Journey to Marriage 9 - The end of the beginning

Hi people. Thanks for following me through this journey. I have now decided that I will be taking down the posts in this series once they are two weeks old. That will help me create a balance between making sure the people interested are reading and not putting my life out there for everyone to dissect for eternity.

Before the one month period was over, I kind of already knew I was going to marry him (like I said in the previous edition), also because he had already fallen in love with me, though there was still some degree of holding back. Remember we had just seen twice (the first day we met, and our first date)

Still I was nervous as to how the one month review would play out. During that one month period, we had asked each other questions, me being the one with the most (he said he already knew most of what he wanted to know about me. I know he'd been snooping me out on social media, lol)

I want to recall one time. He had asked about my age, which he already knew from one of my newspaper interviews. Then he asked when I want to get married. It was really awkward for me.

Please let's calculate this together. A guy who you like and likes you but you are not sure about his intentions on marriage asks for your age, and then asks when I wanted to get married.

Everyone who has been following this series knows the answer to that question. I had been telling the whole world I was getting married this year. It was on my vision board, staring right at me, from my wall. The answer was everywhere, but I didn't want to seem desperate to him or that everything we were doing was just a ticket out of singleness for me.

So I lied

I said "I don't know, I'm not sure. Maybe sometime next year."

It was a big fat lie!

His reply was "okay, that's fair enough."

Anyway, moving on, the one month review was supposed to end on a Sunday, and our date was supposed to be Monday.

BH sends a message on Thursday to bring it backwards to Sunday cos Monday would be stressful. On Friday night, I was at vigil, and went straight to our annual women's conference in church on Saturday, which was all day (my church is not really far from BH's house)

Towards the last segment of the conference, BH calls me and says he's coming to my church. He's moving the date, which is no longer a date one day backwards again because he has to be at a study group almost all day on Sunday and he won't want our date to be late into the night. In my mind, I was like "Hmm, this guy really can't wait to see me, that's why he's so much in a hurry." Lol.

Let's just say I wasn't prepared at all. I had hardly slept after vigil, and if I was going to be getting into a relationship, I should at least be ready for it. Yellow Sisi, who was with me at this time quickly gave me her perfume to spray, told me to wear light makeup and assured me that the Ankara jacket and denim I had on was good. Thank God my hair had just been made four days earlier.

At the conference, the last segment was the breakout session. There were 5 groups, parenting, singles, finance, and two more I can't remember, maybe career and wives, I'm not sure. Naturally, I chose the singles focus group. Immediately I stepped into the singles group to sit (which was supposed to be my first gathering with singles as a single person for the year), I had hardly sat down for 10 seconds when BH arrived and asked me to come to the basement.

To me, this was a prophetic sign. I just had no business being single this year.

When we met, he started asking if I had made up my mind about him, and if I see him as a husband material. I kept dodging his questions and ceding the responsibility to him since the one month thing was his idea. I can't gaan be jumping into conclusions, and then he would now say he has prayed, and we are not meant for each other. God forbid baadddttt thing. Talk your own first.

Even though the signs were all there, one can never be too careful in things like this.

He basically said he's made up his mind, and if things keep going the way they are going, he's most likely going to get married sooner than he expected.

I quickly did a mental chicken dance.

But let's just say that's the most definitive response he gave throughout that day.

At first, I was pissed. I mean it was like we were already in a relationship but he didn't want to define of right there. He said we would meet the next week and do things the proper way. He also joked about needing one more week to mourn the death of his singleness.

After a while, I just let it go, and we spent three hours in the car, basically doing nothing serious but chitchat here and there. He took our first selfie as an unofficial couple. The attraction was so strong and concrete, you could hit the atmosphere with a stone and hear the thud.

We stayed in church till late at night, and then called it a night. I don't care what he called it but in my mind, I was in a relationship, lol.

The one week that followed was so intense, we could hardly stay away from each other via phone calls and chats.

Three days into the week, he said "I love you." I was so shocked that I could hardly respond. I was like "did you just say what I think you said? What did you just say?"

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He responded with "what did you think I said?" I pushed for like 5 seconds, and he repeated it.  I just said thank you. I didn't want to say I love him because it would sound like a mechanical response to what he said.

He said and still says "I love you" in such a way that I've never heard before. There's nothing mushy and emotional about it. It sounds like "I love you and you must never ever forget that I love you." Lol.

And that was the beginning of the I love you I have come to hear from him every single day, from that day.

In the meantime, We still had the date to look forward to. Towards the end of the week, he was like "here's how Sunday will go. I will officially ask you to be my girlfriend, and you will say yes. Even if you say no, you will be my girlfriend."

On the other end of the phone, I was just grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

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Three days later, we went on a proper date, our second date ever and fourth time we were seeing each other. We talked and talked. He asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes.

We walked hand in hand out of the venue, as a couple, and my life has never been the same again.

Question: Who was the first to say "I love you" in your relationship? Does it even matter who the first is? Is it important to continuously say it in the relationship?

P.S: This is not the end of the story o. See you all next week.