I am ‘rejecting’ him before even rejecting him. This is not revenge. This is nothing but a suppressed emotion that has been lingering within me for years.
Rewind 15 years to when I first stepped into his Audi TT at 3am. I know you must be wondering whether I was going to the supermarket aisle with this man at 3am...oh, but I was young and we make such uncanny mistakes. In reality, this is how the conversation went after a week of shenanigans: “I can’t marry you, because I don’t marry relatives of friends; that’s my rule.” And this was how the rejection slip passed through his shapely lips many moons ago.
Fast forward 13 years of marriage and two kids, Mr Audi TT is now the 50-year-old, Mr Separated-But-Not-Yet-Divorced - a man on the road to ‘Deeeevorrrrce’ with no concrete plan; driving with pots of insecurity about various inner dealings from his haircut to how good a father he was; a man caught up in ‘should I stay until my kids are this age or should I leave when this happens?’.
With rapid, almost entangling effect, I find myself at my desk participating in video chats with the not yet ‘singleton’. He looks good for his age: tall, swarthy in some respects, resembling a chiselled Punjabi prince who was out to get some much longed for pleasure because, as he claimed, it had been far too long since he had been with anyone in his life.
Speaking like the charmer and flatterer he always was, I listen to what he thought he wanted, and determinedly realise that he was going to be filling his own cup and leaving me with nothing to move forward with. I recall how the rejection had stung all those years back then (as we knew there was that ‘thing’ called ‘chemistry’) so why was he trying to resurrect something which had long lost its credulity?
He felt that we ‘owed it to each other to meet’ after all these years. I had agreed that once he is single and sorted, it would make sense to do so, but not before. After all, the man for me is not someone else’s husband I had retorted on one video call. He thought that I was creating barriers preventing me from ‘living in the moment’ as he called it, not realising that one establishes boundaries to prevent transgressions and protect oneself.
Yet, ‘what would really come of the like you? I fancy you,’ I thought to myself. Was I going to be led on by a man who clearly said he did not want to hurt me or lead me on? I mean, really, if a man has to say that, then surely he had every intention to do just that I thought!
So, in all essence I felt like the resolute Mma Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, sussing out the real intentions of men and their BS; men who tried and were going to try and pull the wool over an innocent woman’s eyes! There lay only one really simple solution ladies (that even Mma Ramotswe would agree on), one that an evolving, growing woman needs to put in place: I halted all communication and took the liberty to block him all social media communication platforms. It felt like I passed the challenge of not letting yet another indecisive soul try to distract and derail me! And I breathed a deep Alhamdulillah as I did so.
Aside from the above, the bigger questions were really sizzling inside of me, dear sisters; the inner reality of the little girl inside a supposed mature, conscious open minded Muslimah. Whilst I was trying to step up and place my own boundaries in place in order to meet my needs and wants, there remained the expectation of wanting something to come of it. Were there not still parts of me that needed addressing as to the behaviour and what was going on inside for me particularly so that I was able to take responsibility of my part in this ‘affair’. A reflection of my own part and responsibility in participating in the above that led to the decision of no longer wanting to communicate with this soul. It was all too easy to think and state that this man was not emotionally mature and perhaps not communicating the way I would have liked or giving me what I needed and wanted, but deep down it was about me, and how this came to be.