Do I have sense? No.

I have A LOT of boyfriend energy. It’s in potential form, so it’s brimming… just waiting for the right guy to unleash it upon. I also feel like it’s palpable, so I fear that when guys see me, they sense it.

Let’s say I meet a guy, and we connect in that rare way, where we can really be ourselves with each other. For me, this only happens once in two/three years, so when it does, I get instantly carried away. If he makes me laugh, he spells his words in full and gossips like a woman, that’s all it takes. Before long, I’m throwing all this energy his way without ever pausing to examine the kind of energy he’s giving back to me. 

I complained about this to my sister a long time ago and she showed me a scripture; “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces” (Matthew 7:6). That’s when I realised that no recipient of all this boyfriend energy will ever say, “Hey Ngozi… I can’t match this energy. I honestly don’t think I’m worthy of it. Why don’t you conserve it for the next guy?”

They would rather waste it. I mean, why buy the cow when the farmer is giving you milk, cheese, butter and suya for free?

When I started dating (around the Flintstone era), cell phones had just come to Nigeria. At a point, me and my then boyfriend lived in different towns. My town had cellular network, his didn’t. He would leave his hostel before dawn and head to a phone booth to stand in line with other students and patiently wait for his turn to call me. The lines before dawn were short so our conversations could last longer. Any time after dawn and the queue would be a long, winding line of sweaty students pressed up against each other. Whoever had a turn with the phone had only a minute or two before the line would grow impatient and start grumbling as one entity. And two minutes are not nearly enough to whisper sweet nothings to your baby girl over the phone. So he set off in the mornings…

I am easily impressed, so you can imagine how he was raking up points with the early morning phone calls. That kind of energy left a young girl in no doubt that he was my boyfriend. In those days, it was so easy to tell. 

Now, whenever I’m asked how many relationships I’ve been in, I say ‘two’ and people are shocked. Truth is, only two guys have publicly referred to me as their ‘girlfriend’, and really meant it. Things are done differently these days so now I try not to get excited about meeting a new guy. 

The first time I chatted myself into a relationship, I didn’t realize I was dating my network provider until it was too late. We were in the same town, we saw each other almost every day. Still, whenever I wasn’t with him, l constantly had my face in my phone, chatting WITH him…

 

“Hey… What are you up to?”

“Nothing. Thirsty. Just drank water.”

“Cool. Send me a picture of the cup.”

*adjusts cup on table to capture good lighting* 

*holds cup so that newly manicured nails show* 

*takes picture* 

*sends*

“Your nails look cute.”

“☺️”

 

My bosses would ask, “Wait o… Ngozi who is this guy you are always chatting with?” And every time they asked, I would blush heavily and say, “One guy like that”. After a while, I told them his name and the teasing got much worse. “Please, when are we meeting this man?”

You see, one of my bosses was a young man, early 40s, but he was also a very very traditional Igbo man. Half the time, he spoke in weird proverbs. Ask him a serious work related question and he would start his response with “In my place, my people say, blah blah blah”. Sometimes he translated, sometimes he didn’t.

One day, during our usual back and forth over my love life, he dropped one of his proverbs. Very loosely translated, it meant I should get my face out of my phone so that I could see other real life options around me. We were consultants in the head office of a bank and he said guys were on his case, asking him what my story was.

I wasn’t interested in anyone else. I had my WhatsApp guy. And I told him as much, but our conversation got me thinking. So on my way home,  in a bus, face in my phone chasing with my Whatsapp guy  and I told him about it. Admittedly, it was a cowardly way of me asking him, “What are we?”

He responded immediately and said, “Hey, don’t let me hold you back. If you meet someone, please go ahead.” And that was the beginning of the end for me. For a while I tried to act like I was a cool modern day girl who didn’t like labels as well… like I was content with us just hanging out like the way cool kids do these days, but by the following weekend, we were done. Months later, when we talked about it, he said (in his defense) that we were never dating because he knew early on that we would never work out.

I’m telling you all this because it’s 2019 and I still don’t have sense… Pray for me.