I was just chilling and I realized it's been, it's been
over a year now, almost two years, OK, over a year now.
And I can tell you guys this story.
So in my lifetime, I have been proposed to four times marriage,
all before the age of 30. And I'm talking proposal with a
ring. Those are the ones I'm counting.
I'm not talking the ones for, oh, I'll marry you.
I'm talking a man actually going getting me a ring and asking me
will you marry me? And the last time this happened
was in 2024. I was dating this guy.
I think I've written about him, but I will put out one more
article about him. I was dating this guy, an
Italian man, very romantic, very amazing.
Actually the relationship was was OK.
Let me tell you the story so that you can judge for yourself
what the relationship was like at this time.
I was just coming off the privacy.
I was just coming up of employment and I was trying to
figure out unemployment, how to make money and survive off on my
own without depending on anyone else, trying to create multiple
streams of income so that I could be very comfortable
financially. And I was was I lonely or was I
bored? I was actually, I had actually
just broken up with this guy that I was, I thought I was
mildly in love with. And we, we, we keep doing this
on and off, off and on thing. And this time we had broken up.
So I was going through my contact list looking for who I'm
going to call because I was bored and I saw this man's name,
let's call him Alejandro. So I saw Alejandro's name and
I'm like, oh, I haven't spoken to him in so many years, like
4-5 years. Maybe I should give him a call
and see how he's doing. And I called him and immediately
he picked up and he was so excited.
Roberto, Roberto, how are you, my darling?
I missed you. And he planned a date for the
next day. The reason he was able to plan,
I did that fast. First of all, I told you guys I
was, I think I was lonely and I wanted to go and eat somewhere
nice, of course. And I I wanted the company.
I mean, I had missed being romanced.
I wasn't thinking of anything other than that at this point,
but I was, I was like, it's OK, let me, I wasn't thinking other
like anything beyond going on a nice date and coming back home
and maybe reconnecting and then that's it.
So that night for the restaurant, I found that he had
booked out, closed out the whole restaurant so that we could have
a romantic dinner just the two of us.
And he decorated the whole place with so many flowers.
It was really, really easy to want to find new Aqua Aqua
movies Instagram. It was really, really actually
romantic and beautiful. And he's a chef by profession
and the restaurant is actually his.
So This is why he was able to do this.
And he made all the meals himself.
It was a full cost meal. Amazing food, amazing
experience. There was a band to play music
for us and he fed me and we drunk wine and it was just
really, really super romantic. And from that day on, he just
told me you're my girlfriend, I want you to be my girlfriend
'cause I'm a saw, you know, this was not a stranger, this was
someone I actually knew, so why not?
And we officially started dating.
The relationship was amazing because he was really romantic
and he was taking care of me, but I was coming from a
relationship with someone who would ignore me for days.
Like he wouldn't talk to me. He'd go a whole day without
speaking with me, sometimes weeks, sometimes months.
And now it's like I had conditioned myself to think this
is what relationships are. I'm supposed to be there just
waiting, and my lover is supposed to be living his life
completely forgetting that I exist.
So I wasn't used to someone being present, someone needing
communication. I had now become the one who was
avoidant in this relationship because my lover Alejandro was
was wondering why I was so against being together all the
time and spending time all the time.
He would pick me up after at work to go to him to go with him
to breakfast, and then he'd pick me up for for lunch again.
And then we'd have dinner together every day.
And most times I was spending the night at his house.
So sometimes you just wake up and go to breakfast and then I'd
go to work. And after a while he started
being cross about me walking. He was like, you know, so we can
spend much more time together. I think you should just stop
working as much and I'm going to give you the money.
In the beginning it was nice because he was giving me the
money. He was giving me the money to
stay out of work. I mean, I could afford to be
with him all day and he would give me the money.
He was taking care of everything.
He was paying for everything, my rent, my bills, and I was
spending all my time and at his house anyway.
So I didn't even need to to shop at in my house or to do
anything. I just used to go to my house to
pick my stuff, change stuff and come back.
He actually did shopping for everything at my house.
He bought me bags at his house. He bought me bags, clothes,
shoes, all the oils that I use, all the perfumes that I use so
that I didn't have an excuse to want to go to my my place.
In the beginning, this was beautiful because it felt like I
was in love and this man was adoring me.
He was actually everything that I've ever, ever wanted in a man.
