Like most men, he started believing that a woman is a soft shell, to be treated with care. He admired marriages and relationships that lasted for decades even when men said they were slaves to their wives. He heard the marriage jokes. Most of them always castrated the man but he never made much of it. Looking out the window, he remembered his innocence before falling in love.
The rain fell gently from the Heavens. The subtle thud from the chrome roofs allowed his thoughts to be in peaceful meditation. On this day, he was thinking about the days when he was young and before he had loved a woman. You see, it had been 2 years since he was in a relationship. 2 years in which he had not touched a woman. He could feel in his body the absence of a woman. But unlike his younger self who never knew love, his older self was reluctant to fall in love. His older self had discovered that women were not the soft-shell beings he was made to believe they were. Far from it.
It started with his first girlfriend when he was 15. His girlfriend was a grade below him. Most people, including the girlfriend's father, who was his teacher, believed that their relationship was natural. He was a consistent feature in the grade top ten and she was a consistent feature in her grade top ten. They were both part of extra mural activities and they were both nerds.
It was a fun time, so he thought. He found it peculiar though that she preferred that they only communicate over the phone and never in person. When he would try to reach her on the school grounds, she would give him the coldest of stares. It was the stare of the tiger that clearly communicated danger. A stare that said, “Step closer and I will kill you.”
Yet on the phone, she was his girlfriend. The only time they enjoyed quality time together was when they were on school road trips for a group they were part of. Only then she would find it appropriate to spend time with him.
For the longest time, he would dismiss the relationship. He would it call puppy love and find no meaning in it. It was only when he started reading more psychological and philosophical books that he realised that all events in one’s life are important in their growth. Even the events that occurred before one’s consciousness fully developed.
He realised that his relationship laid a dodgy yet stable foundation. This relationship gave him an impression that women do not want to be touched. This relationship gave him a façade that women prefer words as a primary love language. It is for this reason that even 16 years later, his primary love language is words of affirmation and physical touch is his last. But this relationship also taught him a valuable lesson.
It taught him that women cannot be trusted. He dated the girl for about a year and a half and only spent one day, on a school road trip together. When the relationship ended, she found another guy and with this guy she found no problem being seen with him. She found no problem displaying public physical affection with him. He always thought that perhaps it was because the guy was cooler, more popular than him the math nerd. It seemed that she loved the idea of him but not him as a person. His mistrust schema was then birthed; only to be raised by another woman.
After that relationship, he found myself with another woman. With this woman, he met her at the peak of his puberty. He met this woman while he was in the eye of his hormonal storm. And so, she was the girl of his firsts. Through her, he learnt and felt lust. She too was at the peak of her puberty and so, the feelings towards each other were mutual.
This relationship went on for many years until it met its conclusion 6 years later. He did everything he thought should for a woman. He tried his level best to be the ideal man who her. He would make sure she had food when she was on campus. He would save up money and try to take her out when he could. When they mugged her phone, he went and bought her a new phone. He thought he was doing everything that man should do; to treat a woman gently and with care.
It was only a year after they broke up he learnt that her stage of puberty lasted longer. During their relationship, a feeling always wrestled with him. He always felt he was not alone in the relationship. But he would discard the feeling. He did not want to believe it. He believed marriages that lasted until forever. And so, to believe in a thought of betrayal was to plant a weed in this garden of love he was building. He always discarded the thought even after she admitted to sleeping with her ex.
Youthful naivety. It was Christmas Eve when she called him. She asked to please see him as she had something heavy in her heart to share. The madly in love boy he was, he dropped everything and ran to the bus-stop. The bus that day, luckily did not waste time. Perhaps because it was a day before Christmas, the bus driver wanted to end his shift early to prepare for Christmas. Roughly 45 mins later he was in her hometown. He remembers the high waist jeans she was wearing. But because of what she was about to tell him that day, high waist jeans are a reminder of the painful news he received that day.
The bus ride back home was a painful one. It was one that can be characterised with one word: hurt. He was hurt. He was hurt in his own beliefs about love. He was hurt about his girlfriend’s betrayal. His hurt that another man could easily get his woman. He was hurt for thinking he was a man yet he was still a boy. He was hurt by defending her even when his mom told him she was wrong for him. He was hurt. But youthful naivety. He forgave her and told himself that surely in marriages, the husband and wife always find a solution for their problems. And even though he was not married to her, he treated her like his wife.
Youthful naivety. She never changed her ways. Instead, she merely became better at hiding her ways from him. Even though, in hindsight, he realises that there were many indications of betrayal, because of his beliefs in love and what love means for him, he blindly loved her. He did so blindly until the relationship reached an end. Because even though he blindly loved her, the pain changed the lenses he was seeing love through.
