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  • Sex Life is an anonymous Zikoko weekly series that explores the pleasures, frustrations and excitement of sex in the lives of Nigerians.

    The subject of this week’s Sex Life is a 27-year-old heterosexual woman who rarely has sex. She talks about almost getting married to an ex boyfriend who betrayed her trust by cheating on her multiple times and how this experience shaped her interest in sex.  

    What was your first sexual experience?

    The first time I did anything sexual, it was sex with my boyfriend. I was 16, and we had just started dating. He came over to my house when my parents were out of town. My older siblings were in the house, but they were in their rooms ⁠— they never really bothered about me. My boyfriend and I sat in one of my dad’s cars and had sex.

    What was the experience like?

    It was bittersweet. There were moments when it felt like he was reaching deep into something, and I felt an interesting sensation going through my body, then other moments where all I felt was pain. He wasn’t very gentle, even though it was both out first times. I bled and felt really sore afterwards. I told my sister — though I was freaking out about telling her —  and she casually told me to use a condom next time. That was all. 

    What were your expectations of sex before this experience?

    My expectations matched my experience. I expected it to be painful and disgusting, and it was. The only thing I didn’t expect were those moments of sweetness.

    I’d always wondered why people had sex because it’s so ew. Then I started dating, and it felt only natural to have sex. 

    You hadn’t had a boyfriend before this point?

    Nope. I was chubby in my first year in secondary school. Nobody really liked me. People would say mean things to me, like I have body odour because I’m fat or I’m ugly. It affected my self-esteem. Then I started losing the fat — not even deliberately — and suddenly, everyone wanted to be my friend. I basked in it because I had never been the cool, slim babe before. That was really how I started dating my ex. He was a cool guy, and I was becoming a cool babe. 

    Okay. What happened after the sex? 

    More sex. We started at the same university, and he got an apartment outside of school. I would go there during the weekends, and we would have sex in every position: the bathroom, the kitchen, the verandah at night. We went out on dates as well, but the sex was a big part of how we spent our days. 

    Was the sex better?

    Sometimes it was. Sometimes, it wasn’t. He prioritised his pleasure before mine. I doubt that he cared if I orgasmed or not, but I performed to his tune and gave him what he wanted. The times when it was good, it was mostly accidental, like if he accidentally hit a certain spot, and I made him stay like that for a while. If it wasn’t convenient for him, he did what he wanted. 

    Doesn’t sound exciting.

    It wasn’t. In university, I was a JJC, so I didn’t say anything. I also didn’t talk to anyone about it. We continued having rubbish sex and pretending to be the perfect couple in the world. Then one day, I think in my third year, he asked me why I was frigid. 

    What?

    He said I always just lay there doing nothing. That was a lie. We didn’t always lie down. We did all kinds of positions, and I even acted like a pornstar in some of them, but that didn’t seem enough for him. I took it in good faith sha — it was feedback. 

    Tell me about porn.

    Watching porn is a recreational activity for me. I’ve been watching it since I was 12/13. I discovered my brother’s porn magazine stash, then his CDs and was hooked. I stopped watching it for a while when I was religious in secondary school, but I continued when I started dating just so I could impress my boyfriend. 

    But he wasn’t impressed. 

    Nope. And neither was I with him. The dissatisfaction with our sex life actually led me to masturbation. I would put on a good black porn clip, maybe women-on-women action and I’d masturbate. I’d give myself several orgasms and realised what he wasn’t giving me. But did I leave him? 

    You tell me. 

    Nope. We finished university, and I was still with him having mediocre sex. Worst part is, I wasn’t interested in having sex every single minute of our time together. He was. Left to me, we would go an entire weekend without having sex. 

    Once when we were serving, I brought up “spicing up our sex life”, and he said, “It’s about time.” Implying that I was frigid and the sex with me was bad. I was so angry, so I told him, “Oga, you’ve never made me orgasm. Not once in the five years of our relationship.” Boy was he mad. He asked if I was lying; I said I wasn’t. He said he’d do better. 

    Did he?

    Here’s where it gets interesting. We were not living together at the time. We lived in separate states for NYSC, but we visited each other regularly. After this conversation, we didn’t see each other for a while. When we did see and were about to have sex, he told me that I had lied about him not givng me orgasms. 

    Yeah? 

    He said he slept with two women and made them orgasm several times. One of them even said she’d had the best sex of her life. I was stunned by the audacity. Normal men would be hiding the fact that they cheated, but this one cheated and came to tell me in order to prove a point. 

    We fought. It was our first real fight. The first of many.

    You had never fought before? 

    Not really. Apart from minor squabbles. The relationship wasn’t all bad. He was really kind to me in other areas, like with money, studying with me and helping me out generally. We loved each other. But when it came to sex? He thought only with his dick and had an ego the size of a mountain. 

    Yikes. How did the fight get resolved? 

    I was pretty much done with him, but he begged me to take him back, that he would never do it again, that he was just really insecure. As a stupid 21-year-old, I believed him and took him back. 

    Did the sex get better this time? 

    He seemed to try a bit harder this time, investing in foreplay and oral sex. I really enjoyed those. Gradually, it got better, but I told myself he would never be as great as my fingers or a dildo. 

    Fair. So what were the other fights about? 

    After his confession, I wasn’t sure I could trust him and would monitor his activities on social media — he’d met the two girls he slept with on social media — and read his messages anytime he came over. He saw that I couldn’t trust him and would always make it a big deal, instead of trying to win his trust. The older we got, the less we fought. We both got jobs and were busy with life. Sometimes, we wouldn’t even have sex for a month. But when he proposed to me, I said “yes”. 

    How old were you?

    23. Everyone expected us to get married, so we decided we would. I convinced myself that we had a lifetime to figure out trust and sex, so I wasn’t bothered. 

    We even started to get close again. We moved in together and started to try sex in risky places. It wasn’t exciting sex, but that feeling of coming back together and sneaking around to have sex was great for us. Unfortunately, this didn’t last long. He became messy.

    How so? 

    Someone would text me to leave her boyfriend alone. Another would text me to say she’d had an abortion for him.

    What? 

    He was cheating on me throughout. My instincts were not wrong. 

    What did you do? 

    I was too scared to break up with him. Our families had met for introduction, and we were about to do the traditional wedding. I didn’t tell anyone. Not even him. I just simply blocked their numbers and never responded. 

    Yikes. How did it make you feel? 

    Depressed. I had been with this guy for about eight years, and he was cheating on me? Who could I trust then?

    I’m sorry. What did you do? 

    I went ahead with the traditional wedding, hoping the messages I got were prank texts. I read his texts one time and didn’t find any evidence of cheating. In fact, I saw a text where he was telling a babe to leave him alone. I stupidly thought that the people he messaged me were trolls or something. But my spirit wasn’t settled, and I kept on having nightmares about it. And so I called off the wedding. I told him why, and he kept saying it wasn’t true, that he loved me, bla, bla, bla. 

    Wow. Now that you’re single, what’s sex like these days?

    I haven’t dated anyone since then. It’s been four years. I’ve had a few sexual partners, but I’m always so afraid to have sex with someone new. I think I’m afraid of men. A dildo won’t break your heart, you know? 

    Right? And these sexual partners you’ve had, what’s that experience like?

    Good actually. Some of it was fair. One stands out. He was so good that I almost told him I loved him. He made me orgasm multiple times. Actually, beyond even orgasming, the sex was good. I felt it in my bones. 

    LMAO. How do you find them? 

    Social media, and mostly, they’re the ones that find me. We get talking, establish what we want, arrange to have sex a few times and that’s it. This happens like once a month, and I never sleep with someone more than twice. 

    Sounds like an arrangement you’re okay with. 

    Yup. I’m still mostly into my dildos than I am into men. I don’t even know if it’s the heartbreak alone. It’s time, and the fact that I’m not that obsessed with sex. People on social media talk about sex morning, noon and night, and I think, aren’t you guys tired?

    LMAO. So how would you rate your sex life?

    I’d say 8/10. I have sex on my own terms, and even though it’s like once a month, it’s not so bad.

    Relationships can be hard, and sometimes you just need someone to give you a bit of advice. Ask Ozzy is our new advice column where you send Zikoko the relationship questions that have been bugging you, and Ozzy Etomi gives you the best relationship advice. The column is part of our brand new category, Ships, that tackles all kinds of relationships, not just the romantic ones. If you’d like to send in your questions, click here.

