We met on a platform on WhatsApp, and he took a special interest in me. He came into my inbox one day, asking questions about me and asking if I could be his special friend. I asked the meaning of “special friend,” and he said, “Someone who can call you at any time and talk about everything freely.” I told him, “My guy, please go straight to the point and stop beating about the bush. Are you looking for a relationship?” He answered, “Maybe one day we’ll get there, but for a start, we should be friends.”
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I agreed to be friends with him, so we chatted often, and he called me on WhatsApp video very frequently too. I suspected he wasn’t in Ghana, but I didn’t ask questions. He was always inside a room, but you could still see foreign signs. He was using a local number, so I got confused somehow until he said he was in New Jersey.
A few months later, he started talking about a relationship. I asked him, “So you mean to tell me that there are no women in New Jersey?” He talked about how difficult it was to meet a woman and how you had to meet people on dating apps, and why he didn’t like that idea. He said, “I want a home woman. A woman well raised with culture and the fear of God.”
I also told him what I expected from a man I wanted to date. I told him I wasn’t comfortable with the distance, and he said he came home often and even promised that if everything went according to plan, we would be together as soon as we got married. I told him when I date, I don’t expect intimacy to happen until we are married. Then he asked, “It means you’re a virgin.” I answered, “No, I’m not, but I’ve learned my lessons, so for the past three relationships I’ve been in, I didn’t give the men sex.”
He applauded my stand and said he wanted a woman as strong as me. I asked if he had kids. He said no. I asked if he hadn’t given the same promise he was giving to me to another woman in Ghana, and he laughed. He said, “You’ll believe me when you see me.”
So a relationship started. I didn’t ask him to give me anything or ship anything to me, but he would wake up one morning and ask me, “There are some TVs I want to ship to you. Five of them. You can even sell them. Do you want them?” I would say I wanted them, and I wouldn’t hear of the TVs again. He mentioned phones that never came. He mentioned a set of sofas. He mentioned clothes. They all didn’t come. What came were excuses.
I wasn’t expecting him to take care of me or do anything extra, so I was surprised at how he felt pressured to promise what he couldn’t deliver. After nine months of dating and consistently talking on the phone, he sent me only $100. He sent it to me on my birthday. I was so happy, I thanked him consistently for days. He said, “Oh, this is even small. You’ll see big things coming.”
Then he started talking about coming to Ghana. Anytime he talked about that, he mentioned that he couldn’t wait to be with me and do things to me. I reminded him of my stand. “I told you not to expect intimacy, remember?” He asked, “Oh, you mean forever and ever you’re not going to give it to me?” I answered, “Of course that’s not what I mean. If we become serious and I see concrete commitment, why not?”
He came to Ghana in November, and the very day we met, he asked me to close my eyes. I closed them and opened them and saw him kneeling on one leg. I was shocked. That wasn’t part of the conversation at all. I said yes, and he put the ring on my finger. The ring looked very expensive, looking at the packaging it came with. He said it was rose gold—sparkling pink.
That night, he expected something to happen, and I actually wanted to give in, but the voice in my head whispered, “Patience. Not too fast.” He tried, but I kept saying no, telling him it was too soon. “We just met. Let’s get to know each other very well,” I told him.
He was in Ghana on November 7th. On November 13th, he said he wanted to meet my parents and introduce himself. Another milestone that got me very excited, and I loved the fact that it came from his own initiative and not mine. I took him home to see everyone who mattered in my life. He told my dad he would like to get the dowry list before he went back because he was going to marry me the next time he returned.
Everything was moving too fast, but I’ve come to learn that when God is in your boat, everything happens very fast: the storm goes quiet very fast. You throw a net, and quickly it’s full of fish. The stormy seas lay low very fast. Fast is the doing of the Lord, so I was never scared.
Because everything was moving too fast, my heart followed, and my defenses crashed down very fast too. That same night, I spread myself wide so he could dig for gold. He called it a beautiful night and even thanked me for believing in him. It happened again and again while I cooked for him with my own money and cleaned after him like a king. I thought he was going to celebrate Christmas, but he said his break was ending and he had to leave.
He left on the 11th of December with smiles and contentment, but since he got to New Jersey, everything changed. Whenever we had a video call, he wanted to see me intimately. I told him I wasn’t comfortable. He asked that I send intimate photos. I said no. He retorted, “It looks like you came into this relationship only to say no. Do you know the kind of cold I suffer here? Just photos to keep me warm too, you say no. How are we going to keep this relationship going then?”
After that, he went silent on me. My last message to him was last week. He has read it but hasn’t responded. I go out and send him beautiful photos, but he says nothing. One morning, I looked at the ring and realized it was fading. I’m not an expert in gold, but does rose gold fade just within weeks?
This makes me feel the whole thing was a plan just to get me to keep him company while he was here in Ghana. How can someone who did everything right while here all of a sudden can’t reply to my messages just because I won’t send him crazy photos? But then, I’m also not shocked because I know the length some men will go just to get sex. And it’s not about how early or how late you give it to them—they are the ones carrying the plans, so they know exactly how to make it work.
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I’ve stopped trying to get him to talk to me. I’ve taken off the ring. I took a photo of it and sent it to him: “Your rose gold has faded, just like the love you said you have for me. You won, champ.”
—Asantewaa
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Silentbeads
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