I met a man who changed the course of my life. It was at a party. That night, I was the eye of every man in the room, including him. I went from dancing with my girlfriends to a stranger. I don’t really know how that happened, but I thought, why not?

When pictures from the event came out, we were caught in a funny pose, him leaning into my ear, me giggling. My friend sent it to me laughing, then added, “He’s asking for your number to apologize.” I said, give it to him.

He reached out. “I hope that I didn’t say anything inappropriate to you. I was a bit tipsy from the drinks I was pouring down my throat.” The call went on longer than either of us expected. One thing led to another, and he promised we’d have dinner the next time he was in town.

That took about a month. But when we finally sat down for dinner, we hit it off just as well as we had on the phone. He saw a beautiful girl with a smart brain. I saw an older man full of wisdom, someone who gave genuinely good advice about business and life. I invited him back to my place after dinner, and we just talked. I had moved into my own apartment, but it wasn’t fully set up yet. He noticed I had no TV, and I told him, “I am focused on building my life. TV is the least of them.” He said very little.

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About two days later, he called to say, “I have a surprise for you.” It was an envelope with 1,500 Ghana cedis inside. This was 2019. He just said, “Buy the TV.”

I didn’t hear from him for a while, but that was just his life. Some days, he disappeared. He is a big business tycoon with family outside of Ghana, always on the move, from one meeting to the next. Occasionally, he reached out, and when he was in town, we met for dinner. And for about five months, that’s what we were, no romance, no labels. Just good conversations over food, him pouring into me, advising me on my future, my choices, my career. If he could solve a problem I had, he solved it.

Then one day, on a Monday evening, he came to spend the night at my place. In his words, “I’m coming to watch TV and sleep over.” He never slept outside his own home in Accra, but he showed up in front of my apartment. He did, and that night, a lot of things changed too.

After that, our lives settled into a rhythm. When he was in town, I was always his muse. We would have dinner, then sex, and then he would leave. Some days, he was teaching me how to make money; the next day, he was furnishing my home, a double-door fridge, a microwave, a rice cooker, an air conditioner, and money to pay for installation, down to the furniture, bed, sofa.

Whenever he came over and noticed something I was missing, he either gave me money to sort it out or had me go select it and he paid. He even started giving me a monthly stipend for groceries, and it was honestly more than I needed.

Every time we met, we talked about how I could improve my life, refine my choices, and think bigger about my future. Or he would share lessons from his own journey in business.

And then, somewhere in all of that, I fell in love with him. One day, I had a pregnancy scare that never materialized. While I was jittery, he was calm. As it turned out, in that moment, if I ever found myself pregnant, we would have figured it out. He would have stood by me. “I would have pampered you more than I am right now,” he told me. That sealed it for me.

The closest we ever came to talking about a future was when he once said that if he ever had a child outside his marriage, it would be with me. “I want to have a chld by the time I am 35” I told him. “Well, then we should start planning for our baby then.” I was 32 then. That was it. That was the farthest we went.

During that time, a few younger guys came into my life. I think I was still carrying this conditioning that, as a woman, you’re supposed to find a young man who loves you, settle down, and build a family the traditional way. I tried. Most of them weren’t serious. Someone was cheating, someone was unsure, someone had someone else they hadn’t fully let go of. One particular guy came along who was single and said he loved me, but he didn’t want to do life with me. It always felt like I was just a convenience, either at his place or mine, nothing more.

One day, that was how two drunk men, one tipsy, one drunk, came to my home. Kay, the man who loved me but couldn’t stay.

Kay came to my house drunk one day. He said he was there “to talk.” We talked, but I didn’t really believe anything he said. What I was more worried about was him trying to drive home drunk. So I offered him my couch. He dropped dead on it and started snoring immediately. A few minutes later, Sugar came around too.

He was standing outside my gate at 1 a.m., tipsy from some New Year’s party, saying he hadn’t seen me in a while and just wanted to pass by for the night.

I let him in and told him, “I have a visitor sleeping on my couch.”   “No problem, we could just talk in the bedroom,” he responded.

We did. But at some point, he became affectionate and wanted us to be intimate. I couldn’t. Not with another man in the next room. What if he woke up and heard something?

He asked questions that, if I lied, I would have been easily caught. So I told the ultimate truth. I figured it would set me free, and it did, but in the most drastic way ever. I watched the hurt cross his face. He stopped everything, got up, and left.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the last time I would ever see him.

Nothing I said after that could convince him. No explanation, no consistency, no amount of reaching out. That was the last night, and in his mind, it was enough.

And for five years, I carried that. I promised myself I would never reach out to him again, but I always did, on his birthday, when something reminded me of our pregnancy conversation, when I hit a wall with my business and asked myself what Sugar D would tell me to do. When I had a big win, I would send him a WhatsApp message just to share it with him. He ignored every single one.

Then one day, he saw on social media that I had had a child. He called. He congratulated me, “This is what you have always wanted. I hope that baby’s father is doing well by you,”  as if he already knew the answer in his spirit. My baby’s father was a complete disappointment, but I couldn’t tell him that. I told him we weren’t together but that he was handling his financial responsibilities. I didn’t want him to pity me.

I loved that man. I was new to this whole dynamic, if you can even call it that. He was my first and last situation of that kind. But he never really acted like what people describe when they talk about that. He was just a man who genuinely poured into me, supported my ideas, cheered me on, showed up when it mattered, and pushed me to grow.

Last Christmas, I sent him one final message. We had closure. We both did.

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Sometimes, I wonder if I will ever find someone like him again, someone not afraid to empower a woman, someone who listens without making you feel small, someone who believes in you before you fully believe in yourself. He sent me to register a business. He encouraged me to quit a job that was destroying me. He sat with my dreams and took them seriously.

I’m doing well for myself now. Really well. But love, real love that also feels safe and chosen and present, that part is still a work in progress.

As for the guy on the couch that night, he woke up the next morning not knowing a thing about what had happened while he slept. He tried to convince me to stay with him. I didn’t. The very day he left my apartment, I blocked him. I was furious. I blamed him for a very long time, he is even married.

—Chelsea

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