Girl code: Dear future husband, I grew up, phew!

There was a time in my early 20s when weekends were a big thing in my relationships. I looked forward to spending weekends with my man, no matter what. In fact, I would feel disrespected if my man found something else to do.

I would cry if he woke up on a Saturday morning and announced that he was leaving to run an errand. Sometimes I look back and feel like finding this man and apologising for making his life unbearable. I would rant like a hornbill until he aborted his mission and stayed home with me. If he really had to head anywhere, I would suggest that I tag along because, in my head, weekends were strictly supposed to be ours.

It was even harder for him as he was employed and I wasn’t. I would spend all my weekdays in his house scrubbing walls, doing laundry, and cooking his favourite meals while he was at work. Was it too much to ask for a weekend together?

He was about 10 years older than I and was always trying to figure out my next move. One time, he even sat me down and tried to explain to me that his blood was not as ‘hot’ as mine and that I should take him slow. I am still wondering what he meant by that.

I will never forget how I insisted on tagging along to work one Saturday morning when he received a call that he needed to attend to something urgent at the office. It was around 9am and I had just finished making him a nice breakfast. God knows how much I fumbled with ingredients inside the kitchen to finally make it.

This was the day I was going to serve my man breakfast like a king. I had assumed that we would stay indoors the whole day just watching movies and running around the house like teenagers. Then came this phone call! I immediately started crying and told him how much he didn’t care about me. I even asked him: “Does your boss know you have a woman in your life?”. He then dared me to go with him to work if I doubted the phone call.

Let’s just say he will never ever dare another woman in his life! I took a shower and dressed up as he waited for me and off we went to his workplace. To be honest with you, I will never try this kind of nonsense again.

At his workplace, only the staff were allowed past the gate. When we got to the gate, he asked me to head back home but I told him that I would wait for him. In my mind, I thought that by waiting for him there, he would quickly handle whatever emergency it was and then we would head home to finally eat our Italian breakfast.

It turned out to be a long day for me. What I thought would take an hour took the whole day. I sat with the guard in the small security shed tapping my feet impatiently. By midday, I was already crying out of anger! How could my man make me stay out there all alone?

To make things worse, I was hungry and with no money. By the time the sun was setting and the guard was winding up his shift, we had become good friends. My man came for me at 8pm and I refused to talk to him for another week because I felt like he had wasted our weekend.

That was the younger version of me though. I am in my mid-thirties and I can swear to you that I will never assume that I would spend weekends with my man. If he will be around, well and good. If he has other plans, I will release him gracefully and even wish him well.

I have stopped being over ambitious in relationships because some of my ambitions have turned out to be ridiculous. I am that woman you read about in books. Like fine wine, I have become better with age.

And, for the record, I no longer make Italian breakfasts.

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