RELATIONSHIPS ARE COMPLICATED interactions. Sometimes you are with someone and you think, ‘this is it; I have met my soulmate. I could not be happier’. Then he cheats on you and you’re devastated.
Or you may be in a relationship where the man shows more interest in his job or car. He hardly takes you out, buys you anything special, or even pays you a compliment. All he wants is sex. So you decide to walk out of that arrangement as clearly you are only his sex toy. From the time you do that, that man goes ballistic, threatens your life, stalks you, and he may even try or succeeded in beating you up.
Then there are the liaisons with other people’s husbands and boyfriends. Common sense and experience tell us that those relationships don’t last, and you often end up getting hurt. Despite this, you still do it. Then, when things go south, you blame the man for misleading you or curse the person who informed his wife/girlfriend about what was happening, which led to her pressuring the man to stop seeing you.
You blame everybody but yourself, when in fact that relationship was doomed from the start. You knew it, he knew it, but you proceeded anyway. So how it ended should never have been a surprise.
Of course, like situations in life, something always happens that defies the usual pattern. I’m speaking here about situations where men and women somehow stay together despite every attempt to break up their union by either events or the people closest to them.
That is my story and I’m telling it because I genuinely believe that everything in life happens for a reason and that is why you meet some people and fall for them though on the surface there appears no future for the relationship. But, as if some invisible force is at work, that individual is in the right place at the right time to meet you to forge a bond, even though the two of you are poles apart socially, intellectually and otherwise. For whatever reason the two of you click and that’s enough spark to ignite a lasting relationship.
In my case I met my friend more than 30 years ago. I was a full woman while he was younger, well educated and not married. We met at my workplace where he came in to review the efficiency of the plant and I was one of the lowly employees assigned to explain specific processes to him.
From day one we just hit it off as he had a real sense of humour and could find the funny side in anything going on. At the same time, his sharp mind questioned the efficiencies in some of the processes we had in place, which, after they were drawn to the attention of the boss, were eventually changed to the company’s benefit.
What impressed me and most of the other workers was that though this guy was senior to us and more educated, he was always respectful and listened to what we had to say. And when he understood what we were doing and eventually came up with a better way to do the particular process, he asked us what we thought and was patient with those who objected to his ideas more out of fear of losing their jobs than anything else.
At the end of his stint no one lost their jobs, but the business was producing more and we began to get overtime for the first time – so we made more money.
Between our work together, he and I would talk a lot. I really liked him, but he was a manager with a degree and I did not even finish secondary school as I had to find work to help support my family. Also, I became pregnant after he started working there, so by the time he was ready to leave after five months, I was showing. He wished me well and left.
About three years later he revisited the plant. By then he was married, while my boyfriend and I had broken up. Though I had not heard or seen him in that time, we just hit it off again. The evening after his return he took me out and we had sex in his car. It was a crazy thing to do, but I did it because I really loved how he made me feel as a person.
What surprised me is that I did the same thing for him. So we continued seeing each other like that for nearly six years. I never once asked him about his wife and he never spoke about her. We just enjoyed each other.
Then one night he told me he was getting a divorce as he no longer loved his wife. He slept at my house for the first time that night. For the next two years he would sleep over at least three times a week before leaving to further his studies overseas.
Initially we kept in contact, but as time progressed that stopped. Eventually, I decided I had to move on and became involved with someone and sought to make a new life for myself. However, that relationship and the two after that never fulfilled me. I missed my friend.
In the meantime, he remarried, had children, and in all spent 16 years overseas before divorcing that second wife and returning here.
The day after he returned he called my house, found out where I was working, and that evening was outside work waiting for me. We have been together ever since.
I love him and I know he loves me as I have nothing else to offer him but me. Call it what you want, but I know he is my soulmate, and I am his.
My relationship is of course unusual, but it shows how two people with little in common could grow to treasure each other.