Help! I am the only one in love

TO 32-year-old Chioma, she and Abass were in love and would soon head for the altar. ”I was always at Abass‘ family house and all his siblings called me ‘our wife,‘” she recalls. ”Though I didn‘t mind going to his flat always, I observed he hardly called or visited me at home.

”Whenever I complained, he would tell me that his banking job took more of his time. I was always the one giving him gifts and sharing emotional text messages with him. Abass didn‘t. His excuse was always his job.

”But if he could spare time to eat at work, I believed there should be time to text a message. Initially, I overlooked all this and thought he would change, but he never did. In two years, I had never received a recharge card of N400 from him.

”Though he took me to an eatery twice when I was celebrating my birthday, he never bought me a gift. Meanwhile, I would buy gifts for him, his parents, his siblings and relatives. At a point, my siblings opposed the affair because they believed I was the only one in love with Abass, but when he proposed to me, they changed their mind.

”When I started making wedding plans, he never dropped a kobo. He would humorously say that women are the ones who sponsor weddings and not men. But I have started having a re-think after seeing the receipt of an item he bought from a gift shop. It was an expensive jewellery case and I have seen many paper bags of feminine items in his car. That meant this guy could afford to buy things for another woman. I confronted him and his answer shocked me – he was not in love, I was the only one and his heart was elsewhere.”

”I was always buying his clothes, going to his flat to do his laundry, clean and even cook. But all I received was a hug. He would manage to say: ‘I love you, Patty,‘” recalls Patricia, a 29-year-old civil servant.

Could it be that she was desperately in need of a mate? ”Maybe,” she offers. ”I was the only one doing everything to make the relationship work and anytime I suggested that we went to see my parents, King, my boyfriend of 14 months, would blow his top.

”He would have an excuse not to be available, but he kept professing that he loved me. The only time he bought something for me was when his cousin, who was my colleague, was getting married and she forced him to pay for my aso-ebi and headgear (N5,000).

”Since then, anytime I complained that King was stingy to me, he would remind me of the aso-ebi. Could this be love? I have tried to talk to his friends about his ways, but they would advise that I exercise patience because he lost some money at the stock market.

”Didn’t I lose some too? Last week, he requested a pot of soup and when I asked for money, he was angry and said I was too stingy. This was a guy who had never put money down for a tuber of yam and he was always eating at my place after which he would request a bottle of ‘Big Stout.’ I am tired of him and already told him to stop coming to see me.”

Men could also be in these ladies shoes. Kenneth, 30, an architect recalls, ”There was no day Agatha, my girlfriend of two years, had even bought me anything as small as chewing gum. But she kept asking for everything – I recharged her phone, I paid for her last rent, her laundry paid for by me and I was always available to pick her after work.

”Although she was always grateful and would freely give me her body, I still believed that she would have done better than that. There was a day I complained that I had headache and asked that she went to the drug store. Was I shocked when she asked for money? The drugs were just for N2,000 and she made sure I gave her that amount.

”Not that her salary was meagre (she worked as a marketer in a bank and always met her target) Agatha would not play with N100. She had never bought me a gift, never bought anything in my house for decoration and was always complaining about my window blinds when she also did part-time interior décor as contracts. After six months, I knew that we would never get married, but I played along with her. Naturally, I am a generous person but I am also learning how to be stingy with a woman like mine.”