  • On the 4th of June, 2021, the Nigerian government banned Nigerians from using Twitter. This came after Twitter deleted a threatening tweet posted by the Nigerian president. The implications of the Twitter ban in Nigeria is far reaching and would affect different segments of the Nigerian demographic in different ways.

    We decided to speak to a few business owners who run their business via social media, and specifically Twitter, about how this ban is affecting their business already or will affect their business and here’s what they said:

    Susan – Thrift Clothes Business

    The ban has already affected me even thought it just came into effect. I didn’t know about the ban until this morning. I was off Twitter all of yesterday. I was trying to log into my business Twitter all to no avail. At first, I thought Twitter was down or that they had suspended my account. When I mentioned it to a friend, they told me what had happened and helped me download VPN. Apparently, in the short time I was trying to log in to Twitter, a customer had sent me several DMs. Luckily, they understood why I wasn’t responding on time. I can’t imagine a world where I have to constantly use VPN before I access Twitter. I can already see it draining my battery all the time, which is annoying. I use Instagram too, but I’ve realised that a lot of my customers come from Twitter, so it’s really worrying to me.

    Olumide – PR Agent

    I own a music PR agency and I get most of my clients and traction from Twitter. I’m currently using VPN because I have a few deals to close. Imagine there was no VPN, just imagine. The country is a ticking time bomb, because imagine the amount I would’ve lost if there was no VPN. When will someone not carry gun?

    Liz – Fashion Business

    I haven’t fully processed what the Twitter ban means for my business, it’s really a lot to be honest.
    Apart from the free exposure from likes and RTs, Twitter really helped me gain customers when I started out my fashion business. I feel like I’ve already lost a sizeable portion of potential customers thanks to this ban. It’s going to be a lot harder to get customers or new orders if no one can even access the platform that helped us gain them in the first place. A lot of small businesses rely heavily on Twitter, and I guess the biggest thing is for us to restrategise and make use of the other platforms to reach new customers.

    Sola – Food Business

    The entire climate of the country has affected my business, not even just the Twitter ban. If my people don’t have money or are thinking about how to survive in this harsh, wicked government, is it snacks that they’ll be thinking about? The Twitter ban just made it worse. On weekends, we sell out. We have lots of orders. I have never seen a dry day like today, since maybe October. It’s tiring.

    Ewa – Jewelry Business

    I’ve tried not to think about it because, Twitter gave my business visibility. I first started on Instagram, ran ads multiple times but I got only one customer from there. But as soon as I started on Twitter, I’ve gotten more customers, plus I’m able to reach a lot more timelines just because of retweets and likes. This Twitter ban is just going to affect it all; if I’m not able to tweet about my business, how am I going to get customers ? People don’t even trust Instagram vendors anymore.

    Onome – Social Media Manager & Content Creator

    The Twitter ban is very upsetting because it’s affecting what my business is now. I am a content creator and a social media manager which means a lot of work is on Twitter and managing social media. I work for brands, manage their Twitter and Instagram. After the ban was announced, the office said to stop posting for Twitter because they didn’t want the brand to be caught disobeying Nigeria’s “law”. If this Twitter ban in Nigeria continues, I forsee social media managers losing their jobs. Imagine being a Twitter influencer without Twitter; of course you will go out of business because a major source of livelihood has been cut off. I just started having customers on Twitter after 4 years of putting in work. Now, what happens to it? There’s a lot of anxiety. Twitter is what helps you grow, where the interactions take place. Even people who follow you on Instagram find you on Twitter first. Once, someone told me she patronised me because she searched my handle on Twitter and found no bad reviews. If we are being honest, no other website can be like Twitter.

    Divine – Breakfast Business

    I graduated 2 years ago and after a year of unemployment, I started my breakfast business which functions 100% online. I started using Twitter to market my business and make sales. Twitter alone brought in over 65% of my profit which I’ve used to fend for myself and family. I have met a lot of investors who are ready to enlarge my business so as to create more employment for other people too. This Twitter ban in Nigeria would not only destroy my source of livelihood but also cut me off from potential investors. I am a responsible Nigerian graduate who is only trying to survive.

  • How to use VPN now that the Nigerian government has banned Twitter.

    how to use vpn

    On the 4th of June, 2021, the Nigerian government via a Twitter post announced that it would be banning Twitter. The news came almost 48 hours after Twitter deleted a tweet by the Nigerian president, President Muhammadu Buhari where he threatened Nigerians. Twitter deleted the post on Wednesday, saying it was abusive.

    Here’s what the deleted tweet said:

    “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”

    You can find the full thread here.

    In the Twitter ban announcement, the Federal Ministry of Information and Communication cited the persistent use of Twitter for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence as the reason for the ban.

    Since the ban took effect, several Nigerian Twitter users have tried to process the news in different ways. One of which ways is using VPN to stay online in order to air grievances, discuss the illegality of the ban and how to move forward.

    How to use VPN

    A virtual private network gives you online privacy and anonymity by creating a private network from a public internet connection. With the use of VPN, Twitter users can bypass the ban placed by the Nigerian government.

    Decide on the VPN you want to use.

    There are a bunch of VPN applications on the internet. Consider their price, speed, accessibility, ease of use, etc. After doing this, download the app and connect to one of several locations available.

    Other things to note:

    If you’re a creative who uses Fiverr for freelance work, please keep this in mind.

    https://twitter.com/gabyjamie/status/1401080060258439174?s=20

    Twitter users who also use Binance, a platform for trading various cryptocurrencies have also been advised to not use USA as their VPN location so as to block their Binance account.

    VPN uses a lot of battery, so if you can, only use VPN when you’re about to use Twitter.

    https://twitter.com/Placeholder30/status/1401057574376689669?s=20

    You can check this list for some recommended applications along with their benefits.

    For more information on how to stay online, you can read this article. Please spread the word.

  • The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 50-year-old woman who dated her ex-husband for 12 years and was married to him for 14 years. She talks about leaving him after years of being manipulated, the joy that comes from being a single woman again and life as a divorced Christian woman.

    How did the relationship start? 

    I met my ex in 1988, in my first year in university. On one of our first few dates, he invited me over to listen to a Sade Adu record. I really like Sade Adu. So I went to a boy’s quarters he was staying at. When I got there, there was no proper bed. There was just a mattress on the floor. I had heard about the slaughterhouse where guys take girls to sleep with. As I sat on the bed, I saw condoms fall out from under the pillow. Shocked, I ran away. I told him never to come to see me again. That was the end of the beginning of our relationship. After a while, he came and said there would be no sleeping together. Then we started dating again around the end of my 200 level. We soon started living together. 

    What was the relationship like?

    I was very grateful to be with him. I had a bad home situation. He provided the kind of environment that I wanted. He provided a lovely home and was very caring. Anytime I quarrelled with my folks, he stood up for me. I saw a champion in him. It’s only in retrospect that I see it was a perfect relationship for him to manipulate me because he knew the things that triggered me. It was easy for him to switch from being a defender to an aggressor.  

    Do you think he loved you? 

    Perhaps, he did. But I also think it was because when he got rusticated from school, I was the only friend that stayed with him. 

    So how did he manipulate you? 

    From the beginning of our relationship, he often got upset if I talked to someone else. I didn’t realise until later that this was manipulative. It got so bad that if we were stuck in traffic and someone in a vehicle looked at me, and I looked that way at the same time, he would start saying I knew the person but was only pretending. 

    He also made it mandatory that I check in with him all the time. One day, I went to work and I left my phone at home; my boss called me because he hadn’t checked my office to see if I was around. My ex then went on about how I lied about being at work because of my boss’ call. It became so bad that whenever he started to talk, I froze, anticipating his accusations. 

    Did your parents approve of the marriage? 

    My parents didn’t have a lot to say, because as I said earlier, it was a bad home situation. We went to the registry three or so years after we started dating. We didn’t tell anyone about it. 

    People always asked when we would get married, and at one point, my dad got upset and asked that we have a proper wedding since we were already living together. 

    When we got to church, we were told we couldn’t do a proper wedding because we had gotten married before. We had to get the first marriage annulled at the registry before the wedding could be held.

    How long were you together before getting married in church? 

    Twelve years. We got married in the year 2000. 

