He Gave Me His Ex-Girlfriend’s Waist Beads as a Gift

The first gift he gave me was a wristwatch. He had proposed to me, and I had asked him to give me some time to think about it. He called every day wanting to know his stand in my life. I told him, “Please let me know you a little. I want to accept your proposal with the peace of mind that I know what I’m getting myself into.” Then he brought me a wristwatch. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t even in a box. It was in a small rubber that looked like it was picked just to put the watch inside.

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I said thank you and turned the watch upside down. He said, “Yeah, it’s not new, but I loved the quality and figured it would look good on your wrist.” I hugged him and told him he was very thoughtful. He helped put the watch on my wrist, and it fit perfectly. He took a photo of my wrist and said, “That’s going to be my screensaver.”

A few days later, I said yes, and we became lovers. He was a little bit insecure, but I took it as love. A man who doesn’t care doesn’t have the time to be insecure. Whenever he asked questions about my whereabouts, I answered truthfully and respectfully. When he saw me with a guy and got jealous, I explained the relationship to him openly and transparently.

He got me a pair of dinner dresses—one red and the other blue. Again, these dresses were not new. They also didn’t smell like they were thrifted. They didn’t have the scent secondhand clothing carries. I smelled the dresses right in front of him. He confessed, “I bought them on a hanger, but I wanted to get rid of the scent, so I washed and ironed them.”

It’s the thought that counts, so I hugged him and said thank you. I pretended to be happy about it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the gesture on my way home. “Is he too stingy to get me something new, or what? What’s all this secondhand stuff?”

One day, we had a fight about an office colleague he wouldn’t stop asking me about. According to him, he was too much in my photos. I told him, “These photos you see are field photos, and I go to the field with him, so what do you expect?” He asked if he was the only one I could go to the field with and why the office would give me a man to do fieldwork with when there were other women around.

It was annoying the way he tried to shrink my world and make it all about him, but I counted it as love until it kept graduating from questions to collecting my phone and going through it. I kept telling him I had nothing to hide, but he wouldn’t believe me. One day, I got him a brand-new pair of shoes because I thought they would look good on his feet. Instead of appreciating the gesture, he asked where I got the money to buy the shoes and if I was sure it wasn’t a man who gave them to me.

It turned into a fight, and for days we didn’t talk. He knows how to say sorry and be sweet about it, so he came around and made it look like I was crazy to be angry with him. He joked, he cuddled, and I got carried away. That day in his room, he gave me waist beads he said he bought to calm my heart down. He said, “Lie straight; let me put it on you.”

I already had some on, and he didn’t know how to put the beads on me properly, so I told him to leave it for me to do later when I was free. I went home with the beads, took them out of the bag, and they didn’t feel brand new. I smelled them, and they smelled moldy. I’m a woman, so I know how these things work. I didn’t put them on. I just tied them and pushed them into a corner. The next day, I asked him, “The beads—are they new?”

“Oh, so now you’ve tagged me the father of secondhand things, so anything I buy for you is secondhand, right? Secondhand waist beads? What do you take me for?”

This nearly turned into another fight. Our relationship was just six months old, but we had fought battles and wars and squabbles. We’d done all forms of fighting. I was tired, so I let that go until he tried to emotionally blackmail me to put the beads on. He accused me of not appreciating what he got me. He said if I truly loved him, I would wear it. So many issues. Finally, he said, “Bring it back to me if you won’t wear it.”

Then it occurred to me that I should ask questions—questions I hadn’t asked since we started dating. I asked him why he left his ex, and he got hyper-angry, asking why I should bring his ex into our conversations. He has a friend I also know, Kobby. He was out of town but was the one guy who was very close to him. I called him and asked him to be honest with me. “Why did he leave his ex?”

He laughed and said, “It’s a long story ooo. He hasn’t told you?”

His ex cheated, and he caught her in the act. That very day, he collected everything he had ever bought her and told her to get them from the man she was cheating with. My heart skipped several beats as Kobby told me the story. I asked him, “So he collected the waist beads too?” He laughed. “I don’t know about waist beads, but he collected what he could take.”

That was my eureka moment. “Now I know why he gets me only secondhand gifts.” I burst out laughing. I called him on the phone. “Tell the truth. The beads you gave me were what you collected from your ex, right? Just be honest.”

The mention of his ex put him in a ready-to-fight mood. He ranted until it turned into insults—that I was belittling him and that I should count myself lucky that he fell in love with me. He said he didn’t know what he was thinking. I only laughed, feeling fulfilled. I knew I’d found the answer to a very deep question that had been plaguing our relationship.

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After throwing all those insults, he came back being sweet and pretending the fight didn’t happen. I told him, “Honestly, I’m not doing this relationship thing again. There’s too much fighting that I can fight. Let’s end this and be free. It’s okay.”

I had put everything he had ever bought me in a box, hoping he would ask for them so I could give them back to him without a fight, but he didn’t ask. He left and later told me he hoped we could resolve the fight someday. I didn’t go back. I had seen, heard, and touched enough to go back.

—Jane

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