One of the key painful thoughts he had was that he was not man enough. He felt that he was weak as a man. Surely he was if another man could easily take his woman and eat her treasured fruit. This pain sowed a deep seed in him. He vowed to himself to never feel that weak again. And to prove to himself that he’ll never feel weak again, he set about an audacious goal for himself: to sleep with as many women he possibly could.
And his transformation began. He set this goal while he was still with his girlfriend. But his mind was in a weird state at the time. It was wired differently. He was delusional. He loved his girlfriend but his girlfriend did not make him feel like a man. Only his goal at this point would give him that feeling. He logged on Facebook with the sole intention to find a woman. At this point, his girlfriend was the only woman he knew. That thought alone fuelled his goal even more.
It did not take him long before he came across a woman on Facebook. A beautiful girl who lived around the corner from where he stayed. She was a homebody who every guy in the neighbourhood desired. If he could get her, it would mean he was better than the other guys he thought to himself. He sent a her text.
Luckily for him, she responded. She liked him too. They seemed to jelly together like pap and melk. They connected effortlessly. This girl was more lady like. She took extra care in how she looked. She was a beautiful flower. One he had the fullest intention of plucking.
And he did. Driven by pure lust and nothing else. For him, the day he plucked her remains the day he experienced the true pleasures of a woman. It surpassed his first time. Perhaps it was because the feeling gave him a feeling that he was a man. That not one woman could ever define his masculinity. His ex girlfriend, to this day, never knows about this. But because of this, he found the confidence to finally let her go.
As the rain continued to pour on his windows, he stood from his meditation to make himself a cup of coffee. Even though he has met many women thereafter, he realises that it is the first two relationships that have defined how he loves as a man. Even though he has hurt women himself and even though he was disappointed by women, those two relationships in his teenage years laid solid foundations on rock and stone.
He knows that he can never be the boy who never knew love. He knows that he can never re-experience the first joys of love. How he wishes he could but he knows it is impossible. In the same breath, he knows that he can never be a nice guy. The last time he was a nice guy, he got his heart ripped in shreds with most shreds lost forever.
He struggles however with not being a nice guy. When he is not a nice guy, he never experiences women problems. But in his not being a nice guy, his selfishness, indifference and lack of empathy evidently leads to hurting the women he would date. He recalls one woman he dated that he knows that because of him, her life took a left turn.
This girl, like the girl he had an affair with, was a beautiful girl. A true lady who spoke eloquently and had a huge sense of humour. But of course, at the time, he was driven by lust. He had thought she was an Instagram Baddie he had seen on his phone. They were wearing the same grey dress and their bodies were the same. He had no intention of loving her. Little did he know that he would, in fact be her first love.
And him being her first love, she loved him fully and completely. He would get annoyed by this and keep her at arm’s life. He recalls how she was crying one night about how difficult it was to love him. He got annoyed and left her crying by the parking lot.
Now that he is older, when he thinks about this, it hurts him that he treated another human that way. Because if it were him, he would have not wanted the love of his life to leave him when it was clear he needed her.
While stirring his coffee he wonders how should a man love. Like the girl in the grey dress, indeed women ought to be treated gently like soft shells. But like his first relationships, the more colourful the animal the more poisonous it is. So he asks himself, how can a man find the right balance between being nice and not being nice?
He looks again at his core belief that stems from marriages. From older marriages, he notices that men humble themselves before their women. He notices that men will allow their women to reprimahand them even in the most belittling of ways. But in the same breath, he notices that these men never dim their honour. Even if a man is down in the dumps, down to his last cent, the older men in marriages even tarnish their respect. They are still able to stand firm and lead the family. The tides of love might be high but the men in these marriages always keep their heads held higher.
In younger generations, the men take it a step further and include aspects such as relationship counseling. They take that extra step to do relationship check ins. They actively keep working on their relationships and marriages. He realises that perhaps that’s the next lesson he needs to learn.
He has learnt the pleasures and pains of being a nice guy. He has learnt the pleasures and pains of being a bad guy. The lessons, however, he learnt at the extremes. He was either an extremely nice guy or he was an extremely bad guy.
With the last sip of coffee he ponders once more if women are soft shells to be treated gently and with care. He comes to the realisation that women are humans to be treated with respect. Like himself, women have feelings. Their feelings are sensitive like himself. Women are no different from men other than their biological function.
Being a nice guy is being a slave and making your woman your queen. Being a bad guy is being a king and making your woman a slave. The balance is being a king and understanding your woman is a queen. As simple a concept this is to him, he still fails to fully understand it.
Perhaps in time he will. The rain started to stop falling and so his thoughts. For now, he was a single man. In the death of the nice guy in him was born a bad guy. A bad guy who never had women problems but would eventually end up lonely. He knew it was time for a change for he still believed that love can last forever.
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