Love Life is a Zikoko weekly series about love, relationships, situationships, entanglements and everything in between.
The subjects of this week’s Love Life, Femi* (28) and Feyitan* (26), who’ve been together for three years, met at an internship in Jumia. They fell for each other during training at Access Bank, but ended up dating other people till they kissed at a friend’s wedding.
How did both of you meet?
Feyitan: We met during an internship at Jumia. I resumed months before him, and since he saw me, he’s been in love with me.
Femi: You’re not telling this story well. Let me.
In 2017, I resumed as an intern at Jumia. In my second week, I saw one babe with big yansh in a pair of pink pants and I said to myself, “I will marry that woman.”
I talked to her friend, who introduced me to her. In a short time, Feyitan and I became really close. Coincidentally, we both applied to Access Bank and got into the training school. Everyone at training school told us we were deceiving ourselves with our friendship, but we didn’t mind any of them. At least not until 2019 when she finally told me she loved me and made the first move.
Feyitan: I firmly believe we would have gotten together sooner if he had noticed all the green light I was giving.
Let’s start with this green light. What were you dropping that he wasn’t picking up?
Feyitan: I’d constantly hang out with him and his friends during the training classes. With all the time I spent around him, would that not be considered a green light?
Femi: Of course not. Especially because after her so-called signs, she ended up dating one of the friends I introduced her to.
Feyitan: When I gave you the green light and you didn’t act right, I decided to move to your friend.
Femi: What even pained me the most was that they didn’t even have the decency to tell me. I had to find out through another friend. It pained me so much that I cried. My heart broke into a million pieces, but I tried to be strong even though I was dying inside. Whenever I realised she was in a relationship, I’d try to pull back from her because of how sad it made me feel.
Feyitan: I wasn’t going to let it happen. I’d still say hi to him when I saw him. He was fighting with me, but I wasn’t fighting with him. About 12 to 15 months later, he got into a relationship.
Femi: I had known I liked her since I first set my eyes on her, but I didn’t think she felt the same way. When she started dating my friend, it really hit me that she probably didn’t. I had to put my feelings aside and date someone else.
Feyitan, how did his new relationship make you feel?
Feyitan: I was still dating his friend, so I only noticed them from afar. I was pretty happy for them.
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That’s nice, so tell me about the kiss that changed everything
Femi: Well, it was at a friend’s wedding. One minute I gave her a harmless peck on the cheek while we were dancing; she was tonguing me the next minute.
Feyitan: You started it, and I helped you finish it.
Femi: What did I start? I was giving you a friendly peck.
Feyitan: You were kissing me all over my face, so I decided to help you out by kissing you.
Interesting. How was the kiss?
Femi: It was great. Remember how I said I was somehow going to marry this woman? Yeah. The kiss felt great. However, I felt a bit sad because I was in a relationship.
Feyitan: His friend and I had broken up months before, and I was not looking for anything serious so soon. I thought at most it would be a fling.
But it wasn’t a fling
Femi: I broke up with my girlfriend less than a month after the kiss. I never told her about it and honestly never planned on telling her.
Did you both start dating immediately?
Femi: No. The problem is we don’t even know when we started dating. We’ve been trying to pick a date so we could celebrate our anniversary, but we don’t know.
Feyitan: One day, he started calling me his girlfriend, and I started calling him my boyfriend. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.
Femi: I still had it in my head I would marry her. Being my girlfriend was the first step.
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What was getting into the relationship like?
Femi: You think you know someone until you start dating them. Then, you’re introduced to a new version of them.
I knew Feyitan was a foodie, but dating her meant I got to see a whole new side to it. She knew what she wanted to eat a week in advance. Meanwhile, I’d be struggling to figure out what I wanted to eat for lunch.
If I take too long to decide what to eat, she gets hungry and becomes an entirely different person. It used to get me irritated and annoyed, but I realised that’s just how she is. Me sef, I try to meet her in the middle and figure out what to eat on time.
Feyitan: I didn’t think it was that deep. I just wanted to eat and knew there’d be a problem if I didn’t eat.
Femi: This is one of the reasons why I say relationships are hard work. You must learn to meet each other in the middle and communicate how you feel. We sometimes have little arguments, but we try to talk it out.
Feyitan: I don’t like considering relationships as hard. I prefer a less menacing adjective like complex. Complex because there are a lot of different layers in a relationship.
So, this relationship started while you both were in Access Bank. What was it like working together?
Feyitan: Well, we worked in different branches, so we hardly got time to interact. It was just that we closed around the same time and spent more time around each other.
Femi: I left the bank in 2021 — a year after she did. But while I was there, I’d go to her house after work. We had mini-dates and just spent time together.
Feyitan: We lived a few streets away, so it’s not like work was our only chance to spend time together.
Femi, about that marriage. How far?
Femi: I still want to get married to her, but we’re currently not in the place we want to be financially before we make that huge step. We don’t want to jump into a wedding without being prepared. We plan on paying for the bulk of the wedding expenses ourselves. Plus also plan the life after the wedding. It’s not cheap.
Fairs. How would you rate your love life on a scale of 1-10?
Feyitan: 8 for me. Nothing goes perfectly and sometimes there are low points in our relationship, but we talk it out.
Femi: 9. It’s a really good partnership, but since nothing is perfect, help us hold the other one point.
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