    Before marriage, we were sexually active and were not using protection, but we didn’t get pregnant. I wanted children so badly. So, I was like, maybe if we got our parents’ blessings, we’d have kids. That was part of the reason I wanted to have the wedding. 

    What was it like in the beginning part of the marriage? 

    Because we had been together for such a long time, getting married was just a formality. 

    At this time, I had a full-time job, but he still didn’t do much. A lot of the expenses were on me. 

    Then he went to university in the UK.

    At what point did you start having children?

    We had our first daughter two years after getting married, and the second was born three years after the first.

    But through this time, we were having all kinds of problems.  

    What kinds of problems?

    When we first got married, he was not the problem. It was the fact that we were living in his mum’s house. She didn’t live in Nigeria, but she would come one month in a year, and I would be miserable throughout that month. She was mean and nasty in a very subtle way; she would be nice when people were around, but she was mean about everything when nobody was there. It wasn’t so much him as it was her, but him not being able to caution her was the problem. 

    It was after I had my first daughter that my ex relocated to the UK. He was living with his mother there. He wanted me to leave my job and join him there. I told him I was unhappy about living in his mother’s house in Nigeria, so I couldn’t move to the UK, where I didn’t have any job and live with her again.

    I would visit him with my daughter once or twice a year. It was on one of those visits I got pregnant with our second child. 

    Did the experience ever get settled with his mother? 

    No. It was a big part of why the marriage ended. She was also manipulative and said I was proud. One night I woke him up in the middle of the night and complained about how his mother treated me. He begged me, but nothing changed. 

    When did you realise that things were going bad? 

    I had low expectations from him, so I didn’t know things were even bad in the first place. I was also the one doing a lot financially. 

    Then I got an American grant to go to the US. Before I left, I kept my ATM card with him for my kids — he was already back in Nigeria at this point. Every time I got paid, he would remove money from my account and lie that he wasn’t taking my money. This was my first introduction to the fact that he could lie. If anyone had told me anything about him before, I would have insulted them. Once when he was in London, someone called to tell me he was doing nonsense, and I told them to shut up. 

    While I was away in America, my mum passed, and he was very mean to me during the time. He even accused me of cheating on him because he called me once, and I was on a Skype call with a student. 

    He began his accusations again without leaving room for me to talk, so I switched off my phone. After that, he didn’t speak to me for a while. Anytime I called, he would give the phone to his daughters.

    Wow. 

    On the morning of my mother’s burial, he called from a service being held for my mum in Nigeria and he excitedly told me about all my family members who were present and kept giving them the phone to speak to me. 

    It was my sister who picked up the phone when he called. My sister was confused because I had told her we were not on good terms. We put the phone on speaker, and I told him I was the one on the phone. He kept up the excitement. This was when I realised that he was playing me.

    What did you do next? 

    I called a friend who had been his best man at our wedding and told him what was going on. I asked him to find me a place I could stay in when I returned to Nigeria. I was ready to move out, but he convinced me not to do that, and I said alright.

    When I got back to Nigeria, my ex was nice for about a month. It didn’t take long for things to return to to status quo. 

    He regularly checked my phone. Once he saw a contact he didn’t know, he would call me ‘ashawo’. He would call my daughters and tell them that I was a whore. 

    One day, I checked his phone for the first time and saw that he was cheating on me. I then realised that was why he was constantly angry. 

    I told him I wasn’t angry, that all I wanted was just for him to stop being constantly mad at me. He was getting progressively worse and verbally abusive. 

    In 2014, I lost my junior brother and an aunt. I took my girls on holiday to get over everything, and he said, “When you come back, you have one month to move out.”

    How did you take it when he said that? 

    It was pretty clear by then that the marriage was over. Before then, he had gone to my dad to tell him I drank, smoked and followed men all over the place. 

    My dad asked him this: “When you came to marry her, was she like that?” He defended me and said that he (my ex) might be the problem. My ex tried to insult him. 

    Afterwards, my dad sent for me and asked me about everything. I told him everything that had been happening. When he asked why I kept everything to myself, I told him it was because he said to keep our marriage private. Then he said he was not an outsider. He said I shouldn’t leave by myself, but anytime my ex asked me to leave, I shouldn’t hesitate to pack my things and move out.

    Did you move out?  

    After he gave me the one-month ultimatum to leave, my ex began to threaten me with a countdown. He threatened to kill me, so my dad insisted I go to the police. The police said they would invite him in for questioning, but that was a bad idea because if they invited him and he was allowed to leave, I better not be at his house. 

    So, I didn’t make a statement at the police station, and my dad was angry. I eventually found a place and moved. Immediately after moving, his attitude towards me got better. It was so strange people thought we were back together.

    Did he also send your daughters away? 

    Yes. But in the first filing he did for the divorce, he stated very clearly that he didn’t want our daughters. It was later he changed his mind. 

    There was an incident where his girlfriend, who moved in after I moved out, went to my younger daughter’s school, picked her up and did her hair. The school apologised for allowing it and asked that I provide legal documents to enforce a rule on who has access to my child. 

    He went back to court to file for custody with the divorce, so I was simultaneously dealing with divorce and custody. Luckily, I got custody at the end. 

    As a Christian who’s divorced, what has your experience been?

    I think God helped me to be wise. No one in church knew I was getting divorced except one man whose truck I used to move my things. 

    Nobody knew where I moved to for about two years. 

    I realised I was attending a spirit-filled church when the junior pastor called me one day and told me he had dreams about my husband, and God kept saying I should pray for him. I was reluctant — the pastor didn’t know I had left him. 

    I told him he could pray for him, but I was not interested. He was shocked, so this led to me telling him about the divorce.

    What’s life like post-divorce

    When it comes to this, I think I’m the exception. If my ex knew what he was doing when he asked me to leave, he wouldn’t have let me go. I’m living the life now. I’m having a fantastic time. One of the things I was very clear about was that we would parent my children together, whether he wanted it or not.

    In the post-separation period, I spent a lot of time crying, praying and wondering what went wrong. I realised he had to be in their lives and take on his role as their father. I see in separations that the man enjoys his life while the mother continues to slave and ensures the children go to school. Then when it’s time to marry, the children find the father, and he becomes a knight in shining armour that gives their hand away in marriage. 

    This makes the mother resentful, thinking about all her sacrifices. I insisted he had to pay their fees and the girls visit him during holidays. I have the time of my life during their absence. It’s working even though we don’t talk. 

    What would you have done differently? 

    Growing up, I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to have two children for two different men because my parent’s marriage wasn’t fantastic, so I wasn’t looking forward to marriage like that. But when I met him, he seemed like someone who was focused and from a good home. So, when things started to go wrong, I told myself I shouldn’t have bothered. 

    However, I would not change a lot. A lot of the strength and character I have now is a result of this experience. And I wouldn’t change having these cool and well-behaved girls I have now. 

    Are you dating again? 

    Yes o. All I’ve gone through hasn’t changed me much; I’m a hopeless romantic. 

    I believe in love and marriage, but it’s not for me. I want to live life with a nice person. When Nigerian men say, “I’m going to marry you,” I cancel them because they believe that’s their selling point. 

    I’ve been dating the same guy since a year after I left my ex. I am mindful of being a role model for my daughters and also not exposing them unduly. I however love meeting new people and enjoy talking to lots of people I meet. It’s always amusing to me that people think getting to know someone means I want to date them but it doesn’t.

    For more stories like this, check out our #WhatSheSaid and for more women like content, click here

  • Sex Life is an anonymous Zikoko weekly series that explores the pleasures, frustrations and excitement of sex in the lives of Nigerians.

    The subject of this week’s Sex Life is a 32-year-old woman who decided to stop having sex after she turned 30. She talks about her toxic sex life in her 20s and how this decision has helped her improve the quality of her life, relationship and friendships. 

    What was your first sexual experience?

    When I was 16, I had sex for the first time with a neighbour who was my age. We had been planning to do it for weeks just because we hadn’t ever done anything sexual before. At the first opportunity — his parents were out and my sister travelled — we did it in his place. Before this first experience. I had read too many romance novels and read the sex magazines my sister had. So I was prepared — with lube and condoms — and had high expectations. The sex was really good.   

    That’s great to hear. 

