It all started when I was young. I was brought up by a very strict father and a somewhat lenient mum. My dad made sure my siblings and I had all the time in the world to study. As young kids, he stopped us from playing outside with other kids. He made sure we were studying during his time at home. We never really got familiar with other concepts apart from studying.
Pertaining to me, my childhood lacked “spice”. It revolves only around books. I would leave for school very early, take down notes, solve some problems and head back home as soon as I heard the bell. At home I made sure i had all my notes, I trusted absolutely no one with my note. After that, check for assignments, if I had, I’ll solve them immediately and if not, I’ll use my free time to read. I actually had a streak for not missing any assignment. Unfortunately, that ended when I got to SS2.
I’ve always been bright in terms of education. I read broadly across different fields, apparently anything that tickled my interest. Sometimes I’d read newspapers and come across different individuals explaining how they found love and all that. This made me think of my love life. Well, nothing to think of, it was blank. I had my eyes on no one. I always thought I was doomed to be alone, without love or even friends.
Time passed, I began to meet new people as I progressed into secondary school. I made friends and I began to open up. I was still smart though. Things were good with friends. Then I met a girl. She seemed perfect. We had a boy-girl relationship but that was short-lived. I gained admission before her. Apparently, we didn’t do well with long distance relationships so we found a common ground and broke things off.
I wasn’t able to maintain contact with my friends once I gained admission.
It’s been some month since I got admission, it was book book book all over again. Until, I met another girl. Our story started when she replied a message of mine from a group we had in common. I noticed her display picture and I saw the cutest girl. I knew better than NOT to message her. I sent her a message, we introduced ourselves and it was smooth sailing from there. We had lots to talk about. It was during the holidays so we had all the time in the world.
After some days of getting to know her, we began to develop feelings. Unfortunately, she has a boyfriend at the time so that was a bit awkward. Knowing this, I threaded carefully.
Few days later, we planned a meeting at one of the lecture halls of our school. I was never used to meeting someone new alone, not to talk of a girl. I had to bring my closest friends along, or stand the chance of having a nervous breakdown.
We settled and waited for her arrival. Then she came. I wasn’t really able to recognize her at first but I eventually did. She had the most precious figure. She took her seat on the row behind ours. Still feeling nervous, i offered my greetings through a text. I guess she was feeling the same way because she also replied with a text. My friend thought it was silly, so did I but what could I do. I summoned some courage and sat beside her. I couldn’t stop smiling. We tried talking and that went fine. Then, she demanded we took a stroll, privately. That wasn’t a problem for me and my friend. We stood up and started the stroll.
We talked about our experiences on campus as we walked past some halls and then we finally sat down at the department’s pavilion. We talked and talked until we got into the moment and we kissed, several times. I felt a bit of guilt doing that because she was in a relationship and all but the moment was to beautiful to be ruined.
I got home. I could see that she was active but I was feeling a bit shy to send a message. Finally, she sent a message and we had a long chat about what happened between us. I knew this was the beginning of something magical. We had what you might call a secret relationship. Soon after, she had some issue with her boyfriend which inadvertently led to their breakup. Not a very pleasant scenario, but that eliminated my guilt.
After that, we had eachother to ourselves. We hung out more, read together, spent time together and all. It was really great. She was very insightful and was able to challenge me academically. I liked that in a woman. We spoke of having a serious relationship but I dismissed the idea. I wasn’t ready for a relationship. You can’t blame me, what we had seemed too good to be true at the time. She was insistent on it. I had to agree to it. Then we started dating.
Nothing really changed. We only had the opportunity to tag one another as boyfriend and girlfriend. Everything was going well until we finished our exams and had to go back home for the holidays. The distance between us was really great. We thought we could manage, it was just two weeks. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic jumped into the picture and the few weeks holiday turned into several months.
These were truly testing times. Things didn’t seems as beautiful as it was when we could see eachother. Anxiety began to set in. Different thoughts rattled through my big bulbous head. I began to fumble. Sometimes I’ll get angry at her for no reason, sometimes I wouldn’t talk to her. Like her, I noticed my distasteful attitude. I thought she had had enough of my shenanigans. Weeks went by and it was getting worse. I couldn’t help it but I felt bad for making her feel bad. She tried to tolerate but I guess I was too much to handle.
We broke up or better still, I broke up with her. Seemed uncalled for but I felt she deserved better than a distrustful teenager. I felt I was doing good for the both of us. We stayed months apart, the next more gruesome than the last. I couldn’t handle staying away from her. My friends advised me to talk to her. I contemplated and later sent a message but I sent it at night when I knew she was asleep, I was afraid of her response. I typed a very very long message, trying my best to explain why I did what I did.
Her response was positive. We cleared the air and chose to start things off as friends. During our time apart, we made a couple of new friends. Well, I made one, I wasn’t really a friend magnet like her. I made a female friend. After the break up, we grew closer but not the relationship type. I’d often post her pictures on my status but that didn’t sit well with her. Though we haven’t resumed our relationship, she had some reservations about her. This caused some problems as I was unable to cut her off for no reason.
I assured her that she was just a friend but there’s was only little to what she could take. It was hard for her to believe there was nothing between us. She complained a lot about her which I didn’t give much regards to. I felt since she had her prospective grooms who would be happy to replace me, why couldn’t I have mine. Very wrong mentality at that but I had to realize the hard way.
Maybe she really wanted me to be hers and I didn’t take the plight seriously. I guess I’ve broken her heart one too many times. No doubt, I did her wrong. I realized my wrongs and I felt ashamed. So ashamed that I’m afraid of apologizing.
