Love Bombed
“I like your nose,” were some of the first words he ever said to me. My nose? Same nose that was the source of my childhood torment? The nose that earned me the nickname Abiola or my personal favourite, enwu fata? That nose? The one that made a friend of my mum’s who’d come visiting after I was born ask, “which one did you give birth to like this?” (I wasn’t the cutest baby, and I still haven’t forgiven that bitch!) It couldn’t be that same nose. Surely, he was teasing.
“I’m sure you’ve never heard that before,” he said.
“Never.”
“I see beauty in the ordinary,” he retorted.
Get Ehi Oduh’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
After rolling my eyes at that obviously corny line, I proceeded to let him sweep me off my feet with sweet words, kind gestures and empty promises.
That’s the thing with having never being in a healthy adult relationship. You crave it and so whatever has the guise of it, you lap that shit up. This search for love, acceptance, and validation from being in a relationship seems to be the bane of my existence. A few days after ‘meeting’ him, he was already asking if I had an international passport and if I would like to be his travel buddy. He painted this picture of us being this happy-go-lucky travelling couple who’d spend their days frolicking in the sun and slow loving the night away. I was smitten.
All you pop psychologists would probably turn up your noses at my delusion. You’d probably love to spew your “love yourself enough to not need validation from another” spiel, but who doesn’t want such flurriless love? He was saying all the right things and making me feel all the good ways. I didn’t have to remind him to call or text! I didn’t have to wonder what he thought of me because he constantly and lovingly told me. I never knew there was a love like this before… (cue the Faith Evans song).
He claimed I was his ideal woman — cultured, educated, a great conversationalist with a good head on my shoulders and a banging body. He wanted me to be his immediately. This was what I’d always dreamed of, I thought. If you guzzle romance novels like I do, you’d have read of this whirlwind style romance. It is the bread and butter of us love junkies.
He was impressed with my passable knowledge of Yoruba as that was the language his family spoke (was he already planning a meet-the-parents event like me?). By the end of that first week, I knew about his sisters in the UK, his job as the curator of Africa’s first digital mobile radio, and his quasi-nudist lifestyle. I was already planning the sitting chart for our wedding in my head!
But as with all things ephemeral, his adulation began to wane. Gone were the daily chats. He began to become too busy to return or make scheduled phone calls. His responses became testy when he was called out for reneging on promises. The man I thought I’d go globe-trotting with and be beholden to had vanished. In his place was a broody flaker who couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge receipt of the online questionnaire he asked me to complete for his podcast. That was when it occurred to me, I had just been love bombed!
