It took me an arm and a leg to decide to share this, but I’ll share it anyway.
I got married with a full heart and high hopes. I believed in forever, in building a home with someone I trusted. I believed that if I gave my best, if I became everything he needed, he’d never let me fall.
But he did. He let me fall and even worse, he watched. He broke me in ways I never imagined, through words, through betrayal, through abandonment dressed as indifference.
He told stories that weren’t true, and let people throw dirt on my name. And yet through it all, I could only carry the weight of being misunderstood, of being judged, and being lied about.
I became a mother in the middle of all this. My daughter, Jasmine, became the one person I lived for when I couldn’t even live for myself. She deserved the best of me, but all I had to give were pieces. Still, she smiled at me with eyes full of love, like I was her whole world.
That’s when something shifted. That’s when I knew I had to fight for more. Not for him. Not for anyone else. For me.
I made the decision to leave the fancy life behind. The comfort. The house. The illusion of “having it all.”
At first, I thought walking away from that lifestyle meant I’d lose everything, that I wouldn’t be able to create content again, that no one would see me, that the brand deals would stop coming. But I was wrong.
Right now, I film my skincare videos in my sister’s kitchen. No marble counters. No fancy decor. Just me, my phone, and natural light coming through a window. And somehow, it still works. Somehow, brands still choose me. I still get deals. I still get noticed, even without the “perfect” life.
That part humbles me every single time because it reminds me that God’s grace doesn’t need aesthetics. He just needs your yes.
I’m still learning how to balance being a single mother (can’t believe in my life that I’d ever address myself as a single mother) and being a woman with dreams. I’m still healing. Some days I cry. Some days I don’t even know how to breathe through the pain.
This is me telling Eve my story, not a sad one, not a perfect one, but a true one.
I know that every story has a name and I think I should call mine The Pain of Deceit.
I started dating this guy I’ll refer to as “Mr. O” in the year 2023. He’s someone I’ve known for a long time, being that we were secondary classmates and our parents were colleagues at work. I relocated to the East due to some issues I had when I was still living in Lagos, and this was when we reconnected.
The type of love we had was one you could call fast and swift because it really didn’t take a lot of time for us both to fall for each other. Mr. O was not just a regular boyfriend to me, he was my best friend, my safe space, and my prayer answered, or so I thought.
We went through the months having slight issues, mostly about him not wanting me to keep male friends or be in contact with a male friend, and we dated for just three months.
I had just two rules which I told him I couldn’t forgive: one was cheating. Don’t cheat on me. The second was domestic violence. Don’t ever raise your hand on me. He had his too, which was that I should neither cheat nor lie to him, no matter the circumstance.
Around September 2024, he went through my phone and saw I was in communication with other guys, including my client at work I once told him about, and the ex too.
I apologized for hurting him because he was hurt and mad. He felt I had broken his rules, as he asked me not to talk to him. We didn’t talk for a while and I had to reach out to his mom to tell her everything that happened and to plead on my behalf.
His mom spoke to him and after some weeks we started talking again, though not dating. The months went by and it was November. That was when I found out that the man who couldn’t stand me not talking to another male, the man who knew I couldn’t tolerate cheating, did just that.
I was hurt but I let it slide because we were not dating at that point. Although I asked and he lied, saying he only had something to do with the girl once.
Now, this was in June. He visited the state where I reside and we met up. I got to find out that he had something with that girl previously, even before we broke up in November, and he’s having an affair with another girl I asked him about before, which he told me was “not that deep” and that nothing was going on between them.
“Not that deep?” And you’re practically going on dates with her, getting to know each other and ending up having sex. Not once or twice.’
My heart hurts and I know forgiveness is a huge step for now, of which I’m not yet at that level. I can’t bring myself to look at him because I feel betrayal, anger, resentment, and I’ve lost my trust in him.
He tells me he doesn’t want us to part ways and he only did that because of distance, but that’s a lie. It’s an excuse I can’t accept because it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t misbehave with other men because we’re not close to each other.
I just lost my boyfriend and best friend in one day.
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