Every week, Zikoko spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between. 

What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way. 

Roxanne*, 23, was a girl’s girl until university, when she was betrayed by her best friend and boyfriend, an experience she never fully processed. She never confronted either of them, and she’s been figuring out what that silence cost her ever since.

Tell us about yourself

My name is Roxanne, I’m 23, and I work as a Key Account Manager.

Growing up, what was your family dynamic like?

I was closer to my female cousins than my immediate siblings, though I loved my siblings too. I come from a family with a lot of women, so we were always together, always in each other’s business, always close. Now that I’m older, it’s not that way anymore. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because my aunty, the one who held everybody together, passed away. She was the glue. Once she was gone, I think everyone just… scattered. Lol. I don’t know.

Were you always a girls’ girl growing up?

Always. In secondary school, we were sometimes a squad of three, four, or five, but it always came back to two. Me and my best friend at the time. She was Senior Prefect, and I was Deputy. She was in first position, and I was second. We were that duo. That one also went south after secondary school. I wrote my WAEC before them, so we naturally drifted apart. 

I already knew how it felt to lose a close female friend by the time I got to university. I just didn’t think it would become a pattern. I don’t really have female friends now. It just happens that there’s always a falling out, one way or another.

Did you make any close female friends in university?

Yes. There’s one strong friendship I had with a girl called Ruth*. I can’t remember exactly how we started talking, but knowing me, I probably saw her looking lonely and went to keep her company. She had resumed school late and didn’t really know anyone yet. Then we found out we had sequential matric numbers, hers then mine, back to back. If she were 4563, I would be 4564. Out of however many students. Crazy, right? LMAO. We took it as a sign. That’s how it started.

What was the friendship like?

It was everything. Our families had been restrictive at home, so when we finally got to school, we didn’t study rara. We were wilding. Skipping classes to hang out with my boyfriend, going out in his car, doing all the stupid things you do when you finally have a little freedom at 18.

I even travelled with her to another state so she could meet a guy for the first time. A stranger. Imagine if they had kidnapped me?  

Another time, she ran away from school to go live with some guy friend, and her father had to send the police to come and find her. I didn’t sleep in the cell, but some of her guy friends did. That’s how tight we were.

So when I found out she had slept with my boyfriend, it broke something in me I didn’t even know was there.

Wait, what? Tell me everything.

She slept with him. Or at least, that’s what I believe now, and I have reason to. My boyfriend came to me with this whole story about how Ruth had been throwing herself at him, how he had turned her down, how I needed to watch her. He was very concerned. Very outraged on my behalf.

But I had gone through his phone before he came to me with that story. The messages between them were not those of two people in which one was “throwing themselves”, and the other was resisting. They were comfortable. Familiar. The kind of back and forth that doesn’t happen between people who haven’t crossed a line. I didn’t find an explicit confession, but I didn’t need one either. I knew.

Then I found out Ruth attended Eckankar. It is a spiritual movement, not the juju shrine he made it sound like, or that I know people think it is. But somehow, during whatever was going on between them, he found out too. Maybe she mentioned it, maybe he saw something at her place, I am not sure. But the moment he found out, he panicked. In his mind, she was dangerous. Someone who could tie him down or do something to him. So he ran. And the cleanest way to run was to come and tell me she had been chasing him, flip the whole story, and paint himself as the loyal one.

He was not loyal. This is the same man who told me to my face that he had been sleeping with hookup girls behind our school because “he cannot eat one soup all the time.” Don’t judge me, I was 18 or 19. We were all out here making choices. But men are liars. There’s an 87% chance the full truth is even worse than what I saw. 

That relationship fizzled out not long after. No dramatic ending, it just died quietly. Good riddance.

Did you confront Ruth when you found out?

No. And I never stopped being friends with her either, not immediately anyway. I know how that sounds. I don’t have a clear explanation for it. Maybe I didn’t want to lose the only person I had in that school, I wasn’t ready to be alone or  somewhere in me, I knew that confronting her would make it real in a way I couldn’t undo.

I still don’t fully understand it. If you have any deductions, please let me know, because I’ve thought about it and I still can’t tell you.

How did the friendship eventually end?

Not with a confrontation. More of a slow fade. I dropped out not long after to look for a job, and life pulled us in different directions. She still had her parents supporting her. My sponsor had pulled out, so I had to face reality. When survival becomes your full-time job, there’s no bandwidth for anything else. We just… stopped. No dramatic ending. No closure. It was almost worse that way.

Earlier, you mentioned there’s always a falling out with female friends. What do those falling-outs usually look like?

They haven’t always been dramatic, that’s the strange part. At my first job, the environment was almost entirely female, and somehow I still only ended up with male friends. There was one colleague who tried. For a while, it actually felt like something was building. Then one day she just… stopped. No fight, no confrontation, no explanation. She woke up and decided we weren’t doing this anymore.

I wish I had gotten clarity. But what I won’t do is go and chase someone for an explanation. If there’s an issue, wear your big-boy pants and say something. I’m not begging anyone to be my friend.

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Do you think you’ve put up a wall, or do you genuinely feel like you just haven’t met the right women?

It might be a wall. I really don’t know. I think I might need therapy. Do you think the same? I’ve been functioning, and I don’t seem to need it from the outside, but I would really love to be friends with a woman. A real one.

Saying all of this out has made me miss my cousin. It’s made me miss being that girl in secondary school, the cool social butterfly who moved through the world easily. I don’t know when I stopped being her.

If you saw Ruth today, what would you say to her?

Probably nothing. I wish her well, in hellllll, and I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to be friends, I don’t want updates on her life, none of it. It’s past. I no get strength abeg.

What do you want other women reading this to take away?

Be more gracious with your female friends. More patient. More understanding. The same grace you keep finding for that your boyfriend, who only ever shows you pepper, extend some of that to the women in your life. Don’t only stand on business when it doesn’t involve your wicked boyfriend.

Fix your falling-outs. Have the hard conversations. Don’t shut people out and call it strength. Don’t be like me.

Because I genuinely envy women who have a bestie they do everything with. I want that for myself. I really do. How will my future children go on playdates if I’m still like this? 

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