Yemisi Wada: How to Walk Away

As I grow older, I realise that I could be very naive sometimes. I make very childlike suppositions.

I assumed for a long time that women were in bad relationships because they didn’t realize it or because they didn’t see it or they were not aware there could be a better way. To this end I am always proffering often-unsolicited advice. Just the other day I was at it again ‘Madam Adviser’ when I realised the ‘aburo’ I was talking to, was filing her nails. At some stage when I had told her another unforgivable thing I heard her man had done to her, and why it was rubbish, she twisted that her mouth around and said ‘Aunty, there’s even more you don’t know but where am I going to?’

The fear of the unknown, the fear of being alone or feeling like a loser is part of the reasons women stay in these sad relationships and are coupled but miserable and frustrated.

The first thing you need to do is work on yourself. Analyze your being and decide you deserve better than this. Analyze the situation. Don’t make it okay. Don’t compare it to your friend’s or your sister’s or your neighbour’s that you think is worse. Don’t rationalize it. If it felt bad to you and it caused you hurt, or shame or pain then it is what it is, it is bad.

Stop seeing your life without him. Think of his life without you and please allow him to go taste it. Value yourself and your input into the relationship no matter what it was. Even if it was just to look pretty on his arm, that too has its value. If you’re one of those they tell ‘There’s plenty of fish in the Sea, you need to start thinking too that there’s of lots of Seas on this Earth!

Get busy. Get obsessed with something else. Channel it to good use. Ife said she saw a ‘Make-up and Gele tying Course’ on a blog. She signed up and started taking the classes. She said ‘Aunty the days were okay’ as the Course was very intensive but the nights were hell. I missed him so much but I just remembered all he had done especially when I was financially dependent on him. Guess what! By the time the jobs kept coming and I was seeing my work on Social media, I was too obsessed with who I was now and achieving his sins seemed to multiply. I couldn’t even imagine my new self with that dirty, low life, controlling……..”

Plan forward. People ask, is this not too soon? I say that’s why you have lyrics of songs that say ‘Love all the hurt away’. It’s not jump into marriage but if it leads to it, why not? Although I must warn ‘rebound relationships’ have a lot of problems. That’s a topic for another blog post. So plan the fun your single life will be. Who, you can meet. How, you will be so different. Maybe not so easy to be walked over, or not so gullible, or not so generous or whatever you feel you did wrong here, plan to avoid next time. Instead of mourning where you’re coming from, look forward to moving forward.

Once a friend of mine found out her fiancé was cheating. It turns out they both thought he was their fiancé. He stayed with my friend but kept asking her to stop acting like the ‘vanquished’! I had to go find out what the word meant. You can only imagine the type of husband he turned out to be. So stop seeing this thing like a battle. If he is cheating, and you cannot take it, leave. There is more dignity in either being dropped or staying knowing you were okay with fighting for the prize; because trust me, you will pay the price for ending up with the prize. If you walk away he will know you didn’t think you needed to fight anyone to have your own man and forever respect that about you.

In case of physical violence, all these don’t come into play. Just LEAVE PLEASE. You do not deserve that.

God Bless.