A day before he landed in Ghana for Christmas, he sent me four videos—X-rated ones he might have downloaded from the internet. They were explicit videos of couples engaging in various styles of intimacy. He told me, “These are the kinds of things I want when I come. Get ready to give me all of this to prove your worth, or the marriage won’t happen.”
I watched the videos one by one, imagining myself in the scenarios portrayed. I shook my head and simply replied, “Please, I can’t.”
He responded, “You can. Are you not a woman?”
The next day, he arrived in Ghana. According to our plans, I was supposed to meet him at the airport, spend a night with him at a hotel, and then follow him home the next day to meet his parents. When he called from the airport, I told him I couldn’t make it. He flared up, ranting, “How can we begin our love life with disappointments? What did we agree on? I’ll wait for you at the hotel. Come over.”
I had booked the hotel under my name. When he got there, he called me, but I told him I wasn’t coming. He screamed, “Why are you doing this? What has come over you?”
Every dream and hope I had for a future with him came crashing down when he sent those videos. We met online and became friends. We talked every day, and in the third month, after several video calls, he proposed. I accepted to date him. He said he admired my modesty and the fact that I didn’t expose myself. He praised my upbringing and the fact that I went to church regularly.
He promised marriage, saying he would use his December visit to meet my parents and introduce me to his family. Everything seemed fine until he started sending me gifts.
He would buy gifts, show them to me during video calls, and then ask me to reveal parts of my body to “motivate” him to send them. It started subtly: “Can I see some thighs?” or “Can you lift your dress a little?”
When I refused, he accused me of not contributing to the relationship, claiming it had become one-sided. The requests became more outrageous until he sent the videos. At that point, I realized the full scope of what I was getting into and decided it wasn’t for me. I can do many things to prove I’m a woman, but not what I saw in those videos.
When he arrived and saw I wasn’t cooperating, he claimed it was all a joke—a test to see how I’d react. But I still didn’t meet him. He arrived in Ghana on December 15th and pursued me for a week. When I didn’t budge, he stopped calling and texting.
Just yesterday, I saw he had changed his Facebook profile picture. It was a photo of him and a woman wearing matching Kente outfits. The comment section was filled with congratulatory messages. I smiled and commented, “I’m happy you found a woman who can do what you showed me in the videos.”
He deleted my comment, but I wrote it again. Minutes later, he blocked me.
I cried a little—happy tears, actually. All my life, I’ve ignored my gut and landed in one bad relationship after another. This time, I listened and saw what could have been. The tears didn’t come from a place of sadness. They were just my gut saying, “Good job for listening to me.”