He Is A Good Man But I Can’t Be With Him Because Of What He’s Addicted To- Lady Narrates Experience

I met Yaw in my first year at the university. I didn’t like him when I met him. Along the line, he became good friends with my roommates but I still did not even have any interest in being his friend. He had braids and dressed like the kind of boy my mother warned me to stay away from. One look at him, and you would get the feeling that he is a bad boy. While I, on the other hand, looked everything like the devout church girl that I am. He knew I did not like him, so he did not try to get close to me.

One day, an unknown number called me and I answered. The person on the other end said his name was Nana, and he was interested in getting to know me. Usually, I would not have bothered to entertain a stranger on the phone, but there was an allure to this particular guy. So I didn’t shut him out. We spoke on the phone frequently until I started opening myself up to him. He also shared personal details about his life with me. As time went on I fell in love with Nana even though I hadn’t met him. He was different from all the guys I had met. He exhibited a great deal of maturity in our interactions, and he was also very caring. One day we were talking when he said he had something to tell me. I urged him, “Go on, I am listening.” He replied, “This is not something I want to say over the phone. Can we meet?” I was nervous about meeting him but I said, “Yes, it is about time I put a face to the person I have been talking to.”

The day I was meant to meet him, Yaw showed up at the place and time we picked. He said hello to me and I responded with a tight smile and darted my eyes around wondering which of the gentlemen in the vicinity was Nana. Then I realized Yaw was trying to take a seat at my table. I shook my head at him and said, “No, you can’t sit here, I am waiting for someone.” He smiled sheepishly and asked, “Is that someone you are waiting for called Nana? Let me guess you guys have been talking on the phone but today is the first time you are supposed to see him?” I was surprised at first, but I concluded that my roommate must have told him about my mystery phone guy. However, he shocked me by saying, “Hello Marie, I am Nana Yaw, but my friends call me Yaw. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

I didn’t believe him at first. How is it that a guy I didn’t like was the same guy I was talking to on the phone and had even fallen in love with? So I asked him questions about our conversations that only Nana would know, and he answered all of them. He explained, “I fell in love with you the very moment I met you, yet for some reason you dislike me. So I became close friends with your roommates thinking they would sing my praises and get you to like me but still, nothing changed. That’s why I took your number and spoke to you anonymously all this while. I figured if you got to know me beyond your reservations, you would give me a chance in your life. And I know you like me as Nana. Which means you like who I am as a person. And I love you so much that I want to be your boyfriend.” When I finally gathered my thoughts I told him, “I fell in love with the person I have been talking to on the phone, but I don’t like the person sitting in front of me. You look like a bad boy, the kind good girls like me are supposed to stay away from. And I have noticed that you smoke weed. That’s just a no-no for me. I am sorry, I can’t be your girlfriend.”

He asked me to think about his proposal, and I told him, “I will consider you if you are willing to work on the smoking because I don’t want to be with a man who smokes.” He promised to work on it and we parted ways but kept in touch. We spent time together even when he smoked, and I noticed that he didn’t act hyper when he was high. He was rather always calm. But I still didn’t like it because it took a toll on his health. He would cough and catch serious colds when the weather got cold. I stayed by his side and watched him gradually reduce the number of times he took the weed.

He put in a lot of effort and worked on himself, which was very evident to his friends and family. So after two years of knowing him and working together on this habit, we decided to start dating. Not that he had stopped completely, but he was a work in progress and I loved the fact that he was putting in the work.
He has been so caring and supportive of me and my ministry with regard to church and I have come to really fall in love with him. We have been dating for the past four years and I have been very glad to have him in my life.

Every day, I pray and thank God for bringing him my way. We don’t have a rosy relationship but I had this peace and knew that I was in a safe place with him. We support each other financially and in any other way you can think of.
About two years into the relationship, he told me he no longer smoked. I believed him, and we were all happy. During that entire time too I didn’t see any signs to indicate that he was doing it. It was only that the serious coughs and cold persisted. So I prayed that his health will also drastically improve.

To cut the story short, in August 2022, I took some days off from work and decided to go see my parents. I told him I would return on Sunday, but later I decided to surprise him and return on Saturday rather. I went to his house to see him, only to find a lot of rolled Marijuana on his bed.

Before this day, I always gave him those surprises but I had never seen anything like that. I was so devastated because he deceived me. All this while that he told me he had stopped turned out to be a lie. I didn’t understand why he would lie to me when I already knew his struggle and was willing to support him through it.

When I left his place, I decided not to go back into the relationship. I felt if he was able to lie to me about this, then what else is he hiding from me? The trust that we established was broken, and we couldn’t get it back. If he knew he could never stop then why did he keep me around for four years? The fact is I keep hurting every day because I really do love him and we were even planning to settle down next year. The painful part is, my desire to get him to stop smoking is not about me but mainly about his health. I don’t want to have a husband who will start having health complications all because of smoking. I fear for his lungs, and the hospital bills it will cost us in the future. I want to grow old with my husband and kids, not that I am saying that it is only smokers who die young. But it is common knowledge that it causes health problems.

Even after I broke up with him, I went ahead to get him some professional help by connecting him to a psychologist who specializes in addiction. But he doesn’t want to work with the therapist because he says the sessions are too expensive. He says he is working on it on his own, but it doesn’t seem he is succeeding at it. I have also exhausted all my options to help him out. Should I just count my losses and move on or should I settle for this? I feel if I settle for it, it will get worse and he will now do things anyhow because he knows I won’t leave him. Please advise me sincerely.