Relationship & Love Series : Our Lips Met In Disgust

Hey Michael, how are you?

So, you asked me about my previous relationship. Well, I wouldn’t really call it a relationship. It was a situationship, and it lasted for just a month. I’m grateful it ended before it even started though, things would have gotten complicated if it didn’t.

How did it start? What led me to it? Pressure. It all started with this. 

You see, I was in a clique, five really close friends. Two boys, three girls. We became friends from church and literally did everything together, or most things. Being the only single one in my crew (the two girls were dating one of the boys each) I was always teased about my singleness. I mean, not dating anyone throughout my 4years of school was not worth being mockedabout right? Now don’t even get me started on the terrible jokes, they were awful. The 4-0 jokes, or the one about me being destined to always be a third wheel for life. Apparently my friends thought this was funny. Third child and last child in my family, and now the third wheel when my friends hang out… “destiny”.

I saw my friends happy, and I wished for a relationship of my own too. Their jokes got to me. I was already going through a lot from home, having this added to it again just wasn’t it for me. I felt cheated by God. At some point I questioned God. I mean, 4 years in school and not one boyfriend while my friends kept getting in and out of relationships. I felt there was something wrong with me, so I prayed. I wish I had been patient like God told me to be,  I wasn’t…it wasn’t easy really. Words got to me, made me feel I had an issue because I felt no one was attracted to me. Confident me now had serious self esteem issues. I kept praying and asking because I could no longer take the ridicule from my friends. I wanted to get together with someone in my final months as a student of Obafemi Awolowo University.

Count it all joy when a boy approached me after a certain church meeting and told me he liked me. I mean, after months of me enduring certain comments and treatments from my crew, after feeling left out for months, finally, the chains of singleness had been broken, the gates to dating were finally open unto me. I could finally fit in among my other friends who were also in relationships. We could finally go on double or triple dates. I didn’t have to be the 3^rd or 5^th wheel any longer. I was no longer going to be the object of ridicule among my friends. God had finally answered my prayer. Joy!

As a Christian,  I prayed about this guy who said he liked me. I had been praying for weeks and even when I felt this little, tiny pull back in prayer, I ignored it as just being me, and decided to give things a chance with him. For someone who gave accurate words about a person’s life, a whole spirikoko like myself, I wasn’t certain  about my own words because I wanted to have my way. I wanted a relationship.

Now let’s call him “Tade”. Tade was my church friend. Someone I never really related with outside church. We only saw every time church had a meeting. He wasn’t someone I saw myself dating. I wasn’t attracted to him. The evening he told me he liked me, I was outside conversing with church folks as usual after an awesome service, Tade was there too. You know the way church folks mingle after every service? Well that was the scenario. We were having a simple, casual conversation whenTade dropped the bomb. It was so random and unexpected. Apparently he had been crushing on me for “months”. Well, child was in shock. At that moment I felt a wide range of emotions going from indifference, to shock, to confusion, to pride. I mean, a guy told me he was crushing on me, of course I felt proud. I didn’t like Tade like he liked me, but I liked that he liked me. You would have felt the same way if someone told you they were crushing on you…who wouldn’t?

After this little confession, and me telling my friends about it. They were all on my case talking about how Tade and I would look so good together, how he was the perfect guy seeing as he was a Christian who shared my beliefs, how he was submitted to my pastor. Basically they made him out to be this complete mouth-watering package. One I just couldn’t miss out on.

I’ll admit I was desperate and I wanted a relationship, but, I wouldn’t have given things a chance if my friends hadn’t convinced me to do so. I Ignored the  the little restriction I felt, gave “love” a chance.

Was Tade my spec? Nope. Did he have any qualities or characteristics I liked about him? Well, I guess him being Christian could count? And maybe he was actually a fine boy.Fine boy who could pray fire…that covered for the other things he didn’t make up for on my Spec list.

When Tade and I started out, I told him I wasn’t so sure about being with him, he knew I didn’t like him enough to date himtoo. But he told me he was certain we were going to work out and I just went with the flow. I was ready to go all in to make things work. Ready to give this situationship of ours a chance. You see, I wanted to keep things low key at the beginning because I wasn’t sure where we were headed. This was what I wanted, and I specifically to him and my friends because we were all attending the same church, and I really wasn’t ready to have them all on my case breathing down my neck, but Tade and my friends had other plans, and this was where our problemsbegan.

Less than a week after I agreed to give things a chance with Tade, literally everyone in church knew because Tade and my friends kept making jokes about it. I felt so awkward because they were being so open about something I told them I wasn’t sure about. What I wanted wasn’t respected, and because it wasn’t respected, everything I did was attributed to it being because I had a boyfriend now. Mind you, we weren’t even official yet. I remember the first time I fixed my nails and changed up my make up a bit, people made it seem like I did it all to impress Tade, but I was only doing these things for myself. They were new experiences for me, I wanted it for myself, but people made it about him, and even when I corrected them, no one ever listened.

