As Told To Itohan
For a while now, I had been asking people what the most interesting parts about their love life. So, when someone reached out to me and said she fell in love with her Uncle, I wondered if I was reading right.
The person in today’s As Told To is *Anna, a 19-year-old girl who fell in love with her 23-year-old Uncle. She talks about how her mother found out, and how they all dealt with it.
Names are changed for the purpose of anonymity.
How we met
We never actually grew up together. My extended family has always been very close, but because we lived in different states growing up he was never one of those Uncles you could see whenever you wanted to. When my family finally moved to Lagos, my uncle *David and I both lived in Ikeja, so we saw each other a lot more. He’s four years older than I am, so we had a lot of things to talk about. I am the first child, so it was nice to have someone take care of me for a change. Maybe that was one of the reasons why I fell for him.
Falling in love
During the pandemic, he worked from home and my school was out of session, so we spent a lot of time together and got even closer. We would text till late in the night and it felt nice to have someone I could talk to. He is kind, intelligent, funny, handsome, and treats me the way I wish more people did, like an adult. I was going through a very tough time and David was constantly there for me. He became the blueprint for the kind of guy I wanted to end up with.
When I started comparing him to guys that approached me was when I knew what I felt for him was more than what you feel for family members, so I told him. He said he felt the same way, but we knew we could never be together. We never initiated anything physical. I do not know if the reason was that we were related, or because I made a chastity vow. We even tried to reduce the amount of time we spent together, but because he is family, we still spent a lot of time together.
We were found out
One day, my mum came into my room and started asking questions about my Uncle. She told me that she was already aware of the situation and *David had told her everything. Apparently, *David never told her anything but she had her suspicions. She went through my phone looking for the conversations I had with him. She did not shout at me or punish me, but instead, she scheduled prayer meetings for me. Luckily, she also promised to not tell anyone else in the family about it. She promised to handle it all and I let her. There was nothing else I could do.
Since my mother found out initially, *David and I have seen in person only once. It was during a family dinner where we were surrounded by lots of other family members. We think it is best to reduce any and every form of interaction we have with one another. Currently, he has a girlfriend and I have gone back to school in a different state.
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