He was everything. When I described the man who's
my type, he absolutely was Loving, reassuring, emotionally
present, sweet, thoughtful, considerate, patient, forgiving.
We laughed so much together. We always told stories at some
point. I feel like my life revolved
around his because now I was always waiting for us to do for
him to tell us the plan for what the day was.
He tell me, oh, I have a meeting with so and so I have to go
here. I have to do this.
But after that, can we please do this?
So I found myself avoiding my family and friends, not
intentionally, but I go weeks without speaking with them or
seeing them. I love to host a lot at my
house, but I was going so long without even my friends coming
over or anyone seeing me for that matter.
And in this moment I started to realize that I it's like, can I
call it isolation? You know, people usually think
that, but when these things are happening, they're usually
coming from violence. It's like he takes you and he
closes you up in a basement. No, this man was actually
providing the perfect life for me, but I had no time.
Even going to the salon was was a problem because I had to find
time between when I wasn't having lunch with him or when I
wasn't having afternoon coffee with him that I could rush to
get my hair done and come back. I couldn't even really hang out
with my friends that much because he always wanted to be
around me. Like we did everything together,
even shopping, even going to the mall.
We absolutely had nothing. I absolutely had nothing else I
was doing. His friends became my friends.
His life became my life. And you see in this moment,
especially as a woman, you're thinking this is what a
relationship is supposed to be like.
Especially if you've never been in a very healthy relationship,
you're thinking this is what it is.
I'm supposed to be very submissive and this is my man.
Now I'm supposed to to settle and build a home and start a
life. But I was also getting so tired
because it was performative. Hanging around him all the time
mean means I had to look dolled up all the time.
And that's not my personality. I'm very mostly introverted.
I like to spend a lot of time at home by myself, doing my own
things. It was starting to affect me
because I was starting to be very exhausted and then I wasn't
showing up. Even for my personal project.
I was cancelling a lot of work, meaning I was losing a lot of
money in the process. And even though I was getting
compensated, it just felt. It just didn't feel right.
Something within me did not feel right.
Remember this whole time this man is very romantic.
Even in the shower, like he used to wash me, he used to carry me
from the shower to the bed, he used to oil my body, apply my
skin, all the perfumes. He used to buy me anything I
want. We used to spend so much time
talk about the perfect boyfriend.
We used to watch all our shows together, we used to eat, he fed
me all the time. I don't remember ever once
cooking, making anything even boiling water in a relationship
with him and even when I was at my house he would send me food
directly from the restaurant so I really never had to struggle
about anything. He completely took care of me
and he never once seemed exhausted or annoyed or like I
was an inconvenience. It actually made him happy to
show up for me and I think this is the first time I was I was
experiencing like a true provider man who did not need or
require anything from me. Well, I have been dating men who
provide. But you see this moment, there's
nothing I did for myself. And if I could, if he could
carry me everywhere I had to go, I'm sure he would.
If he could hire someone to just carry me so I didn't have to
walk, he absolutely would. He absolutely took care of me.
So one time we were just chilling.
We had just had a really beautiful dinner.
And even even when we're at home just chilling in the house, he
would still make me like full meal costs all the way from
appetizers to dessert. He loved to spoil me and to feed
me. And I don't know if you're a
woman, you know how this this how important this is because
my, my last boyfriend, I asked him to buy for me cake and he,
he asked me how many times do I have to tell you that I'm broke.
He was so rude to me just because he couldn't buy me the
cake. So to avoid such situations, I
always try to date people who do not fear, like do not have fears
around money because it will start to it will start to
trickle down into my belief system of money.
And also I don't like the way it makes people rude when they're
struggling with their own stuff because I also do be going
through stuff, but I don't get rude.
So Alejandro, of course, there were red shrugs here and there.
Like as much as emotionally available he was, he also would
really throw tantrums. He also he had a lot of issues
with people's talking to me, looking at me, saying hi to me
and this is quite inevitable because a lot of people know my
face. He would get super jealous and
he wouldn't really fight me but he'd do this.
He'd throw Moody tantrums like expecting me to assure him and
and reassure him over and over again over strangers that I did
not know. So this was very strange to me
considering Alejandro was a man in his 50s.
He threw the worst emotional tantrums.
I used to get over them really quickly, but I'd noticed they
were starting to become more frequent.
The more he took me outside, the more people noticed me and the
more annoyed he'd get that I was getting so much attention.
He just wanted me to be his and for him only one time.