    Yup. I later found out that it wasn’t the guy’s first sexual experience. He’d been lying to me, thinking that I wouldn’t have sex with him if I found out he wasn’t a virgin and was excited about “taking” my virginity. I found out through another neighbour. I was livid. But I was also dumb, so I continued to have sex with him until I had a pregnancy scare, told him and he said that if I kept the baby or told anyone else, he’d deny that we’d ever had sex. That was my first experience with wicked men. I panicked for a while. My period came that night. 

    Lmao. Wow. 

    It was scary. I didn’t know how I would tell my sister or my parents. My parents would regret ever allowing me to come to Lagos to live with my sister. I decided that I needed to be more careful with sex, because I wasn’t planning to stop. 

    Mad. What was your next sexual experience? 

    I went to university and made sex my criteria for a fulfilling relationship. Well, that and you had to be very attractive. So I was constantly hopping from relationship to relationship. The most memorable one after was the guy who had an even bigger sex drive than I did and wanted sex almost every day. I was in my second year in university. He lived in a boy’s quarters, so I moved in with him for a while. We would have sex before I left for classes, when I returned and at night. And all the time, it was good. In hindsight, I wonder if he was doing drugs or something. I didn’t know much about him to be honest. 

    How did the relationship end?

    I slept with one of the people he lived with. 

    And I oop—   

    It was bad. The day after I had sex with him, I ended it with my boyfriend. I didn’t even say too much and neither did he. 

    Why was it so easy to end things?

    It was a purely sexual relationship, as most of my relationships were back then. There wasn’t love, and we didn’t date in the conventional way, even though they did ask me to be their girlfriends. The relationship usually started with sex and after a few weeks, they would ask me to date them. Some started with hanging out though and ended up in bed. 

    Throughout university, did you sleep with someone you had feelings for?

    Oh yes. A bunch of times. I dated someone in my final year whom I really loved. He loved me too. The sex was not as great as what I was used to. Sometimes, I didn’t have any orgasms, and he resisted when I tried to teach him what to do. We spent our entire relationship like this: he would want to go out and have fun with me, I would want to stay in bed having sex. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that the first man I loved wasn’t great in bed. He was enthusiastic about sex, but not just as much as I was. Me I didn’t have sex-life balance. So I kept trying to make our sex lives work, while at the same time, dreaming that one day, we would get married.

    Though I was still in university, a few colleagues had started to get married, so I was already thinking of the future. Then he broke up with me. 

    Ouch. 

    He said I was obsessed with sex and that I wasn’t even that good. This was shocking because I was doing a lot to pleasure him. I show love the way I want to be loved. That was why I was so into pleasuring him and getting him to pleasure me. And at the end of the day, he broke up with me. I felt bad. 

    Did his “feedback” make you feel weird about your sex life? 

    No, but it made me obsess over getting feedback from the people I was sleeping with. So after university, anytime I hooked up with someone, I would ask them to rate the sex. It was always great. 

    Did you get into any more relationships?

    Not at first. I kept hooking up with people and having one-night stands. I was horrible. I had sex with people who were bad for me. I slept with my friend’s ex and lost a lot of my female friends.

    Yikes. 

    Yup. They were afraid I would sleep with their partners or their exes. I admit, I fucked up. 

    When I did start dating again, the number one criteria was that they had to be good in bed. I didn’t even care if they were attractive. I dated someone who was very ugly and yet amazing in bed. He’d give me multiple orgasms in one round and still ask me if I wanted more rounds. I think I removed “attractive” from my criteria because of the uni boyfriend that broke up with me. I continued this way for years, accumulating exes and lovers everywhere. I never dated anyone for more than three months. Meanwhile, all my friends were getting married, having babies, settling down. I was obsessed with marriage then. I really wanted to get married, yet I didn’t want to have a boring sex life as I’d heard a lot of women had because their husbands didn’t have their time. Every woman from my mother to my sister had this opinion. They believed sex was for men, not women.  

    What did you do to fix this?

    I tried to decenter sex. So it stopped being my criteria for a while. I think I was 26 at this time. I dated one fine boy and the sex was so bad, but I promised not to run away. He ended up breaking up with me after six months and didn’t tell me why. I dated another guy for four months. He wasn’t even into sex. Found out he was cheating on me with a guy. There were a couple of more relationships like this before I snapped and went back to having sex. 

    How old were you? 

    28. I told myself to forget about marriage and enjoy my life. But that thing where you’re not looking for something and then you find it, happened to me. I fell in love again and he was perfect. The sex was great. He was smart and attractive. He had a good job and even wanted to get married. 

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    What happened? 

    His parents refused to approve. 

    Why?

    Several reasons. Cultural differences was one of the big ones. 

    Wow. I’m sorry. 

    He wasn’t going to defy them. We had this very prolonged fight about it, and at some point, I went and had sex with someone else because we weren’t having sex while we were fighting. He found out and we broke up. 

    And then you became celibate. 

    Well, I turned 30 a few months later. I didn’t do anything for my birthday. I just went to a cafe and started thinking of my life. On a whim, I decided I would become celibate. Also, I was becoming a bit religious, so it was rational. 

    Was that easy?

    Oh no. That was when I discovered masturbation. I was vigorously masturbating everyday. But I soon realised that this too was going to become a habit. I had to break away from it and just started taking each day at a time. 

    It’s been three years? 

    Yup. Three hard years. I plan to end my celibacy vow soon, but I’m not sure. My life has been really good since I became celibate. 

    How so? 

    I have two best friends now. Two women I met after I turned 30. Before them, I did not have any well-meaning female friendships.

    I have also been in very healthy relationships and I am friends with my exes. I also enjoy working too. Sex takes time to be honest. A lot of time you can spend doing other things. I mean, that doesn’t mean it’s not great. Sex is great. But it’s important to sometimes step away from it. 

    So why do you want to go back to sex now? 

    I miss it. 

    Fair enough. Do you still want to get married? 

    Yes. But I’m not obsessed with the idea of marriage anymore. My criteria is friendship and kindness. I want to marry someone who is my friend. If I don’t get married before I turn 35, though, I’m planning to either adopt a child or get pregnant and have a child outside of marriage. 

    Why? 

    Selfish reasons I’m not proud of. But it does get really lonely.

    Fair. What would you rate your sex life?

    When I was having sex, it was a 10. Now that I’m not having sex, it’s a zero. 

  • Sex Life is an anonymous Zikoko weekly series that explores the pleasures, frustrations and excitement of sex in the lives of Nigerians.

    The subject of this week’s Sex Life is a 30-year-old asexual Nigerian woman who has only ever had penetrative sex twice. She talks about discovering her asexuality after years of being uninterested in sex and how she’s lucky to have married someone who feels the same way about sex as she does. 

    What was your first sexual experience? 

    I’ll answer this as my first exposure to sex. When I was 12, one of my classmates brought a porn magazine to school, and all day, everyone was talking about sex. I didn’t even know how people had sex, but my mates said they had already had sex before. I was shocked because I grew up hearing sex was bad outside marriage and had associated it with evil or something only adults should do. So imagine hearing that other 12-year-olds were having sex? I was shocked. At some point, I thought they were lying, but during a school party later that year, people were caught having sex with each other. 

    Wow. And what were your general feelings about sex? 

    I was going to wait for marriage. There was no arguing about it. I didn’t feel any pressure to have sex because everyone was doing it. Also, I’m pretty close to my mother, so I told her about what my mates said, and she kept telling me to face my books and instilling the fear of sex in me. 

    When I started dating in senior school, it was a long-distance relationship. We dated for three years and never had sex or made out. We rarely even saw each other during our relationship. However, I often wonder if the guy wasn’t cheating on me. 

    So sex never came up?  

    Nope, but then again, we were both religious and naive, although I felt more naive. 

    We met when he was still in my secondary school, but he changed schools midway, and the relationship became long distance. When we saw each other, my mum was there, so there was no opportunity even to attempt kissing.  

    So when did you make out with someone? 

    Not until I was in university. My boyfriend and I had just broken up, and I was sad. I was looking for distractions, and I found it quickly in a random senior in my faculty who told me he liked me but didn’t want to date me yet because he needed to talk to God to be sure. I went along with it because, as I said, I just needed the distraction.

