Their Wahala

She was like a combination of a girl who was high and on her period. Except that it was every single damn day of the month. When was the last time he had peace of mind? When was the last time he could breathe?

He was like someone who had ingested large amounts of codiene. So slow to respond to the stimuli of his environment. On top of that, he was so oblivious to everything. Everything. She felt like she was about to lose her mind.

One drama to the other. One fight to another. There was nothing he did right. Large portions of their time was spent in heated arguments. She had lost her appeal to him. He was still here for loyalty sake. He was in this for the long haul. He felt their relationship was not past a solution. If only she would listen.

He just couldn’t understand her, she thought. He just couldn’t see. What was his problem? She loved him so so much. She just wanted him to be better.

To hell with being better, he thought. You mean to tell him there was nothing good about him? For two damn years he’d been trying. Trying to please her. Trying to dance to her tune. Nothing was good enough for her. She had to stop behaving like his mother.

And why was he so free around other girls? She wondered. Was he cheating? She felt insecure. There was a time when he could tell her everything and anything and now he was just mute. He never smiled at her again. Not real smiles anyway. The way he talked to other girls, on the phone or face to face. She knew how to differentiate a meaningful converstation from a forced one. It was like all his converstaions with her were forced. And all his conversations with everyone else were genuine.

The nerve! How many times was she going to accuse him of cheating? The first couple of times, he begged her to listen. She initially believed him, but she kept bringing it back. He even gave her his phone to read all of his chats. There were definitely other girls and most of them were definitely more appealing than she was at this point. But the one time in her life she actually had a guy who was hellbent on being faithful, she was going to mess everything up with her insecurities.

He wasn’t fun or romantic anymore. He was now doing things out of obligation. For her last birthday, he got her a gift bag that comprised of different chocolates from that new store she liked so much, coupled with a card and a written note that looked like he’d poured his heart out to her. As a matter of fact, her friends went crazy over the note and one of them even jokingly said, “You complain too much. If you don’t want him, I definitely do.” But she knew him too well. He was good with words but not good at masking his feelings. Not to her anyway.

He was fed up. She couldn’t even be grateful for anything in this life. He went out of his way to make her happy and she was always nitpicking. Just once he would’ve liked to get an unconditional thank you. It wasn’t like she ever went out of her way to do things for him like he did for her. She was selfish and she refused to admit that truth.

He called her selfish. Seriously? She was everything but selfish. She spent so much time and effort on him. She went out of her way to help him when he needed it. Although she remembered his need for her opinion and help had reduced drastically. But she always dropped everything she was doing to assist him whenever he asked for it. He was on her mind all the time. How dare he accuse her of such a thing as being selfish?

Sacrifice? Sacrifice? She had no right to mention that word in his presence. What sacrifices hadn’t he made to sustain this relationship? His ego? His logical thinking? Him going against the advice of his friends to just end it? His time? His efforts? His emotional freedom and stability? His money? He’d spent enough on her to start a small business for crying out loud. What had she spent on him? He never said these things to her but he was definitely thinking them.

Well, talking to him was definitely not moving anything forward. She needed advice on how to handle this whole thing. She couldn’t talk to her friends. As far as they were concerned, he was perfect. She needed an unbiased opinion, so she found one of her older friends with experience in this sort of thing.

His friends did not know what he saw in her. And truth be told, he was starting to see things in that light. Their advice was always the same. But there was one guy he should’ve talked to but never did. There was a neigbour not too far from his house he always admired. His relationship with his wife seemed so flawless, which was uncanny because it was unrealistic to not expect clashes with a spouse. His curiosity was sparked again and he was going to talk to him. He didn’t even consider talking to his father because his marriage was nothing to write home about. He was hellbent on not repeating those mistakes.

She told her everything and she listened with keen interest. When the story and complaints were over, she gave her advice. “No guy likes a nagging girlfriend,” she said. “You’ve moved from the love of his life to someone he does a bad job at tolerating. You can’t force change. This looks like a guy who can move the world for you if he could. Stop destroying the good thing you have because of a few flaws and your impatience.”

“It’s not that my wife and I don’t fight,” he said. “We do. We just got to the point of maturity where the whole world does not need to know about our issues. You would definitely have arguments with your future spouse. Don’t look for a dealbreaker in that regard. You seem like someone who is mature enough to know that but you also seem like the type with the weakness of not knowing when to let go. Do not. And I repeat, do not stay in a relationship because you feel you owe someone anything. Or because of how much you’ve invested in it. It’s a bad thing for you and your partner. You have to decide that you want it. Then you need to agressively find the root of whatever your problems are and fix them. Then get used to doing that at different intervals for the rest of your life.”

She thought a lot about it. Maybe her friends were right. Maybe she needed to show more love and correct him less. Maybe she should’ve been more patient with him. She was going to try to fix things and not care who was at fault. Maybe she could start with taking him out on the following weekend. Maybe . . .

He broke up with her.