We were just chilling. And then he said, you know,
Bobby, we've been dating for a while now.
You've been my girlfriend and I think I'm ready to take this to
the next step. I want to ask you to marry me,
to be honest. You know you're supposed to
feel, I think when you're with a lover and you're in love with
them yes, I had started falling in love with him and you're in
love with them. You start to feel like this
would be the right thing for them to do like this is what you
want. But for some reason this felt it
didn't feel right. It felt like I wasn't sure that
I wanted to be with Alejandro as a married woman because I was
already kind of feeling very small that.
And at this point, I had such a resuming walk, but I felt like I
had to hide to go to work or I had to or I had to go behind his
back to devise ways to make money for myself.
Because I started to think about, OK, what if he just
decides he's done with me? Like how many actually are?
What am I going to do after months out of the workforce,
after months of not of snubbing like business advances, It
wasn't going to make sense. So actually I had such a going
back to work. I couldn't even talk to my
parents about this marriage proposal.
I couldn't even talk to my friends.
And this is how I knew that my answer was going to be no.
And the next day when we met, he asked me to meet him for lunch.
Guess where we met at? We met at at the Jewelers to
look at rings. We looked at the rings and there
was so many, many beautiful rings, different stones.
And I definitely saw the ring of my dreams.
It was way out of his budget, but he said he could definitely
upgrade me in a few in a couple of years.
So I took a ring that was much less still as expensive, but a
bit much less by like $1000. And that's when I started to
realize that this this proposal marriage thing was actually
real. He paid and they were going to
have the ring resized for me and customized to my liking.
And then he was going to propose within the same week.
He tells me, Bobby, you know, since there's nothing we're
doing in Nairobi, I want us to start looking at property and I
want us to move either to he's from Sicily.
So I want us to move either to Sicily or to move to the Kenyan
coast, Diani. I want us to have a beach front
house where we can just, we can retire there and we can live
life. We can.
This seems like, I don't know if it seems like love bombing or it
seems like things are being rushed.
OK, to me, it didn't feel like things were being rushed because
but this is someone I knew from before.
It's not the first time I'm meeting him.
This is someone I knew and this is very much his character.
This is how he is. He loves to move forward once he
knows what he wants. He's a man who knows what he
wants. And so it didn't feel off to me.
But the thing was, I had this deep, unsettling feeling without
me that am I sure this is what I want?
Am I sure I want to be married, living in another country or
living in another town? And yes, it looks good.
He's going to buy me a house, he's going to buy me a car, he's
given me a ring, he's going to throw me the wedding I want.
But is this really, really that? And then to make things even
better, he's child free and I did not.
And I'm child free as well, so I knew I was never going to get
pressured to start making babies.
This was literally kookafunga. And I kept thinking, should I do
it? Should I do it?
I tried to float this idea
within my mom. My mom has always had a problem
with me dating white skinned people.
Which is crazy because most of the people I've dated this last
2-3 couple of years are white skinned people.
And my mom has always had beef. She says you know you can never
trust people who are not of your kind blah blah blah blah blah
blah. So I already knew what she was
going to say. Floating this idea, I saw where
the direction was headed. But then I decided to sit with
it for myself to just see how things unravel in this time.
He had to travel back to his hometown in Sicily to figure out
stuff, family stuff. And I was left in Nairobi.
And for for that month, I was able to breathe.
I could finally go places without having to report where I
was. I could do things.
I have started to feel like he was my dad.
In the beginning he was my lover, but now it felt a bit
controlling. I had to check in, tell him
everything. All my plans revolved around if
he was going to finance them. It just felt like this was not
my personality. You see, when you're on the
other side of the coin, it seems very enticing.
It seems like that's the life I want.
I want a man who does everything, pays for everything,
does everything. But when you're actually in such
a relationship, you realize that it's not what it's cut out to
be, especially if you're a very independent woman who wants to
have her own stuff and her own successes and accolades.
Something just didn't feel right.
And I was starting to shift my mind from do I really, really
like, yeah, I really, really want a man who takes care of me.
But then do I really want a man who takes care of me like this?
It was starting to feel about a bit more controlling than it was
love. He's looking for property in
Sicily. He's looking for property in
Diani Minico 2 Appananzaka. I might actually be a wife by
December. I might actually be a wife.
This was in May. I might actually be a wife by
December. Crazy.