The very first date Tade and I were to go on, I made up an excuse, told him something came up because honestly, I wasn’t interested. I know, you might say I should have at least tried, but I didn’t want to. From that first week, I wanted to end things. Our first week together and he couldn’t even listen to my plea of wanting to keep things on a low key because I wasn’t certain. He went ahead and did what he wanted. This wasn’t a good sign to me.

Michael, don’t get into a relationship with someone with the hopes of changing them to suit your taste, it’ll always end in tears. 

I mentioned earlier that Tade wasn’t my spec, so when I got together with him, I was hoping I could change certain things, but the very first thing I talked about, I was reported. You see, Tade told me I could tell him anything I felt he needed to work on, to him if I wanted him to change the way he did anything, he would. So I talked about the way he dressed, told him the best way I could, after which I asked if he was okay with it and wasn’t offended at all. Even though I wasn’t sure about us, and I avoided him the first week, I really wanted things to work, and knowing how important communication in a relationship is, I told him he could tell me if he was okay with what I said. I mean, I didn’t want to force anything on him. Well, he said nothing. Told me he was very okay with it all. Would you believe the next Sunday my pastor called me and told me exactly what Tade and I had discussed in private? What I clearly told him he could tell me if he was okay with or not. He didn’t do this, instead, he carried my case to our pastor.Tade told my Pastor I was trying to force him to change and he wasn’t comfortable with it. I was pissed. Why didn’t he tell me? I told him he could. I’d been honest with him but he didn’t reciprocate my honesty.

Tade is this type of guy who talks about liking an independent woman but would still like to force his opinions and desires down her throat. He wants a hardworking woman; one he can lord over. I remember specific conversations we had, when I told him what I wanted, he told me he would make sure I wanted what he wanted, and when I rejected it, he made it so clear that I had no choice. He loved saying “you don’t know me ooo, it’s what I want that will happen”. This was a huge red light for me. I couldn’t be with this human. I’m pretty stubborn, and staying with someone so different, someone I can’t agree with on things, would be stupid of me.

So, as usual, I went back to pray, wrote how I felt in my journal, shut the world out and actually had a conversation with Abba. During my prayers I realised the only reasons I was trying to give things a chance even when it was so obvious we wouldn’t work out from the first week were “Regrets and people”. I feared I would regret ending things and never be happy. Because we were attending the same church and everyone already thought we were dating, I feared people would see me as a bad person for breaking Tade’s heart.

This affected me, and I almost decided to wait and not end things, just to avoid my fears. I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I faced them head on, I’m glad I got free.

Our first kiss was brutal. You would think the whole idea of our lips locking and licking each other would be as soothing as people portray it to be. It’s a scam. We kissed and I felt nothing but disgust. I felt bad. It was disgusting. Imagine kissing someone and instead of you to not want it to end, you are just waiting for him to take his lips away? I can’t count the number of times I went about spitting after we kissed. I just couldn’t bear it anymore and I wanted to get the disgust out of my system. That was how my own first kiss went like that. 

Finally, I decided to end things. Wrote down a list on the pros and cons of dating him, and the cons outweighed the pros. I told my friends I was ending things, told them I didn’t like him, told them my other issues with him. My friends weren’t so supportive. They talked about Tade all through. Said I would hurt him, told me it wasn’t always about my spec, told me I could regret ending things, told me it wasn’t always about how I felt. Honestly though, I tried to make things work. It wasn’t like I just gave up. I tried to see if I would like him by doing other things. Tade was my first kiss, and the very first guy I allowed to hold me in ways I would have slapped any other guy for if they dared to. I was ready to do things to make us work, I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I ended things before things went too far between us.

I understood my friends trying to explain things to me, but I was still hurt because even after I told them everything that transpired between Tade and I, they said it wasn’t right, but It wasn’t enough reason to end things. They said Tade had put in too much effort to make our relationship work and I was going to hurt him by ending things. They kept on talking about me regretting my decisions. It almost made me doubt myself, but my mind was made up, and Tade just wasn’t it.

I ended things. Best decision I ever made! The day I ended things, I felt so free. I was so happy, I took note of nature like never before, I felt light weight. For the first time, I understood freedom in its fullness.

I’m so grateful and happy I ended things. Recently I saw a post Tade put up shading feminism, cancelling the whole movement and calling it useless. Can’t believe I almost dated someone who didn’t share my values and ridiculed what I believed in. Things would have been awful if I had stayed longer. I’m glad I didn’t.

I wish though, I really wish we would stop teasing our friends about their singleness. Sometimes we take things too far without even realising it. A relationship isn’t an achievement. No one should be rushed into something as life changing as that. Enjoy your now.

How is Pepe? Hope you’re taking really good care of him?

I must say it felt so great being able to share this. Thanks for giving me this opportunity.

Have a great day.

I want to share stories about love and relationships on this space for the rest of the month. It does not have to be that it ended in tears. It could be that you guys are still together or it could that it was simply an entanglement. So, I want to listen to you. Let’s peel the formalities. Send me a DM. +234 704 714 7081. Pepe will greet you at the door. Stay beautiful.