I like to believe everyone has a romantic love story to share and the crash that came knocking afterward. Good for you if you found the love of your life, clicked a 100, and tied the knot to live happily ever after. You know that’s witchcraft, right? Bad for you if the only love story you got is seeing through the eyes of characters in novels, television, and yeah social media. You’re a coward, you’d rather be alone than stomach a breakup yeah? Well, I hate to break it to you that the moment you give in, your share of heartbreak will be served on a platter. You can’t be as lucky as the witches, never!

MY LOVE STORY

I am not good at romanticizing lines to trigger butterflies in your stomach, I can only beg you to pretend that it’s that romantic a piece so we can arrive at the sole purpose for telling my story. Shall we?

We met at a youth group meeting, a friend had invited him to come to train us, and I, being part of the organizers of the event, was assigned to follow up with him and see to it that he was going to be available for the training session. So we exchanged numbers and got talking every day with his PowerPoint presentation being the leverage. He let me in on his social phobia, he’s an introvert and had developed frozen feet. I tried my best to encourage him… you know those “Go Boy! You Got This!!” inspiring lines, yeah, they came in handy lol.

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Still talking and now getting cheesy, I found he stayed around my area, and tell you what,  it was one of the most amazing news to have greeted my ears. I’m an indoor girlie who hardly talks to anyone around my area. My routine was to go to work, church, back home, and repeat the process.

Fast forward to months of a beautiful friendship and me getting to know him better,  what I started to feel for him took me back to how I felt towards my high school crush only that this time my crush was my friend and he also had a crush on me too. Jackpot! 

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We were alike on so many levels, it was easy to talk with him for hours non-stop. We shared our fears, our dreams, our plans, and aspirations together. It was only easier for my feelings to cross the boundary of “just friends”, I started liking him more than a friend but I was sure good at pretending. 

YIPEE! HE POPPED THE QUESTION 

“I’m in love with you, will you be my girlfriend?” these words flew out of nowhere while we were having one of our random discussions. OF COURSE!! baby girl was already head over heels in love but was only waiting to be asked, LMAO. 

Read: A Merry Go Round Affair; Should I Leave Her Stranded Now?

We became better friends, it was like we just transitioned from a level of friendship and love to lovers. It would be sometimes hard to tell the difference if you had met us in person. He always looked out for ways to make me better and I also helped him out in ways I could. I felt so loved by him, talk about the time he would send me handwritten letters when he lost his phone to let me know how much he missed me and was thinking about me. Boy, I was in love with this guy and I didn’t see anything that wouldn’t make us work because we were both intentional about showing love to each other. 

I’m not the PDA kind of person he was, so he would publicly hold my hands, kiss me quickly when no one was watching (or so we thought), and so many other love gestures I had never experienced before him. I felt treated like a princess, he was quite a gentleman, I confirmed from meeting his parents that they had a great influence on the Man he turned out to be. Sometimes when I close from work or school he would call ahead to know if I was hungry (I was always hungry 😋) and since I’ll have to pass by his house before I got to mine he would call ahead to know if I’ll stop over, he would have cooked noodles, boiled egg and fried plantain for me, it felt too good to be true but cause I knew him as a friend I wasn’t too surprised about his loving nature.  He was very thoughtful about giving gifts, hugs, surprises, and words of encouragement.

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It was my first real relationship in my 25 years of existence as the one I had before him only lasted a month LOL. So let’s say he was my first love (not in the context of first love as regards sex o but love like when you fall deeply in love with someone and you cannot think straight again LOLs).   There was one time I became depressed because I was facing pressure from work,  school, and home.  I was beginning to have suicidal thoughts, it was a hot afternoon and I was late for a meeting, I thought of jumping in front of a moving bus and was waiting for the right type of moving bus, then I thought “let me call him before I die”.  I will never forget his saving words; “Everybody fucking makes mistakes, why will you kill yourself over one?  when you get there, act like you never knew you were late and if they say anything tell them fuck you and go back home”. His last lines made me laugh off my depressed state. I went for the meeting and realized that they had already changed the time and I was an hour early. Yeah, you can say I was blessed with him at that time.

THE ODDS WITH TAKING A BREAK

Seven months down the line, he wanted to start a project and I was in on it big time like I was glad he could finally go for his dreams. He had always talked about starting the project and I was happy. At this time I was also running a program and facing stress from my project supervisor, I was drained financially, was facing home stress, and shuffling a low-paying volunteer work and school together. He was also getting deeply engrossed in work and it was also financially and emotionally draining for him. He became less attentive and I started to nag, he hardly called, and when I called him it was to blame him for not calling before saying that I missed him. 