    We didn’t do more than make out because he needed to be sure that I was the one for him from God. Once he had the confirmation, we could start having sex if we wanted. So it was kissing and me giving him head. He never asked what I wanted. He kept demanding. He strung me along for about a year, and that confirmation never came. I brought it up once, and he got annoyed and broke it off. It’s not as if I wanted to date him sha.

    Did you enjoy making out with him, though? 

    Nope. I was waiting to feel that explosive feeling that I heard came with making out with someone for the first time. It never came. I assumed it was because I didn’t have feelings for him. He wasn’t that attractive honestly. So I decided to find someone who I was emotionally and sexually attracted to. But before I saw anyone I had feelings for, I made out with a bunch of different people and didn’t enjoy it. It felt like I was forcing myself to do something I didn’t want to do. 

    So when you found someone you were attracted to, what happened? 

    There were parts to the making out that I enjoyed. I enjoyed kissing him. I enjoyed giving him a blowjob. But I didn’t feel ecstatic when it was his turn to give me head. I mostly always told him I wasn’t interested in that. To make matters worse, he wanted to have sex, and I didn’t. I told him I was waiting for marriage, and he wasn’t buying that. Every time we made out, he would try to remove my underwear forcefully. I was becoming terrified that he’d rape me, so I broke up with him. It was a short-lived relationship. 

    What happened after this?

    After university, I decided I was going to have sex. It happened like this: during a night out with friends, I met a guy, and he invited me to his house. I went. I wasn’t thinking. We started making out the next day, and he raped me. He kept saying ‘just the tip’, ‘just the tip’, and I was like, no, I don’t want to.  

    I’m so sorry.

    Thanks. I didn’t even think of it as rape at the time. I kept wondering why I didn’t feel anything. So I decided that I would try sex. That was when I gave up on waiting till marriage. I tried it with a colleague. To be honest, I didn’t feel like it, but I was determined to try. Unfortunately, I was dry down there and each time he tired to penetrate, I would scream from the pain. So it didn’t happen then. I thought it was because I wasn’t physically attracted to him. I tried with someone else, and it was the same thing. I decided to speak to someone about it — a friend who was studying medicine. They said I could use lubes for the dryness, that it was normal, and that if it was associated to low libido or not being aroused, that was also normal and that I shouldn’t fret. They suggested I try masturbation.

    That worked out well. I was watching porn and having multiple orgasms with just my fingers. But I started to feel ashamed of it, so I stopped. No thanks to my religious beliefs. It didn’t correct the way I felt about sex.

    I went back to sex — I tried a few more times with different people. All painful experiences. That was when I met the man who became my husband. 

    How did you meet? 

    I met him through a friend. We kissed on our first date, and I loved it. The first time I went to his house, months after our first date, we had sex, and it worked. It actually worked. I was excited. I didn’t have an orgasm, but I enjoyed it. He was the one who initiated it.  

    Mad.

    But we didn’t have sex again for long after that because once I knew that I could have sex and enjoy it, I felt like I was normal and wanted to go back to waiting for marriage. But because we had had sex, we were very open to talking about it. It was during one of these discussions that my husband told me that he might be asexual. I had never even heard of asexuality. But once he explained it to me, I was like; I think I’m asexual too. 

    But what about the sex you both had the first time? 

    He said that there were days when his libido was fine and that because it was our first time sleeping together, he felt the need to initiate sex. He said that if I had said I wasn’t interested, he would have stepped back and not pressured me. 

    Fair enough. 

    Yeah. So I realised that it’s not that you don’t feel like having sex, or you don’t enjoy it when you do, at least for us. For me asexuality means I’m rarely interested in sex and I rarely get aroused. His interest level when it comes to sex is similar to mine, but he doesn’t have a problem with arousal.

    When I told a friend that my boyfriend was asexual, he was so shocked and said that how can a guy that has mad sex appeal be asexual. He was like, nope, my boyfriend is cheating on me, that all guys want sex. And I bought it for a while. The friend even told me not to marry him oh.

    But you did. 

    The more I discovered that I was asexual, the more I realised that it would be wrong to do life with someone who isn’t asexual like me. There would be so much pressure to have sex, internally and externally, and I’m not sure if I’d be able to live with that. 

    Since you married, how often have you had sex? 

    Just once more. We’ve been married for a year, and in that time, we mostly just make out. We enjoy that more than anything. We cuddle, we hold hands. We are very touchy people, especially in public. Nobody would ever guess that we’re not killing each other with sex every other day. And when one of us is horny or stressed, we get each other off. He’s very good with his hands, and I’m good with my mouth. 

    How often? 

    I can’t say, but maybe monthly? But most of the time, we’re doing other things without really having sex. 

    That’s cool. Would you say that you’re satisfied with your sex life? 

    To be honest, I’m not. There are days that I feel very abnormal and wonder what I’m missing out on and if there’s a way to fix myself. Because we’re kind of newly married, everyone jokes about having sex — from pastors to our parents and friends. No one knows we’re asexual. I am learning though that sexual needs can change over time, so maybe ours would.

    Most of the time though, it’s all good. I’m glad I found my husband. And sometimes, just knowing that he exists is all that matters. 

  • The subject of today’s What She Said is a Nigerian woman in her 50s. She talks about her difficult experience living with extended family, her relationship with her father and managing her mother’s mental health until she died. 

    What’s the earliest memory of your childhood?

    It’s of my father. He had me on his lap in a gathering. I don’t know if it’s a real memory or it’s based on a photo I used to have. I’ve lost it now. I was maybe three or four, and I had the look of shock on my face. Someone joked that I was supposed to be a boy, the way I was glued to my dad. That’s all I remember. 

    What was it like growing up?

    There were good days and bad days. I grew up in Lagos. Both my parents were tailors, so they made me lots of nice clothes. That was one thing I was very proud of as a child. I had a lot of fashionable clothes, and it went on to inform my fashion sense. 

    I was an only child for the longest time. My mother tried to have more children and that didn’t happen. Before she gave birth to me, she had a son, but he died after a few months when they made a trip to our village. The narrative I heard was that evil people on my father’s side of the family killed him. 

    My father, after being pressured, slept with two other people at different times and they had a boy and a girl, respectively. 

    He didn’t marry them?

    No. He was very much in love with my mother. At least, that’s the reason I think he didn’t marry them. For him, it was just to have more children. My mother was very accommodating with them. In fact, my sister and I are close till today and it’s mostly because my mother made us see each other not as step sisters, but as sisters. 

    What about your brother?

    We didn’t grow up together, and I haven’t heard anything about him till date. I just know I have a brother. Whether he’s alive or not, I don’t know. My sister and I have tried to find him on Facebook, but that didn’t work out. 

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    Do you know why you didn’t grow up together?

    It was my extended family’s fault — my father’s siblings. My father was a bit well-off. He had lands and buildings around Lagos. His siblings were not that well-off. They lived with us — with their families o. For some reason, we lived in the boy’s quarters, while they lived in the main building. They were wicked to my mother and made all kinds of demands from my father. My father was a kind man — too kind, maybe. So he often bent under their whims, although he did try his best to stand up for us. It was because of his siblings, my uncle and aunt, that he had two children out of wedlock.

    They believed it wasn’t right to have just one child. They said that my mother’s womb had spoiled because she could only have one child for him. When when my step brother was born, they had issues with his mother and so didn’t accept him. That’s why I think we never grew up together.

    Wow. I guess what they say about your father’s side is true. 

    Hmm. Well, in my case, it was. I do have family members on my father’s side who I’m very close with. Like my father’s cousin’s children. But his siblings and their children were terrible. They tried to sow discord between my sister and I, saying we weren’t really sisters because we didn’t share the same mother. 

    How did your mother cope with all of these?

    It was a lot for her and she eventually became mentally ill. Back then, we all believed that my father’s siblings had done something to twist her mind. This was the 80s. A lot of people recommended churches to go to for deliverance — pentecostal churches were becoming popular then. Now, I believe that it was psychological. The stigma associated with mental health issues didn’t allow us to seek the help she needed, although a few doctors suggested this. It wasn’t like she was parading the street naked. That was what a lot of us believed was mental illness.

    I can’t really describe the kind of behavior she exhibited, but one thing I’m sure of is that she started believing everybody was against her, even me. She would talk endlessly to herself, often in a loud voice, about how bad everyone was. This affected my relationship with her. 

    Wow. What was your relationship with her before this?

