Part 1 - Na My Wedding

From the minute we started dating I made it abundantly clear to my boyfriend Charles what my name means- ‘Handle with Care’, the long version is “This child is nurtured with love and care.”

I am called Atoke. I like adventures, but I don’t like drama. Charles and I have been dating for over a year. I’m 28 and he’s 32. We are both wise adults who carefully entered this relationship with the aim of getting married. At least I did.

Charles and I have a great relationship, and we’ve crossed all the lines of uncertainty, at least I have. He’s introduced me to his family and, and I have introduced him to mine. Not in the grand ‘let’s call the drummers’ fashion, but you know, casually, just to know the family of one’s significant other.

Charles is wonderful; he’s tall, dark, fit and mysterious. We complement each other in all the ways that matter. He has plenty of hair for instance, whilst my hairline recedes daily. He’s quiet, calm and calculates before taking any major decisions and me, well, I am quickly and absolutely certain. He’s trusting and I always have 13 reasons why or why not to engage new people. We share the same value system, he’s an expert at loving me and I am devoted to being the best partner to him. We know we’re great together and we make a super team.

So I wonder, why hasn’t he proposed? Is Charles handling me with a little too much care or not enough? Is he calculating whether or not to ask me to marry him or is marriage assumed? Is he seeing someone else? Because these things have been known to happen even in the best relationships.

We crossed the one-year mark a few weeks ago and he didn’t make a big fuss about it. I’m assuming this is because a bigger event is coming up, one that involves a ring…

At this point in the relationship, a man either breaks it off or makes it happen forever. Charles came round last night and asked me random questions that simply threw me off. Like “why does tradition behoove a man to ask a woman to marry him. Why can’t the woman ask?” Then goes off on a long tangent about how his friend Wole asked his girlfriend to marry him and how she wasn’t pleased with his limp proposal. “She described his proposal as limp, can you imagine! I think the modern day emasculate the man.” The whole time, Charles was darting his eyes about looking like a tortured cat. I mean what is a woman supposed to make of all this talk. Clearly Charles doesn’t want to get married, either that or he wants me to ask, which will never happen. My mental point here is, let us break it off sooner than later if you’re not sure. But I don’t say that, I make a straight face and hope to God that I look like I want to strangle him.

A few seconds later, he calms down, and insists we watch Violated. “You like that film don’t you babe.” Ten minutes into the film, Charles’ phone rings and he steps outside to take the call. My alarm bells go off. That’s never happened before, why on earth would he need to step outside to take a call. He comes back in sweating. Who was that, I ask him and he dismissively mumbles something about work.  Where were we he asks… ah Violated, more alarms go off. Is Charles feeling violated by me in anyway?

Charles takes my hand and seemingly mindlessly slides his key ring into my ring fingers. There’s a long string on the cuff of his shirt, he pulls it off and guides it around my wrist, and then surreptitiously around my finger. I giggle. ‘What’s so funny’ and add ‘You have such lovely hands Atoks”. He said hands, not fingers. I smile back into his eyes thinking; yeah they’d even be lovelier with a rock on it.

Charles nods off watching Violated and leaves me with my mind still wondering what is happening between us. I know we have a great relationship but I am tempted to end it rather than torture myself wondering if indeed he will ask me to marry him.

I have a great life, wonderful friends and then I can travel. One is either absolutely secure or absolutely on the edge. It’s one or the other, I refuse to be in between.