I Didn’t Know Our Relationship Was Over Until I Asked For Her Hand In Marriage

I helped her through school. I’m not going to sit here and say I did everything for her while she was in school but I helped. Little things; money for books, contributed to school fees and also bought groceries for her. When she needed pocket money and I had money, I sent it to her. I mean the things a man would do for the woman he loves.

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While she was in school, she told me she couldn’t be intimate with me because she wanted to focus on her academics. I agreed. So all the times we spent together, the farthest we could go was a kiss.

I was content. Her presence was all I needed. A young man my age could also forget about sleeping around and focus on my business and I did just that. I gave her the credit for bringing stability into my life. I told her, “My thank you for being the woman to bring this stability into my life is to make this relationship permanent right after school.”

She told me she would be honored to be my wife and we even set a date, which was her first birthday right after national service.

After school, she took me to see her parents. I met whoever mattered in her family and they all bought into our relationship. I took her home too. She had already met my parents, as a friend, but this time, I introduced her as the woman I was going to marry.

When she started her national service, I started buying what we would need for our marriage. Everything I bought, I gave to her to keep. When she thought of something we needed, she told me and we bought it. At this point, we had started getting intimate because school was out of the way.

Where she did her service wasn’t far from where I lived so at first, she was staying with me and was going to the office. A few months into her national service, she told me the company had a place for service personnel and she wanted to move there. I didn’t like the idea. “Must you go?” I asked. She responded, “It’s an experience I want to have. Plus if we continue living together, what will we celebrate when we marry?”

She moved out of my place when all I wanted was for her to stay.

By the time she completed national service, I’d bought almost everything we needed for our marriage. We only had to go for the list and buy what might be on the list that we didn’t think of.

She told me one day, “I discussed the marriage with my parents and they think I should get a job first.” I asked, “Did you tell them I’m OK taking care of you until you get a job?” She answered, “I said everything but my dad thinks the best option is for me to get a job first.”

So we put our marriage plans on the side and started looking for a good job for her. I got her a sales job but she declined. A godfather of mine wanted to employ her as his personal assistant. The salary was good. The perks were mouthwatering but she declined, saying she wanted to have a job that fell in line with what she studied in school.

A year came to pass quietly and there was no job. I’d started seeing frustration in her attitude. And that frustration brought a distance between us. She constantly told me she was working hard to get a job so I shouldn’t worry about the space between us or whatever I thought was the problem. But one day, I told myself, “Why not talk to her father directly and convince him about the marriage? Maybe if we were married, she wouldn’t be frustrated about a job.”

I went to see her parents. I bore my heart out to them about everything. Her dad was looking confused. Her mom too kept shaking her head. Her dad interrupted and asked, “You mean you’re still together with my daughter?” I said gleefully, “Oh yeah, we would have been married by now if you didn’t kick against it.”

The man said, “Me? Kicked against marriage?”

All the while I was waiting for her to get a job, she had told her dad the relationship between us didn’t work and had gone ahead to introduce another man to them as the one she was with.

I laughed when her dad narrated the story, thinking it was a joke. Her dad called her on the phone and put her on a loudspeaker. He asked, “Were you not the one who said the relationship didn’t work? Why is he here now talking about marriage?”

She was rather angry asking me why I would go to her house when she wasn’t there. Finally she said, “I don’t want the relationship anymore but I didn’t know how to tell him.”

Heartbreaks are silent pain. It creeps in silently and makes your heart its home. Mine was loud and turbulent. I could literally feel my heart melting after the crash. I screamed, “Herh Dora, what are you saying? If it’s a joke please stop it because it’s not funny.”

She went quiet on the phone. Her mom said, “Dora, so if you treat a man like this, do you think you’ll ever experience happiness?” She asked if her mom was cursing her and then dropped the line. Maybe she blocked me because my calls didn’t reach her the whole day that day.

In the night while I was shattered and miserable, I told myself, “What else do I want to hear from her? It’s OK. I won’t bother her again.”

She came to my house with her dad. When they started apologizing, I thought she wanted a way back into the relationship which I was ready to accept. But she came to say sorry for how she treated me. She begged me to forgive the lies so there would be peace. I hate myself for crying that day. And I hate myself more for making her see my tears.

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The guy she met was a Nigerian. She’s currently married to him and they are both in Nigeria currently. I see her on Facebook. She comments here often. I hope she reads this. I hope she comments too. Because I want to know how she would have felt if I was the one who did this to her.

—Ralph

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