Pulse First Love: Just being with her made me feel on top of the world

#PulseFirstLove is a weekly series that captures the emotions people felt, and the motions they went through the first time they tried being in a relationship.

This is a #PulseFirstLove experience many can relate with; particularly those who fell in love while in Nigerian secondary schools, before love became filled with games, drama and plenty tears.

What do you think about this whole idea of remembering one’s first love

I think it’s just the way life is designed to be. Moments and occasions like that are always easy to remember, you know. You may forget the 14th, 25th, 50th deal you closed. But the first will most likely stay with you for a long long time, if not forever. It’s the significance of the event. I think that is how it works with this first love too.

Makes sense. Before I ask about your first love, can you remember the first time you wooed a babe?

Yeah, I think I do.

How about the first time a babe wooed you?

Who tell you say babe don toast me before?

I’m not sure but my money is on the possibility that it has happened

LOL. Thanks for believing in me so much o.

You’re welcome. LOL. So, has it?

Yeah. A couple of times actually. One even happened quite recently.

Tell me about that one

Ok. So there’s this former colleague of mine. Actually we’d been circling each other for a while. But for some reason, none of us ever broached the subject. But then she was laid off in June because of COVID and since then, things seem to be different between us. At the height of the lockdown, we were gisting a lot more, entering a lot of foreign, intimate territories that we never did when we were working together. She was doing most of the reaching out sha, I have to be honest. And then about the time lockdown was eased, we hung out twice and she made her move.

And?

LOL. I couldn’t. I told her that and she said she understood but things have been awkward between us since then.

Sorry about that

It’s OK.

Alright let’s talk about the very first time you fell in love

Bad bad memory guy. LMAO.

Now I’m dying to hear about it

I was in JSS 3, I think. I was still brilliant AF then. No be now wey many things don komot book for men head. I attended this private school where I used to be top two in my class. If I wasn’t first, I’d be second and this certain girl, her name was *Blessing, would be first. She was the first person I had this mighty crush on. I loved this girl to pieces but she didn’t like me back. She liked some other guy in the class. Used to hurt me like crazy back then.

Eiya

It was good for character building I guess. Women will embarrass you anyway. Good to start getting used to it early in life.

Angle. So when did you first love someone who felt the same way about you?

SS3. My secondary school was a mess guy. I had toasted plenty girls before I got to SS3. You know, just for cruise. We were stupid then sha. We used to judge status then by how sleek you were with girls, how many of them you could talk to, those silly macho games boys liked to play.

I see

It was during one of those times that I actually liked one girl like that. She said she liked me back, so we started dating. At least a version of dating that you can expect from ignorant secondary school kids.

LOL. I can relate. So what was it like for you?

From an adult’s point of view, it’d look silly. But back then, it was nice sha. It felt good, really special. The idea that this person was your babe would make you feel cool. It didn’t mean much and didn’t entail anything grander than that but it felt good regardless. I think that is what makes first love in secondary school interesting. The ‘innocence’ and ‘stupidity’ of it all. You’ll cringe as an adult at the things you did back then. But while it was on, it was as if you were on top of the world and for no other reason than just having someone to call your girlfriend. I know that was how I felt. LOL.

Quick one: does love still make you feel on top of the world?

Definitely. But for different reasons. Loving someone as an adult is more intentional, it has more essence, it is more calculated, can be a little more stressful and heartbreaking but you’d be more aware and less blissfully ignorant of what relationships are really about.

What was different in that relationship versus how your relationship now would be?

Oh. A lot. A whole lot. For instance, as kids we didn’t know much about boundaries, or showing affection. I used to believe that showing affection made me look weak especially when my guys were around so we used to actively ignore each other a lot when we were with friends. LMAO. And there wasn’t enough freedom to actually be boyfriend and girlfriend. No dates either. All of that was just seeing each other in school daily and maybe walking each other home from school. Those things.

Makes sense. How did it end?

I think we just stopped talking after secondary school. Something dumb like that, I think.

Oh?

Yeah. I think. You have to realise that this was a time when 15/16year olds having phones wasn’t so common and mobile phones and social media weren’t so common as well. So yeah.

I feel you. What lessons did you take from that first relationship?

Lessons? I don’t think there were any. I did better in my next relationship sha because I was in uni when it happened but I think my better approach to the next relationship can’t be directly linked to the previous one.

Why not?

I just picked up new information along the way, which showed me how not to treat women you love and stuff like that. So it wasn’t like being with her taught me per se.

Ok. What are the things you did as a kid in that first relationship that you’d never do now?

Love someone only in my head and not with my actions. Lol. All those ignoring each other games were so childish. We grown now, can never be caught doing that.

Any good thing you still retain since that high school romance

Lol. I'm still such a sucker for romantic stuff. I was like that then, I’m still like that now. I love love and doing cheesy stuff. The difference is that then, I didn’t know how to express them and I used to let the opinion of other ignorant boys influence me.

That your first relationship ended with ghosting, I hope you know?

Facts. If that happened now, that’s what we’d call it.

So how many women have you ghosted after that?

None o. I can’t remember any. But I’ve been ghosted twice. Like I said, women will embarrass you.

LOL. On a scale of 0-100, how deeply do you love?

Then or now?

Now

I’ll say 75%.

Then nko?

I was a wuss. So 30%.

_________

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