As much as I’d like to think that I’ve grown since my teens and early 20s, I used to handle conflicts in relationships in exactly the same way. Can it be that I’m still that insecure young woman who felt so abandoned, angry, and lonely? Every bone in my body has known for quite some time now that my boyfriend is the person I want to be with forever. He’s seen every part of me—the parts I love, the parts I hate, the parts I feel indifferent about—and he honors and cherishes them. I see every part of him too, and we are so in love with the life we’ve built.
The kind of love my boyfriend gives me is decidedly different from what I’ve received in the past, yet my fears and hangups about love have yet to evolve. So, did I need to look back before I could move forward?
Talking to ex-friends about why our relationship ended proved such a successful experiment that I decided to reach out to my former beaus and hear, from their perspectives, why we didn’t work out.
I have never ended a relationship on good terms (thanks, Mom and Dad!), so the project felt uniquely terrifying. Many said no, some more kindly than others, but to my surprise, a couple said yes. Here are those conversations—and their revelations. Names have been changed.
Jordan
Jordan came into my life at a complicated time. My parents’ marital problems were undeniable, and my father had started to slip away from me. I was a very angry, sad, and scared 16-year-old, who masked all those feelings with exuberant confidence, barely-tolerable bitchiness, and an active social schedule.
Jordan was my volleyball coach’s cousin. He was 19, and went to university in the UK. Our coach decided to put him to good use while he was in Nairobi visiting relatives during a school break. She started bringing him to practices and tasked him with picking up balls and setting up nets. I’ll never forget the first practice he showed up to. The second I saw his tall stature, dreamy brown eyes, and buoyant curls, I told my teammates not to bother looking at him twice. He was mine.
I was useless at that practice. I’d purposefully hit the ball out of bounds, prompting Jordan to sprint across the gym to return it to me. One one occasion, I sprinted with him, making sure to flaunt my assets as I bent over to pick the ball up. “Oh, you’re trouble, aren’t you,” he said with a smirk. “You bet I am,” I responded cheekily.