I’ve always wanted to tell someone about this, so I put it in form of a story.
Writer: IBRAHEEM BASHEER
University of Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria
Nice piece, I’m pretty sure whoever you are trying to communicate this to will surely understand
Thanks bro 😅😏
You have to be decisive and go for who you really want. In my perspective you are really attached to the other girl and wouldn’t let go, know that no woman would want to share her man with anyone not even a best friend…
You have to leave both of them(in fact leave anything called romantic relationship with any lady NOW), continue facing that your book. ALTHOUGH YOU CAN MAKE FRIENDS IF YOU DESIRE, BUT SHUN ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP NOW.
You will still marry in this life, THEN YOU WILL HAVE ALL THE KISS you want, have all the AFFECTION TO OPPOSITE SEX you want…… (If those are the magnets attracting you to A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP)
Stuff
First of all, you should know that you can be attracted to someone and still not have a romantic relationship with them. You can’t date everyone you have an attraction for. You’ll have to learn how to develop platonic friendships for even ladies you are attracted to. This means defining boundaries where necessary. You can’t be giving greenlight to someone and telling them that it’s nothing. So defining boundaries is extremely important when beginning the adventure of developing meaningful, valuable friendships with the opposite sex.
That said, please always have at the back of your mind that stable and lasting relationships are not built on emotions or attractions, they’re built on integrity, loyalty, trust, honesty, respect and other strong principles. A strong relationship cannot and should not be affected by distance even though there shouldn’t always be distance. You know why I say this? When you eventually get married, you can’t always be with your wife. Sometimes she would have to travel to probably further her education or you’d have to travel to take on a promotion or a project. So what happens then? Will the marriage end because one person has to take a step forward? This is where loyalty and commitment plays a role. You should not date a person you’re not ready to be committed to. I define love as being committed and dedicated to constantly add value to another person’s life and help them grow spiritually, mentally, emotionally etc. If you were committed to your girlfriend, you wouldn’t have started giving her attitude. Instead you would have looked for a way to stay close to her irrespective of the distance. Calls (video and voice), sharing songs or memes, encouraging each other to pick up new interests and hobbies, even playing online games like scrabble and truth and dare and all or reading together. There’s a thousand things to do together online but you didn’t see them because there’s no commitment to make the relationship work. It was built on attraction and once the attraction was no longer there due to distance, you probably lost interest.
That said, I don’t know if you’re trying to seek for that relationship or love or emotional attachment you didn’t feel at home due to the way your dad raised you but please know that a girlfriend is not the remedy for daddy issues. You need to go in search of who you are and not what your parents made you to be. And you need to do that on your own. Read books, watch documentaries and videos that will teach you about how to develop positive relationship with yourself and others and the opposite sex and how to develop positive mental attitude. If you constantly feel the need to be in a relationship, then it’s a sign that you’re needy and that’s not good.
You need to get to the point where you can be okay even if you have no girlfriend or something that looks like a girlfriend. You can be okay just chasing your goals, developing yourself and relating with people on platonic basis. You need to treat yourself well so you can treat another person well. You have refused to apologize because you’re ashamed. That’s not treating another person right. And you’re doing this because of the mindset you have. You need to learn people management skills. How to set boundaries and also how to take responsibility for your decisions. These things are what will lay the foundation for a successful relationship in the future.
Thanks for this.
It really summed up everything
I’ll make sure I put this into practice 🤲🏿
I think you should just explain to her in a polite way that she should move on since you also wanted to move on
I think something might just happen between you and the other girl with the way you guys are close.
Distance is always a barrier in a
relationship
This happened to me too during that silly lock down….he ignored me till all the feelings I had for him were all gone
Now he came back begging
Thank you very much for your advice
When you have then discovered yourself and developed your people management skills, this will guide you in making decisions as to what kind of partner you’ll choose.
When picking a potential girlfriend, these are things you should look out for
1) Does she share similar values and principles as you do? Is she honest, transparent, reliable? Does she have integrity, strength of character, a sense of value for herself?
2) Are her goals similar to yours? Dating a person who has no goals is very risky because either she’ll condemn you for being too serious whenever you talk to her about your goals or when she begins to set goals and realizes that both your goals are not in line, she might end up breaking up with you. So do you both have a similar sense of purpose? Are you both going the same direction?
3) What are her thoughts about relationships? Does she see it as a casual thing for fun or does she believe it should be taken seriously? If she thinks it’s a game of hearts then she’ll probably not take you seriously.
4) Then are you attracted to her. Can you build a future with her? Can you handle and manage her negative sides? If she has mood swings, can you handle it? Everyone has their negative side even you, you just have to find out if you can manage with theirs.
There are other things to consider and you’ll find them once you start to search for quality knowledge on how to build strong relationships.
Mind you, you can only find these things out when you observe a lady for sometime and hopefully, someone doesn’t take her while you’re observing but trust me, there are many women in the world, if one isn’t available, you’ll always see another one.
I hope you apologize to her and take out time to discover yourself and the values you hold dear and the kind of woman you want for yourself so when next you want to court or date a lady, you go all in for her.
You can apologize to her though. Nothing long or fancy. Just let her know that you are sorry if you’ve hurt her in any way and move on with your life. Life happens, people get hurt, we only apologize, learn our lessons and hope that we don’t do the same thing again.
I wish you the very best in the future.
This is really great 👍🏿
Thank you very much.
Wow
I love this
I really add something to my mentality by reading this
Thanks for your review 🤲🏿
Wow !! This is pretty nice and awesome . More grease to your elbow 💪