The relationship goes on and while he's in Sicily, I start
to, I decide to, I need to be honest with myself.
I need to, to, to realize that this is not the life that I
want. This is not what I'm cut out
for. And if we're being honest, I
can't, I can't settle for this. I can't be the kind of person
who is OK with being controlled, especially financially.
And I decided that I was going to break up with him.
I don't like how I handled the breakup because I just started
distancing myself. He'd want to see me.
And I tell him I wasn't available, which is true.
You know, I was actually walking.
I was busy walking, but then I I couldn't make time for him
anymore because time for him meant it was all I did.
I was always with him 24/7. And that's how I know
relationship. I was busy, I didn't see I was
out of town. I forgot.
I know because I've done that to someone before.
So when someone does that to me, I know.
I know the relationship is over. It's time to start moving on and
living our own independent lives.
I could have done better. I could have broken up with him
better. His feelings are definitely
hard. When I finally came clean and
told him that I didn't think this was a relationship that I
wanted to be in, he cried. We cried together.
We had an honest conversation in the end.
And yeah, later he did try to get back with me.
He tried to. He said he was ready to adjust
and give me what I wanted instead.
But I felt like that was going to be unfair to make him have to
completely forfeit what he wanted in a life because because
I couldn't be that. I felt like he deserved exactly
what he wanted, and I also deserved what I wanted.
I'm not going to say what I want here because I've been meeting
people who are pretending to be exactly that.
So I want to meet people organically and make the
judgment for myself if they're meeting the standards that I
require to be in a relationship. So yeah, that was the last time
someone proposed to me. Well, I kept the ring.
I kept the ring because he told me that I could.
And as he did all the other gifts that he told me, he was
actually a very generous, kind, sweet, patient man.
We just were not a fit. So many people, when I tell this
story, so many people ask me, why did you leave him?
You could have stared and you know, acquire the property, blah
blah blah. First of all, I wasn't at the
place mentally to even think that way.
And generally I don't think I'm the kind of person who would
take advantage of someone who's actually kind to me.
If it was an evil man, maybe. But like he was, he treated me
really well and even post breakup I was still able to
reach out in case I needed anything.
And that's the thing with dating upwards and dating people who
really love me and treat me well.
Most of my exes are still reliable to to date like I if I
need anything, I can, I don't do it.
But the kind of personality that they have, if I needed something
or if if I needed them, they'd still show up for me 100%, no
questions asked. That's something I appreciate
about my dating lives. I wanted to talk about this
proposal, the last proposal that I had, just because within that
story in itself, I hope you can see some of the red flags.
I don't want to outrightly tell you AT when a man does this.
You should see this when a man does this.
No, most of it has a lot to do with you knowing what you want
for yourself so that when something is happening that is
not for you, you're able to catch it fast and you're able to
communicate effectively without shame and fear so that you're
not stuck. And yeah, right now maybe I'd be
in Italy or maybe I'd be in Diani with my own house, but was
that something I was willing to sacrifice in that time?
No, maybe my mind could change later, but that's just it.
In that moment, I don't feel bad about making the decisions that
I made. I think it was more important
for me to be authentic and honest and to not hurt anyone,
myself or him in this relationship.
Well, of course we ended up getting hurt.
But it's fine. It was either that or me having
to go through a divorce before I'm 30.
So the lessons I learned from this relationship specifically
is stand up for myself. Well, I don't know if I've
learnt how to stand up for myself.
I'm still learning, but just know myself so well that I'm
able to know exactly what I want and not settle for the things
that I don't. I hope you've learnt or picked
up something from this episode about how I almost got married.
And yeah, marriage has been on my mind of late, kids have been
on my mind of late. Maybe I will debunk this in a
new episode, tell you exactly what I'm thinking about it.
My last relationship, I actually for second, I thought something
was going to grow from it. That's why the abrupt ending
threw me into immense heartbreak.
But it's fine. I will be fine.
I'm fine. I'm heeding.
Yeah. So think about it.
Do you really, really, really want a man who gives you
everything to the point that you have no autonomy?
Or do you want an alternative? Think about it.
Let me know in the comments. Let me know what feedback you
have. Talk to me.
I'd love to hear your experience and your thoughts.
Please follow me everywhere on social media.
My name is Roberta Bobby and keep watching me on the Citizen
TV show Daybreak every morning Tuesdays and on Dialogues of
Jaguero. I love love love the feedback to
rules.