By Francis Ewherido
Have you ever been in a relationship, where you felt everything was going on fine and you were moving towards marriage, and all of a sudden your boyfriend/girlfriend pulls off the plug? Even worse, he/she does not give you any reason for ending the relationship.
That was the situation John found himself in over 20 years ago. John and Joan were six and half-a-dozen; they were inseparable. There could not have been any more perfect couple-to-be.
Then out of nowhere, Joan ended the relationship. She would not give anybody, including John, any reason for ending the relationship besides saying she loved John too much to hurt him forever. By ending the relationship then, she had already “killed” John, so which forever was she talking about? She would not elaborate.
Stubborn Joan, her conscience was clear, and she would not be forced into talking. Both of them moved on with their lives, although after over 20 years, I cannot really say John has moved on. He still has not let go; he still bears grudges against Joan.
Joan still loves John. She said John will always have a special place in her heart, but insists she took the right decision. She said John was everything, almost; great friend, companion, lover, brother and father-figure. So why did she end the relationship?
After over 20 years, she let out the cat from the bag: John was too disorganized and it was something that drove her up the wall. Day and night, she agonized. She knew it was hopeless and unfair to try to change him.
That was just the way he was. Reading this, you will think Joan is crazy or foolish, but she was and still is a Methodist (not denomination o). She is an extremely organized person and seeing John so disorganized alone disorganized her life. She said there was no way in this world she could have put up with it all her life. She would have committed suicide, killed him, or ended the marriage. She loved John too much to take any of these routes. So ending the relationship was the only available and practical option.
Now I know. So John, I know you are far away. But just in case you are reading this, you now know why Joan dumped you. Not that it will make sense to you or change your stubborn mind, but at least you now know. I did ask her one more question, why did she not tell you? I did not see it as any big deal. But she said it would have been of no use because you were set in your ways. Doing things differently would have made you miserable.
I still feel she should have left you to worry about the fallout of telling you. Anyway, I had to obtain Joan’s permission before sharing this publicly. She only requested that your real names should not be used.
In life and in our relationships, we do have little things that are huge. They end up being the determinants. So, Joan’s case is not isolated. In the 90s also, I had another friend who was very close to his girlfriend. Let us just call them Peter and Pauline. Pauline was the quintessential marriage material. Im mama cook am don (the mother prepared her for marriage). She could cook, organize the house and even organize Peter’s scattered life. Everybody around Peter envied him. I am sure one or two even thought of the possibility of snatching Pauline from him. Everything was going on well. It was only a matter of time before they got married. Unknown to us, Peter was also agonising. He loved Pauline to bits no doubt, but Peter was a straight guy.
Black was black, while white was white. Black could never look like… to Peter; it was simply black. But Pauline was something else. To put it nicely, she was dodgy. That was something Peter could not handle. It bothered on trust and credibility in their relationship.
Then one weekend, when Peter was sufficiently sure he could not cope with Pauline’s lies all his life, he ended the relationship. I still cannot say who was more devastated, but Peter was unbelievably tortured mentally over the break-up, but it was a bitter pill that he had to swallow.
Our last case is Dapo and Titi, another very close couple-to-be in the 90s. Titi was nice and amiable. Everybody who met her even for the first time naturally and effortlessly liked her. She was beautiful, but it was not just the beauty; she was just likeable. But Dapo never took the relationship serious. I found that a little upsetting. I felt he was just using Titi and wasting her time.
When Dapo felt my wahala was too much, he told me he could never marry Titi. He also did not want to end the relationship. He just wanted it to fizzle out. Why would he not marry her? He said Titi’s “resistance level” was too low, that she would not be faithful.
Which one is “resistance level” again? He said Titi “melts” if he held her hands just for one minute, no matter the initial resistance. He feared that she would also “melt” easily if put under little pressure by other men. He even told me to test her to verify his assertion. What kind of stupid experiment is that? What if she actually “melted” and I also “melted” and the environment was enabling? I just felt it was a dumb assignment to give to someone in his 20s with boiling blood running in his veins and did not bother.
Looking back at Dapo’s strange request, we were very dumb in some aspects, even though we felt we were smart young men then. Anyway, we lost touch; there were no mobile phones then. When we met again some years later, Dapo was married, but not to Titi. I never bothered to ask him what happened between them.
The essence of these stories is to open the eyes of young people. Sometimes relationships end abruptly and you begin to wonder where you went wrong. Sometimes you do not get the benefit of knowing where you went wrong.
That is why I feel that communication, no matter how tough, should take place. After all, which relationship, including marriage, can thrive without communication? Anyway, if you get hit below the belt, just move on, it is not the end of the world. That pain too will subside and go away some day.
Source:
