On the Streets is a Zikoko weekly series about the chaos of modern dating: from situationships and endless talking stages, to heartbreak and everything it means to be single in today’s world.
For Tayo* (24), his love life has always been tangled with insecurity. After years of trying to fit in and staying in a turbulent relationship, he realised he’d spent most of his life defining himself through the people he dated.
On this week’s episode, he talks about his dating history and why he’s choosing to take a step back and figure out who he is on his own.
What’s your current relationship status, and how do you feel about it?
I’m single. It’s the first time in years that my ex isn’t constantly on my mind. It feels strange, but I think it’s for the best. This phase is forcing me to learn who I am outside a romantic relationship.
So how did you get to this point? Tell me about your dating experiences.
Growing up, I was awkwardly tall and chubby with lots of pimples on my face. My insecurities made me feel weak and unattractive, and I believed my mates didn’t like me. I gravitated toward older boys who acted like the tough guys in the area because being around them made me feel accepted.
I only started to overcome those feelings after secondary school when I met Tina*. We met while I was writing WAEC in 2016. My friends and I always passed by her mother’s shop to buy drinks, and she’d insult us for littering the shop with biscuit nylons. One day, she annoyed my guys so much that they wanted to beat her, but I begged them to let her go. That moment softened her attitude towards me.
Not long after, she wrote me a letter expressing her feelings. My friends teased me badly about it, but it pushed me to finally approach her. I bought her a gift, told her I felt the same way, and we started dating.
That’s cute. How did the relationship go?
It went really well. We spent a lot of time together and were honest with each other. When I left for school in another state, we maintained our relationship through calls and visits.
But by our third year together, the cracks started to show. Our communication had reduced, and she didn’t seem as invested anymore. When I came home for the 2020 COVID break, I saw chats with another guy on her phone. They’d never met, but the messages felt too intimate. She insisted it didn’t count as cheating, and we argued about it. Eventually, she suggested we break up if I felt uncomfortable. I agreed even though it hurt.
How did you handle the breakup?
I wanted to move on as fast as possible. When I got back to school, I tried talking to other girls, but they turned me down repeatedly. My insecurities resurfaced, and I began to question my looks. My friends calling me Big T made things worse. Being single forced me to confront everything I’d been avoiding about myself, and I hated it.
I finally met Aisha*, seven months after the breakup with Tina.
Great. Tell me about her.
We had several mutuals online, so I followed her. We started chatting, realised we attended the same school, met up at a cycling hangout, and started dating two months later.
At first, things felt great. She communicated well and seemed very open. But she was emotionally unstable and grieving her mother’s death. She’d call crying at odd hours, and I always showed up. It became overwhelming. She self-harmed occasionally and had unpredictable mood swings. I was constantly on edge trying to fix everything. I even started having panic attacks because of the stress.
A few months in, she told me she’d cheated. She said she did it because she was bored. It crushed me, but I excused it as a mistake because of her unstable emotional state. The relationship eventually collapsed after we entered a long-distance phase following graduation. By mid-2023, she met someone new and broke up.
Realising I’d been used as emotional support didn’t help my issues. I became jaded about the idea of talking to someone new and considered getting back with Tina. I felt the devil I knew was better than an angel I didn’t. Since Tina had blocked me after we broke up in 2020, I asked a mutual friend to talk to her.
Did that work?
It did. She unblocked me and we began chatting again. We arranged to hang out and talk about the past. Since I now lived permanently in the same city, we spent a lot of time together. She admitted she still had feelings for me, and we decided to try again at the end of 2023.
Unfortunately, the second phase didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.
What happened?
She’d become a video vixen, and a lot of her work involved being around male artists, dancers, and entertainers. I struggled with it. Seeing her flirt on camera triggered all my insecurities. We often argued about it, and it didn’t help that her friends didn’t like me. I always felt judged around them. Even though things were rocky, we kept trying, but she started pulling away again.
In November 2024, she slept over at a guy’s house after a party. She said she was drunk and couldn’t go home. I knew something had happened because she doesn’t lie well. She eventually admitted they made out but didn’t have sex. I saw it as betrayal and told her she had to choose between the relationship and the lifestyle that kept putting her in compromising situations. She chose her career.
We broke up.
That must’ve hurt.
Terribly. I obsessed over her Instagram stories, compared myself to every guy she posted, and hated how my body looked in comparison. I was young with a pot belly, and instead of working on it, I beat myself up.
Barely a month after our breakup, I got drunk one night and called her. I apologised for everything and told her I missed her. We eventually rekindled things for the third time.
Read Also: He Married Me Because He Needed a Cash Cow
Oh. Were things different this time around?
Not really. I bottled everything up and decided to ignore her job to keep the peace. I stopped complaining, but she didn’t like that I refused to repost her work or publicly support it. A few months after we got back together, she started complaining about feeling unsupported and emotionally disconnected from me.
Then, in July this year, while we were hanging out, she told me she no longer felt the same way. She’d been uninterested for months, but I refused to take the cue. I begged her, and when she insisted on ending it, we got into a verbal fight where I insinuated she was cheating. She told me to work on my insecurities because that was the main reason her feelings fizzled out. By the time I got home to apologise, she’d blocked me everywhere. That was the final breakup.
I’m sorry. How have these experiences shaped your idea of love?
I’ve learned there’s a thin line between loving someone and projecting your insecurities onto them. After reflecting, I realised that even though Tina was manipulative, most of my jealousy stemmed from how I perceived myself, not what she was doing.
Even though it’s early, I hope to date again. But I want to be a better partner first. I’ve been working out and building confidence, so I don’t keep seeking validation from relationships.
Finally, how are the streets treating you these days? Rate it on a scale of 1 to 10.
5/10. It is lonely. It’s lonely. I haven’t been single for a while, so everything feels new. Some days are rough, but I’m taking it a day at a time and slowly starting to enjoy the growth.
