Tell Them How You Feel

_{Photo by Nik}

I have a friend who will always tell me that he plans on getting married to a white woman (that basically is his way of saying an American woman, be it either black or white) and he always says this whenever we're seeing one of those Netflix romance movies that always ends with an happily ever after. His reason for saying this though is very simple, he wants to get married to a white lady because of how simple the movies makes them look.

And by "them" I mean their ways. According to my friend, a white woman could easily walk up to a guy and tell him how she feels about him. If she likes him and wants to date him, she would say it, and if all she wants is to have a one night stand with him, she also would say it. Now I understand that not everything we see in these movies are true but we have to admit that amidst all of those fiction, there's at least a tiny bit of truth in it, a tiny bit that indeed shows the ways of the "white woman" the ways that I would like to call freedom.

In a country like Nigeria, the people are so backward when it comes to communicating their feelings with each other, especially in romantic situations. The other person expects you to decode whatever it is they're trying to say without saying it, when they could actually just say those things straight to you without mixing words in the first place.

I had once written a post about how some of my friends plan on moving out later this year and how the rest of us boys couldn't tell them how much we would miss them even though we all wanted to, now that is a bit understanding because boys will be boys, but it shouldn't be the same when it comes to talking to the opposite sex.

I honestly can't count the number of times I have literally forced my male friends to tell their female friends how they really feel about them, rather than playing games with their words while hoping that somewhere along the line, the lady would grab on to what they're trying saying and play along.

To me, not being able to express how you feel freely because you're shy or you feel embarrassed makes you look like you're a kid in a grown body and that's final.

I remember I was having a conversation with some of my friends the other day and I was telling them how I always respect girls who are bold enough to actually tell me how they feel using simple english words and not feel shy about it. There's this way it's makes me feel that I honestly can't explain because the moment you do that, my respect for that person increases because I know that this is Africa and here in Nigeria, not a lot of people talk that freely.

But seriously people, like I always tell my friends, life is too short to be playing around with words. Say whatever it is you want to say and take whatever outcome that comes with it because whether you say it or choose to play games, life goes on no matter what.