Isn’t it annoying how the heart and the mind often want different things? Like, “Hey, I’m just a girl with intense feelings and major thoughts, but I didn’t sign up to be a battlefield. I just wanted love.” It’s even worse when nobody can see the battles going on inside you. The icing on the cake is dating a man everyone thinks is the kindest, big-hearted person they’ve ever encountered.
You can’t fully blame them for thinking that. It was also your initial assessment of the man before you decided to get entangled with him. You begin to resent him for it because it’s all people ever see, but you know other parts of him. You’re a girl with an above-average IQ, so you understand humans can be more complex, but why are you the one dealing with the other side of him?
Mike was everybody’s darling. His parents loved him and appreciated his helpful nature. Because of his calm demeanour and respect, he easily won favour with his friends’ parents. When they met Mike, they felt proud of their kids’ choice of friends. My friends also thought I was lucky to have Mike. He was soft-spoken and kind to them.
He was helpful to me in that way, too. I thought this was how you determine a thoughtful man—a kind man who would think twice before hurting your feelings. To be fair, maybe he did think twice before he hurt me the first time, but humans are weak. That’s how I justified it the first time he cheated on me.
I was busy studying for a certification. As expected, I was busy, so he spent more time with his friends. That was where he met her. She was a friend of one of the friends’ girlfriends. They bonded over being the only ones without present partners at the gatherings. It wasn’t intentional but a consequence of proximity.
I believed him when he said he didn’t mean to hurt me. I even took the blame. I also didn’t intend to ‘neglect’ him, and besides, he was a good guy by all standards—good, not perfect. I let it slide and told nobody.
They say challenges bring couples together, and we were exemplifying that notion. Mike was looking for a better job. As his supportive girlfriend, I invested in the cause. We revamped his CV, and I helped him tailor it to each job that he applied to. For weeks, that’s mainly what we did. It paid off when he secured a good-paying job with an international organisation.
We celebrated, and he acknowledged my role in his progress. We had plans, and this job would speed up the execution time frame. Mike got a good job, which came with added benefits. He started interacting with high-earning women. They saw a good thing, too, because one of them actively pursued him.
He started receiving care packages in the office. The first one was a breakfast that was sent to him to commemorate Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month. I didn’t even know there was a campaign. When he received it, he initially thought the package was from me. We quickly realised what was going on and even joked about it. It turned out the joke was on me when I discovered weeks later that he had cheated with the lady who’d sent it.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t leave, I don’t know either. Maybe I believed his apologies. Maybe his charm worked. Maybe my legs failed me, and I couldn’t walk away. I stayed and started acting up. I went to all his gatherings with friends and tried to micromanage him. We didn’t tell anyone what was happening, and I looked like the horrible girlfriend dating the ‘nice’ guy. You know how the ‘good’ ones always pick ‘bad’ partners.
Life happened, and we tried to move forward. Remember I mentioned big plans? It was time to get a car. I was always the better planner, so I got to work. We worked out a plan that saw us cut down on almost everything that wasn’t a basic need to save up for a car. It worked, and in eleven months, there was enough money to buy a decent car.
Then our lives turned into a few episodes of one of those shows—First came the car, then came the hunnies. He became the designated Uber driver for girls. Mike would pick them up and drop them off at their homes. Ever so kind, that one. He just got them to their destinations safely, or so he said.
“Babe, she was going in the same direction as I was, and I had an empty car to myself,” Mike said when I complained.
I remember one particular fight when we attended a friend’s birthday party. Her friend needed to go to a nearby estate and see another friend before coming back to the party. The kind resident ‘Uber’ driver’s hand was in the air, offering to take her. I didn’t even wait for them to get back.
“It was disrespectful,” I argued.
“Babe, if I was planning to do anything sinister, I wouldn’t do it while you were there,” Mike responded.
Once more, I was the one overreacting, yet he did a good deed. At that point, I lost count of the many times he did seemingly ‘selfless’ acts that undermined our relationship. Of course, the friends supporting his actions at the birthday party weren’t privy to his previous misgivings. I wasn’t going to tell them. Knowing Mike, his need to maintain a particular image would have deterred him from telling some of his friends about his transgressions.
I stayed a year longer. I wanted to leave him as soon as he left with the girl at the party, but I wasn’t ready. I hated myself for staying with him. I wondered why I let him get away with his misgivings. I couldn’t tell why I just couldn’t tell others that he wasn’t the perfect and kind boyfriend they all thought he was, but in hindsight, I think I was silent because I was ashamed that I stayed with him after each incident.
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