By Owie Aideyan
Love, Blindfolded
I met him when I was 22, naive, optimistic, and utterly romantic. He was five years older—sharp, charming, ambitious, and disarmingly attentive. We met in a banking hall. I spilled documents. He helped me pick them up. Our eyes locked. A cliché beginning, yes. But I didn’t know clichés could lead to real heartbreak.
For three years, I was his ride-or-die. I helped him rewrite his CV. I stayed up late prepping him for interviews. I lent him money when his rent was due. I cooked, cleaned, encouraged, forgave, and poured out a version of myself I didn’t even know I had. I loved him through his fears, failures, and flaws.
But love, I would learn, can be blind—and deaf too. Deaf to the inner voice that whispers “something’s off.” I ignored the red flags. The missing calls. The last-minute cancellations. The way he took, and took, and took—without ever pouring anything back into me.
Still, I stayed. Because I believed in “potential.” Because I believed that when you help someone through their worst, they’ll never forget you at their best. I didn’t know I was loving a man who was preparing himself—for someone else.
Becoming His Home Before He Built One for Another
We lived in different cities, but I would travel five hours every other weekend just to see him. I cooked his meals in bulk and stocked his fridge. I helped arrange his apartment. I ironed his shirts, washed his socks, even helped repaint his walls. I believed in partnership. I believed in service. I believed I was sowing into “our” future.
He was sweet—sometimes. He would send surprise messages, call me his “peace,” and once said, “I can’t imagine my life without you.” I took those words and built a castle in my heart.
What I didn’t know was that while I was folding his laundry one Saturday morning in his apartment, he was at a rooftop restaurant in Lagos, proposing to another woman. A proposal complete with saxophonists, rose petals, and a ring I never knew he could afford. He hadn’t posted it yet, but his friends did. And one mutual friend—bless her soul—sent me the video.
I froze, laundry basket in hand. Watching the man I thought I was building a life with kneel before another woman, tears in his eyes, calling her “my forever.”
I had never known what betrayal tasted like until that moment. It was metallic, like blood in your mouth when your heart breaks too fast.
The Aftermath of “Us”
He didn’t even deny it. When I confronted him, all he said was, “I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t think you’d take it well.” As though I was a minor inconvenience in the narrative of his life. As though my years of loyalty, sacrifice, and devotion were footnotes in a story meant for someone else’s glory.
I packed up my things. He didn’t stop me. No tears. No chase. Just silence.
In the weeks that followed, I stopped eating. I didn’t leave my room. I stared at the walls wondering how love could feel so much like loss. People said, “Be strong.” I wanted to scream. I had been strong. That was the problem. I was strong while he was comfortable. I was strong while he was indecisive. I was strong until I had nothing left to give.
I blamed myself. Maybe I wasn’t enough. Maybe I was too available. Maybe if I had been more difficult, he would have fought for me.
But slowly, I began to understand: I wasn’t too much. I just gave too much to the wrong person.
Rising from the Rubble
Healing didn’t come easy. But it came. Not in a wave, but in droplets.
I started therapy. I stopped stalking their wedding photos. I began to rebuild my identity not as someone’s “support system” but as a woman with a life of her own. I remembered I had dreams too—ones that didn’t include folding socks or shrinking myself for someone else’s comfort.
And most importantly, I forgave myself.
Because no one talks enough about that part. We often talk about forgiving the person who hurt us, but sometimes the deepest wound is the one we inflict on ourselves for not seeing the signs, for staying too long, for losing ourselves in the name of love.
I took the long road to healing. I traveled solo. I enrolled in classes. I laughed again. I danced in the rain one evening just to prove to myself that joy wasn’t gone—it was just buried beneath the rubble of someone else’s lies.
A New Kind of Love
Today, I am whole—not because someone completed me, but because I completed myself.
I no longer see love as rescue. I see it as a partnership of whole people. I now know that someone asking for your patience while they “figure it out” might be asking you to waste your prime years on their indecision.
The man who eventually came into my life didn’t need to be fixed. He didn’t need to be mothered or molded. He came healed, and honored the healed version of me.
So to the woman reading this—if you’ve ever loved someone who used your loyalty as a stepping stone to their dream life with someone else: you are not alone. You are not foolish. You are not broken.
You are becoming.
Sometimes the pain is the classroom. And heartbreak, though cruel, is one of life’s most honest teachers. I learned that I wasn’t just someone’s “good enough”—I was someone’s answered prayer. And I wouldn’t have found him if I hadn’t first walked through fire.
Let them go.
Let the laundry fall.
You were made for more than someone else’s convenience.
Finally:
This is not just a story. This is a resurrection. A testimony for every woman who gave her all, lost it all, and still rose again.
Let this not just be read. Let it be felt.
Let it be remembered.