    We were not very close. She was always very reserved and quiet. I was closer to my father. He was the one who taught me to drive, taught me to fix my car, made all my clothes. In primary school, he was the one who picked me and dropped me off. When it was time to decide what next to do with my life after secondary school, he was there to help me out. When I started work, he drove me to work and advised me. We were that close. Then a few months after I started work, he fell sick. No one knows what illness it was. After a few weeks, he died. I was devastated.

    I’m so sorry 

    Thank you. When he died, after the burial and everything, my first instinct was: leave home. But I couldn’t leave my mother with those people. I got an apartment on Lagos Island, but my mother wouldn’t come live with me. She insisted her husband’s house was her house and she had no reason to leave. My sister was still living there, so my mind was at peace, a bit. But that’s when properly wahala came up. My father’s siblings were claiming rights to his properties. I didn’t really care about any of it, but another faction of my family wanted me to fight for the building where my mother and my father’s siblings lived. That went on for years. Even when I went back to celebrate my 25th birthday, they were still fighting for it. When I got married, I just told myself I was done. Lucky for me, I started having children almost immediately after I got married, so my mother came to live with me. 

    That’s good.

    It was good. But, my mother didn’t accept my husband. She thought he was evil. My husband was very understanding. He understood what my mother was going through and didn’t let anything she said affect him. She lived with me until she died. She died in my house. It was very challenging to take care of her, especially since I didn’t exactly know what was wrong. There were moments where she was great, but there were other times where it was bad. Luckily my mother had sisters who were great women. They loved each other and took care of each other. I remember once, her sisters came to my house to see her and they all slept on the same bed and gisted about everything. Even though I was close to my sister, I didn’t really have that with anyone until I got married and had children. 

    When my mother died, I was sad for many reasons. I felt she had gone to rest but was sad because it felt like I hadn’t taken care of her to the best of my capacity. I couldn’t take her on trips because she was suspicious of them. I couldn’t buy her things for the same reason. In fact, she continued to make her own clothes and cook her own food into her late 70s because she was so antsy about everything and everyone. 

    She loved my children and was there for them even when I couldn’t be. 

    Nice. Now that you have your own family, what’s that like? 

    It’s great, thank God. I should add that the relationship with members of my dad’s family affected me too because I’m very wary about family members. I protect my children, maybe a bit too much. I often say that they’re my siblings, my friends and it’s true. While I had friends that were helpful during the bad periods in my life, friends that have become family, I’m also very happy about my own children.

    What are some things that helped you cope?

    Food. When I eat, I’m happy, I temporarily forget everything. This started back when I was younger and lived in my father’s house. There was a bakery just by the house. They sold all kinds of bread. I went there nearly every day to get bread and peanut butter. Place a bowl of ikokore in front of me and I’m fine for like an hour. 

    God also helped. I grew Anglican. In my 20s when it felt like the world was collapsing on my head — the period when I was supposed to be enjoying life — I wasn’t a Christian in the born again sense. I was going to church seriously then and cramming the bible but had no real understanding of it. God was always good to me. Till today, he helps me cope. He’s my peace. After going through all that, I know there’s nothing life throws at me that I can’t handle with the help of God. 

    For more stories like this, check out our #WhatSheSaid and for more women like content, click here

  • Sex Life is an anonymous Zikoko weekly series that explores the pleasures, frustrations and excitement of sex in the lives of Nigerians.

    The subject of this week’s Sex Life is a 28-year-old heterosexual Nigerian woman who recently got married. She talks about how rumours about her sex life and stereotypes about being a Muslim woman gave her more reasons to stay celibate until marriage, and also made her detest men. 

    When was your first sexual experience? 

    It’s interesting. If you asked me a month ago, before I got married, I’d have said I had never done anything sexual before. But that’s a lie. 

    Holdup. Explain it to me. 

    Let me start from the beginning: my first sexual experience wasn’t consensual. I was 11 or 12. An older cousin made me give him a blow job, and I was traumatised by it. 

    I’m so sorry. 

    I know. Everybody is. However, it opened me up to sex and I became so curious about it, I was making out with everyone in school. It wasn’t that bad, but when I think of how young it was or think about me having a daughter who is kissing different boys at that age? I almost feel like shooting myself. 

    Was it just making out?

    Yes. Kissing, and sometimes a bit of oral sex. I didn’t particularly like making out when I started. But when puberty properly kicked in, I began to enjoy it like mad, so it did get better and more intense. I would spend hours after school making out in a secluded area with different people, mostly seniors.

    Funny thing is, everyone at home and in school thought I was a good girl. I went to a conservative school, so everyone was quiet about their exploits. I was also careful with hiding these things. I didn’t talk to boys a lot, even the boys I made out with, just to create a facade that I was a good babe. Also, I never got caught.

    Did that change?

    After secondary school, yes. I started taking my life seriously and became religious. I come from a Muslim home, but I had never taken religion seriously.

    What made you start taking religion seriously?

    Nothing really. I guess I just became more mature. This made me become serious about waiting for marriage to have sex. I wiped my slate clean and began to lie about my history: I told people for years that I had no sexual past. I won’t say I was lying to be honest. I just created a new truth and ran with it until even I believed it was true.

    What happened in university? 

    I didn’t know how sexually charged university was. I grew up somewhere in the north and moved to the south for university. I started wearing a hijab in my first year of university, and it felt like a lot of people were interested or attracted to me; I didn’t know why. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m attractive and I have a huge ass, but a lot more men than was reasonable were moving to me. It was very uncomfortable.

    What kind of advances were you getting?

    Men following me to my hostel, cars stopping on the road trying to pick me — all within campus. I used to get a lot of gifts from male classmates too, lol. They would offer to do something for me in order to sleep with me. I kept telling them I wasn’t interested. My classmates were even more adamant for some reason. 

    Wow. How did you navigate that?

    I tried to never move alone. I was always with other sisters or classmates. But honestly, there wasn’t much I could do. When I got even more religious and started covering fully, it got worse. That’s when I started hearing that women who wear hijab and other kinds of full covering were considered “sluts”, that we’re all just hiding behind our dressing and they know what women like me, especially me, do behind closed doors. 

    Wait what?

    It was a friend who told me this — she heard it from some boys in school. She said they said more about me, but didn’t say what else. She didn’t want to upset me. I eventually found out. So it was two things: they had come up with a stereotype about hijabis. Two, they were saying I was loose and anyone could get with me — a ton of boys in my class were claiming they had slept with me and were saying my pussy was tight or that my breast felt or looked a certain way.

    Some of my friends almost believed it because the guys were apparently quite detailed about what they’d done with me. It was a very weird period. Worse because I was the only muslim lady in my class. There were others in my faculty though, and they shared that at some point, they had heard the stereotypes. 

    Wow. How did this affect you? 

    I couldn’t report to anyone or change anything, so I just kept pushing men away and away. I didn’t want to prove their rumours or validate their stereotypes, so I didn’t even go on dates. That was the point that I realised that men don’t have sense. If I felt anything for a man, I’d convince myself he was rubbish.

     This continued until after university. I had never dated anyone as of the time I turned 23, and my parents were worried about me. They were proud that I was committed to God, unlike some of my siblings, but they wanted me to relax a little. I didn’t know how to tell them that I couldn’t let my guard down. 

    I’m so sorry. You’re married now. How did this change?

    Well, I first had to find a sensible man and that was tough. I went on so many dates. My friends introduced me to all kinds of men. If they said one thing that made me feel uncomfortable, I left the date and blocked them. Until I eventually went for my masters and met someone sensible. I met my husband and we dated for about three years before I actually let him even kiss me. 

    Three? Wow. 

    To be honest, we were only in close proximity to each other in our first year. I went back to move back after my masters, so we didn’t see each other for a bit. It was always off and on. We tried to do phone sex a few times, but it was weird. I also used to send nudes and risky texts, just to sort of keep him interested. Won’t lie that I wasn’t afraid I’d lose him since we weren’t sexually active or afraid he wouldn’t cheat on me. Then we got married. 

    How has married sex been? 

    The best. It’s just great. I love it. My husband prioritises my needs. I prioritise his. I don’t like the idea that everybody has to fight for their orgasms. No. When you go into the bedroom, you forget yourself and put your partner first. Those are my two cents. 