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I guess he couldn’t take my nags anymore but what’s a girl gotta do? He asked for a break to clear his head and after two weeks, he came back and said he was sorry and he wanted us back together again. We picked up from where we left it and continued to support each other every other day. But there’s this thing about taking a break, it leaves a glitch and you find yourself trying too hard not to let it happen again. 

After a month we started struggling to keep the communication again, he was always sad about things not working out for him at the time and I tried to support and encourage him. I would take him out to eat to cheer him up. Sometimes I show up unannounced, drop him a cooler of his favorite meal, and leave so that he knows I was thinking about him without encroaching in his space.  I started reading books on communication to master the difference between how each gender thinks or communicates. I just wanted to be able to communicate love to him in the best ways possible but I guess I was failing at it. 

“WE NEED TO TALK”

Despite the hiccups, we clocked a few weeks and a year of dating, and then one Monday evening, I’ll never forget, I got the ever-dreaded message “we need to talk”. I imagined the worst but not a breakup, but to my surprise, it was it. The reason he gave was that he doesn’t want to string me along and waste my time, he needed to focus on his project and he can’t handle a relationship alongside. 

I was in pain. He knew I would wait for him if he had asked,  he knew I was initially scared to let my guards down and fall in love,  he knew that I loved him and would have wanted to stay and fight for love’s sake. I didn’t know how to handle the heartbreak, it was my first, I was too shattered for comfort. 

I had so many questions, What happened to the January 1st promise to fight for our love?  Why know so much about me and still hurt me? Why did he ask me out only to not ask my opinion before deciding on a breakup?  What makes him think I was in a hurry to get married? Why do I feel like he chose his life over me?  Was I really not that important to him or Did he fall out of love with me while my eyes were closed?  I never saw that move coming and no book or anyone had prepared me ahead for this. 

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I told him it’s okay, I believe in forgiveness, love, and friendship irrespective of how people turn out. I owe it to myself and my God to forgive, so I forgave him but I was heartbroken. Remember we were both on a project he was running so I still supported him while healing and trying to relate with him as just friends (I am the ‘My word is my Bond’ kind of person so I never throw any previously good friendship away because of one bad occurrence) but I took a break from being around him. 

SHOULD HE CHANGE HIS MIND…

After a few months of nursing my hurt to no avail, I wrote him a handwritten letter too, telling him how much I loved him and want him back if he changes his mind. His response to the letter was “Why?” alongside sad emojis but he didn’t say he loved me back, there and then I knew it wasn’t a “take a break breakup”, it was for real. I felt stupid, I tore his letter to me,  cleared chats, deleted his number, and took time off social media and everything that would make me see him for some months.  Cried every day into my pillow for like 6 months, it took me over a year before I finally made peace with myself. 

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Sometimes I wish I never agreed to be in a relationship with him because what I feared the most happened to me through someone I had loved, plus maybe we would have still been very good friends to date. Other times I am grateful for the times we shared because as hurtful as the breakup was I know what to expect from a man,  I deserve to be loved and cherished, I also deserve to be fought for irrespective of circumstances and I know I’ll do the same too to whoever comes my way. 

After about a year and some months, I now see him with his new girlfriend,  sometimes it hurts because I wonder if he was really saying the truth when he said he couldn’t handle relationships alongside the project. He’s successful and even handles bigger projects now, was that an excuse to get me off the way? was I really the problem?  These questions I might never get answers to because we are not as close anymore, we talk but just casually, and the friendship we once shared, dead! 

Read: Vent Room! An Unsent Letter To Your Exes

One lesson I learned through all of these was that I could have communicated clearly with him when I noticed him pulling away instead of nagging. I could have asked him about how he felt about the relationship before the pressure of work started weighing in on us. This should have helped right? Now I am very big on communication, communicating clearly without pointing fingers, listening without judging, and talking about issues before they become too hard to solve.

RECALLING YOURS AND THE LESSON

Yeah yeah like I pleaded with you at the beginning of the read to pretend that it’s a romatic read so we arrive at the sole purpose of telling my story. So Uju (Admin) reached out to me, asking if I’ll love to share my most memorable breakup story and the lessons with hopes that you too, can also recall yours and the lessons you learned.

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You see the thing about breakups is that no party is ever too confident to voice their faults in all of it. We mostly enjoy painting our exes as the villain (lowkey I think mine was lol) but deep down we learned a lesson or two and acknowledge our faults. It’s the purpose of this post.

Mind sharing your most memorable breakup experience, how it made you feel, the lessons and most importantly bearing your faults all out? This should be fun, lowkey warming up to laugh too. Leave your comments below😁👇👇.