Love Is Not Supposed to Be Like a Guessing Game

Zainab sat across from her best friend, Rahama, at a small table outside a suya spot in Kano, turning her phone over and over in her hands as it owed her an explanation. “I don’t even know what he wants anymore,” she said, scrolling back through three days of half-replies from her boyfriend, Lawal.

“One day he’s calling me his future wife, planning where we’ll live, the next day he goes quiet for two days, and I’m sitting here trying to figure out what I did wrong.”

Rahama, who had been married for four years to a man named Sani, listened quietly before saying something that would stay with Zainab long after: “Love was never supposed to feel like a riddle you solve at midnight. If you’re constantly guessing, something has already gone wrong, and it isn’t you.”

Somewhere along the way, uncertainty got romanticised, turned into something poets write about and movies celebrate, the “will he, won’t he” tension dressed up as excitement instead of being named for what it actually is, which is anxiety wearing a nicer outfit.

When you find yourself constantly analysing a text message for hidden meaning, replaying a conversation to figure out if someone is upset, or feeling a flood of relief simply because your partner responded normally today, that’s your nervous system working overtime trying to find safety in an unstable situation.

Real love, the kind that sustains a marriage and a family for decades, the way Rahama and Sani were building theirs, doesn’t ask you to interpret it like a puzzle.

It speaks plainly, even when the truth is inconvenient, even when “I’m overwhelmed and need space” is harder to say than simply disappearing for two days.

Clear love isn’t the absence of conflict or difficulty; it’s the presence of honest words even when those words are inconvenient, awkward, or hard to say out loud.

Needing clarity is not the same as being needy, and asking direct questions is not the same as being difficult.

Pay attention to whether your partner, when given the chance to explain themselves, chooses honesty over vagueness, because someone who genuinely wants to build something with you will eventually learn to speak clearly.

And if the guessing continues long after you’ve expressed how much it costs you, that itself is an answer, a clearer one than any riddle they’ve left you to solve alone.

Love was never meant to be a guessing game, and the sooner both people in it agree to speak plainly, the sooner real love gets the chance to actually begin.