    At first, it was difficult to get into each other’s bodies, and I was scared that I had fucked up by not having sex before the wedding, but we’ve only been married a little while and so, I had to cut myself some slack and understand we’re still learning the ropes. And sex positions. Lol. It’s gotten really good. I read stories about women not having orgasms and I can’t relate because I get multiple orgasms.

    How do you compare these experiences with what you were doing when you were a teen? 

    Lmao. See, until now, only my husband knew about that part of me because I erased it from my memory. There’s nothing to compare. I was a child who didn’t know what she was doing. Now I do. I’m more mature, so I’m enjoying it. 

    I am curious though, if those rumours and stereotypes didn’t exist when you were in uni, would you have done anything sexually?

    Not really, tbh. I wanted to wait till marriage. While it was a horrible experience, it kind of gave me more reason to wait. The major thing it did though, is that it made me scared to even date or think of sleeping with a man I wasn’t married to. I’m glad that’s over.

    How do you rate your sex life?

    10/10. Orgasms, 10. Stroke game, 10. Experiments, 10. And it’s only been a month oh. 

  • The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 54-year-old woman who has three children she doesn’t like. She talks about  how they felt like distractions and how her relationship with them has only gotten worse with age. 

    Let’s start from the beginning. How old were you when you got married? 

    I was 26. I wanted to get married, but I wasn’t really sure who I wanted to marry. I had a number of options. I was sleeping with one of these options — he was a colleague in a different department. 

    I got pregnant. Abortion wasn’t an option. I was Anglican then. Even though I’m religious now, I won’t judge anyone who aborts a baby. Back then, I couldn’t even think of it. Also, I was scared of dying.

    My parents too would have killed me if they found out I had an abortion. So when I found out, I was worried about what to do. Then I came up with a plan to tell my parents I was engaged, so that once I started showing, the pregnancy would not shock them.

    You didn’t tell the father?

    That was the next step in the plan. After I told them I was engaged, I went and told him I was pregnant and that my parents said we had to get married. 

    Truthfully, that wasn’t a problem because he was ready to marry. I just wanted to rush the process. I had to do a lot of people-management to ensure that nobody spilled what I had told them. 

    How did your parents react?

    They didn’t want me to court for long. You know how mothers are. My mother, God bless her, just wanted us to have a really big wedding as soon as we could. We got married three months after. I wasn’t showing, so my parents didn’t know. They began to suspect when I started showing within a few months of being pregnant. 

    Did anyone catch your lie? 

    Oh, not at all, but I eventually told my husband that my parents never forced us to get married. I’ve always been the kind of person to sneak around. As a young girl especially. Although I’ve changed now, I do think I enjoyed the thrill of doing that. My husband didn’t feel duped. He wanted to get married. He was much older, I should mention. He was in his 40s. 

    So what was that like? Getting married so fast? How much of him did you know?

    Quite a lot from working together and going out together. But we were not necessarily in love. I was a romantic then. I wanted to marry someone I loved, but he wasn’t all about that. He was the opposite, a strong-head. People were not marrying for love as they are today, but I was optimistic that we would eventually fall in love. And we did, sooner than I expected. 

    How did that happen?

    I had a stillbirth. That was the first real traumatic experience I had in my life. I had never experienced grief like I did. I was just crying and gnashing my teeth. I said God hated me. 

    That should have pushed us away from each other, but it drew us together. I say that it should have pushed us away from each other because first of all, he really loved that child. Second of all, it was the foundation of our marriage. When it happened, we became so close and started protecting each other. That was simply how we fell in love. 

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    That’s sweet. I’m sorry you had to go through that.

    Thanks. We went a few more years before trying again. I felt that our relationship had become monotonous and didn’t have any ideas on how to make it better. All we did was talk about work. Even though we no longer worked together, we still worked in the same industry. We were both very career-oriented people. 

    Unfortunately, getting pregnant this time was war. We simply couldn’t get pregnant, no matter what we did or how we tried. The doctor said we were both fine, that we just had to keep trying. 

    When I turned 32, I got pregnant. I decided I was going to resign and be extra careful because I was scared of miscarrying or having a stillbirth. The doctor said I was okay to work way into my third trimester. I said I didn’t want to. I had a very easy pregnancy, but I was in bed almost all through. I took up sewing and would make many things for my baby. I wasn’t excited because I was scared, yet, I was expectant. 

    When my baby girl came, I didn’t feel anything.

    What do you mean?

    I had assumed that I’d at least be excited that I got another chance to have a child. But I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sad, and I’m not sure if I was depressed, but I wasn’t happy at all. I would spend hours staring at my child, expecting to become happy by just looking at her. Nothing happened. I faked happiness though. I faked the tears. Everyone around me was so excited; I just had to. And I couldn’t tell anyone. 

    That must have been hard for you. 

    Yes. Then child number two and three followed in quick succession. For number two, it was a difficult pregnancy. When I cried after giving birth, people thought it was tears of joy. It was, but it wasn’t because I was happy about my child. I was just happy I had gotten him out of my body. Once I had my third child, I told my husband we had done enough.

    What happened next? 

    He wasn’t thrilled about this. He wanted four children. He first tried to cajole me into having one more. Then we fought about it when I told him that if he wanted any more children, he had to either carry them himself or go and find another wife. Eventually, I made him understand that I had wasted five years of my life on having kids and would be wasting a lot of more time out of work if I had a fourth child. 

    You didn’t work all through the period of time you were having kids? 

    I tried to get a job when my daughter was two. My mum was staying with us, so she was going to help. I applied to different places but my application was rejected. I finally got a job, but a few months later, I got pregnant again. This time I didn’t quit because I wanted to protect my child from dying or anything, I quit because the workplace was hostile to me. People made jokes about my body that I was uncomfortable with. If I had to miss work for a check-up at the hospital, they would remove it from my salary. It was very rubbish. I left and didn’t bother until after I had my third child. 

    What did you do then? 

    I went to do my masters. I was 39 and was the third oldest in my class, but I didn’t care. If I was going to go back to the workplace, I felt that I needed an edge, and pursuing my education would give me that. My mum had basically moved in with us at that point. I didn’t even bother with my kids. She cooked their food and took care of them. She gave them the love that I simply did not have the time or care enough to give. She was with us until she died. However, by this time, they were old enough to take care of each other.

    Wait, during the time your mother took care of them, did you have any relationship at all with them?

    Not as much. I showed up for all the school events; sometimes, my mum or husband went. I was never excited about these events, as other mothers seemed to be. I tried to take them out when I could. I bought them what I thought they’d like. At some point, I thought they didn’t like me too, because they didn’t tell me things. My first daughter had her period, and it was my sister who told her what to do. I didn’t find out till a month later. I felt like a horrible mother. I still feel like a horrible mother. I took it out on her. I lashed out and that pretty much framed our relationship for years. 

    What do you mean?

    She went a few years without talking to me. Except it was necessary. She didn’t tell me things. She only told my husband or my mum. 

    Was going back to work the main factor? 

    Yes. It definitely did affect my relationship with my children. I was working seven days a week. My mind was on work because I really didn’t want anyone to make me feel left out because I have children. But I never really liked them from the beginning. I loved them, but did I like them? I didn’t. They felt like distractions. They demanded time and energy. 

    What about the other two children, what’s your relationship with them like? 

    Last born is my baby. I cherish her. That became a problem for my second child because he thought that I had favourites. They used to fight a lot when they were younger. And I didn’t help matters. I didn’t know how to mask my favouritism or limit the way I spoiled my last child. My mum actually warned me about it; I didn’t listen. Eventually I stopped spoiling her and that became a problem. She began to say that I hated her. She didn’t tell me this. She told my sister, who told me. My sister said I didn’t hate her, that I was just busy with work. She said she would pray to God to make me lose my job. 

    Child number two and three became wiser and formed an allyship that was against me. They realised I was the problem. I would scold the boy for being messy and the number three would tell me that I should leave him alone. 

    Wow. What was your husband like in all of these?

    Just as absent as I was. He was busy with work, but he seemed to have the parenting thing on lock. He was definitely a better father than I was a mother. 

    Then he became sick and died. That was quite the painful experience. I hadn’t experienced anything as traumatic since the stillbirth. But again, grief played an important role in uniting us, making us come together. But that lasted only for a short while.

    What’s your relationship with them today? 

    Nothing has changed. We just grew apart more and more. It feels like I am alone most of the time. My first daughter has moved out. She’s doing impressive work. We talk. I’m closer to her than the others. She says that maybe she had to leave home and get a well-paying job for me to start respecting her. I don’t fault that reasoning. 

    My son lives at home, but we don’t talk a lot. I think he’s trying my patience. 

    How? 

    Not going to church anymore. Dyeing his hair. Wearing earrings. He started it after I complained about someone in church who dressed like that. I haven’t said anything to him about it. Both us will continue looking at each other. But he is teaching me not to judge other people. 

    My last girl on the other hand is in university. She rarely calls, so I have to call her and shout at her to call. That path is still very rocky. I don’t like teenagers of any age.

    Lmao. Is there anything you’d do better about motherhood? 

    Maybe I’d have sought help. I was educated enough to know there could have been a problem. Also, I think not all women need to have children. It’s okay to not want them. They’re not just fillers in a relationship. They’re real people. I wish someone had told me this. 

    For more stories like this, check out our #WhatSheSaid and for more women like content, click here

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  • Sex Life is an anonymous Zikoko weekly series that explores the pleasures, frustrations and excitement of sex in the lives of Nigerians.

    The subject of this week’s Sex Life is a heterosexual Nigerian woman in her early 40s. She talks about barely caring about sex when she got married in her 20s and how this is changing now that her children are grown up and away from home. 

    When did you have sex for the first time? 

    When I was a teenager, I was raped in school by senior boys. They told me that if I told anyone, they would kill me. 

    I’m so sorry. Were you able to talk to anyone about it? 

    Not immediately it happened. I knew  my parents would blame me because I had heard them blame other women who got raped in our vicinity back then.

    That’s messed up. When was your first consensual experience?

    A few years later, when I was about 17, I liked a boy, he liked me back and we often made out. We didn’t date, but we once tried to have sex. I felt very weird when we started — even though I was quite horny and eager to do it at first. I was sweating profusely, gasping and it was painful. I was having a panic attack. I told him to stop and we never tried it again. I didn’t try to have sex again until I got married. 

    Do you think being raped had anything to do with the panic attack? 

    At the time, I didn’t think about it as much. But eventually, I realised that the two incidents were probably related. I must have been afraid and was projecting the pain and fear I experienced when I was raped. 

    Back then, I thought that sex wasn’t for everybody. Being raped really framed my thoughts and feelings towards sex. Nobody had talked to me about sex, so I didn’t know much about it until it was time to get married. 

    Who told you about sex? 

    I was lucky to have a marriage counsellor that was very liberal. Back then, I thought she was crude. The kinds of things she said about sex were not things you’d expect to hear from a 60-year-old Christian mother. 

    She talked about sex positions, looking at sex as pleasurable and not just for having kids, pleasing your husband and more. It was hilarious the moment I became comfortable with her. 

    I was in my 20s at the time. She was the first person I told about being raped. She helped me get through it emotionally and for the first time, I broke down and unleashed all the pent up emotions I had.

    I’m so sorry. 

    Thank you. My perspective about sex didn’t change a lot, though. But I felt I was ready to have sex, and I began having it once I got married. 

    You didn’t have sex before marriage? 

    No, we didn’t. We were both saving ourselves for marriage, due to our religious beliefs. I’m a Christian and he was a Muslim. 

    Did you enjoy the sex? 

    Not really, but I did it. In my mind, it was still only the means to an end — children. In the beginning, we were having sex two times a week. I told myself I was going to cope with it, but eventually, I couldn’t even stand sex once a week. 

    I didn’t know what to do. I loved my husband. I wasn’t sure how to tell him without causing a fight. Yet, I didn’t want any resentment to build up. 

    Why couldn’t you stand sex anymore? 

    So my first year in marriage was great. The sex was okay enough. I didn’t feel the ecstasy and pleasure that I was told I would feel, but it was manageable. It made my husband happy. Then I got pregnant and my body changed. 

    Within a year, I got pregnant again and was so frustrated by it. When I had my first two children, I wasn’t ready for them. I didn’t even want them. That affected the way I treated and related to them. But with my last two children, it was different. I really wanted them. 

    Having my first two kids, working, and taking care of them and the home was hard. Add sex to that kind of frustration, and all I wanted to do was disappear. Some people see sex as an outlet. I didn’t. It was an itch to me. 

    How did you solve that? 

    I didn’t. Our sex life disappeared shortly after my second child was born. I would typically tell him I was too tired to have sex or give all sorts of excuse. I think he got the idea. He tried to talk to me about it twice, but I would always divert the topic. We would have sex once or twice a month and that would be it. I guess I was also punishing him somehow, because he wasn’t really helping me at home. 

    When I turned 30, I became an entirely different person. I felt like I had missed out on my 20s. I wasn’t the best mother or wife or person or even colleague. But I felt I had been given a new slate. And the first thing I wanted to do with that new slate, was to have a child again. 

    I wanted a do-over on everything. My friends thought I was crazy. How could I want to live my best life at 30 by starting with kids? They wanted to know if the two I had weren’t enough. No one really understands. Even I don’t understand it completely. I can’t really explain how I felt. Then I had twins, lol. I wasn’t expecting that. There are no twins in my family and none that we know of in my husband’s family. 

    After the twins came, maybe because I was interested in fixing my marriage, or maybe it was just hormones, but I couldn’t keep my hands off my husband. 

    LMAO. Wow. 

    We started having sex a bit more often. I wasn’t as frustrated as I was when I had my first two kids. Maybe because I wasn’t working full-time. That went well for a while. I was enjoying the act of sex, but wasn’t having any orgasms. 

    Wow. Then what happened? 

    I guess time happened. Sex slowed down again for a few years. We were not deliberate about it and just had sex based on how we felt. I realised that you can’t leave sex to emotions, at least for us. He might be in the mood today and I might not. It took me a while to learn, but we’re there sha. 

    How did you get there? 

    A lot of things. So I started speaking up for myself and fighting him when he wasn’t helping out. Which was a lot of fights. LMAO. I also had to be patient because we were both unlearning. We both grew up in a time when we believed the husband shouldn’t be doing domestic chores. 

    Then two more things happened: my husband became a Chrisitan, even more serious than I was. He wanted us to fix things  between us. He confessed he had been tempted to cheat many times but hadn’t. I was mad at this because it seemed like he was blaming me for almost cheating. I calmed down from that anger and explained that, it wasn’t my fault I didn’t want sex. I told him for the first time about being raped and all of that. 

    The second thing was that our two older kids went to university and then we went to drop the twins in boarding school. The summary is that we became free. 

    LMAO. What has changed now? 

    A lot. Like I said, one of the things we realised was that you have to plan these things. Give room for spontaneity, yes. But still plan it. Also prioritise each other’s pleasure. I would not say I ever prioritised his pleasure, even though when we first married, I was happy to see him nut from sex and felt good about it, but I wasn’t just doing anything extra. So we are both discovering sex now. 

    We have sex regularly, maybe four times a month, but it’s mostly always good. We act like we’re dating and sneak around to have sex, even though we don’t need to. It’s just fun, being able to lose your guard and be vulnerable with each other. I learned a lot about my husband and he’s learning a lot about me. And my body. 

    What about the orgasms? 

    They’re coming strong. I can’t remember when last I had sex and didn’t orgasm. I remember one time, I went out and my friend saw me and said I was glowing. I told her it was sex o. I have that same glow since then. 

    One thing I haven’t mentioned is that, when we started discovering sex again, we didn’t use any form of birth control. I got pregnant. I had to go and abort the baby. I travelled to get this done. I didn’t even care about anything anyone was going to say to me. I didn’t tell him at first, because I was scared he’d want me to keep it. When I did tell him, he was so angry at me. But mostly because he wasn’t there for me. A few months later, he got a vasectomy. 

    That’s cool. 

    Yes it is. The thing is, I had resigned myself to a miserable life in my 20s, and I feel like I’ve learned too many things. That’s why I was eager to share my story. One thing is that people do change, but it’s a frustrating and long process. I have changed and I am still changing. 

    Do you feel you wasted time? 

    No, I didn’t waste time. I don’t do regrets. 

    So how would you rate your sex life? 

    8/10. I’m a bit scared the sex life will still tank. But I’m a bit optimistic. My husband rates it a 10 sha.