If you love a woman, set her free if you can’t make her dreams come true – David Hundeyin, the Journalist.

11 years ago in 2011, I got a woman pregnant.

We met at Hull Uni during my final year, and it was what you might call a whirlwind romance. She was from a town in Zimbabwe called Kwekwe, and she was 2 years older than me.

We were the definition of “opposites attract.”
We fell in love so hard that in just 6 months from when we met in March, we took it for granted that we would get married, have 2 kids and a dog, a nice little house in Market Weighton, her dream Mini Cooper, etc.

Bear in mind I was a 21 Y.O on a visa, without a job or a plan.
She, on the other hand, was a registered nurse with a solid income, a promising career, and UK citizenship.

I didn’t recognize the disparity yet because I was still being subsidised by the bank of Mom and Dad. It was all about the love – the fierce purity of the emotion.
See the thing is young men aren’t allowed to “feel” things very often, so when they do “feel” something like I did in 2011, it can possess them and make them absolutely blind to anything and everything else.

So blind in fact that when the parental subsidy ended, I had no plan.
In August, all I had was about £4,000, my degree certificate, and my fierce, burning love for Rachael to my name.

What I should have done was move closer to London or Manchester to find a job. What I did instead was move to Bradford to be closer to Rachael.

No plan.
All I knew was that I loved her and she loved me, so that was that. Everything would work out. It had to work out. Of course, it would work out.

I’d get a job in Leeds, and visit her in York every other week, and she’d visit me in Bradford. That’s it.

There was no plan.
Instead of finding a cheap apartment to save money while I looked for a job, I spunked most of that £4,000 on 8 months’ rent for a deluxe apartment at The Velvet Mill on Lilyceoft Road.

Why? So babe would be comfortable when she came to visit. Lover über alles.
Well, it did succeed at the comfort thing because one day while visiting, she took a pregnancy test in the bathroom and there were double lines. I was going to be a dad at 21.

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Bear in mind there was still no plan. Just love, emotional certainty, and vibes. Nothing more
Even in that state, I had no doubts in my mind that we would be fine. We would keep the baby, get married, etc etc.

Well, it turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy, which means it grew inside one of her fallopian tubes, instead of her uterus. The doctors found out late.
She had to undergo emergency keyhole surgery to evacuate not just the fetus, but her entire right ovary.

Overnight, she had lost her first child, and her future childbearing capacity had been halved. All because of some guy from Nigeria whose plan was I-Love-You and inshallah.
You can predict what happened next.

We still hung on for a year while I struggled desperately to get my shit together, but she was no longer in it.

She didn’t even bother to break up properly. In early 2013, I saw a photo of her on Instagram with the new guy.
This new guy was immediately able to give her the stability and experiences that I couldn’t then. Vacations in Egypt, all that stuff.

Within a year they were married, and when last I checked in 2019 or so, they had 2 boys and a dog and the exact Mini Cooper she always wanted.
The moral of the story?

As a man, it’s OK to let a woman go because you’re simply not yet at the stage in life where you can give her what she wants, or what she can get with someone else.

There is no zero need to force the issue. Accepting it doesn’t make you a failure.
The simple fact of human evolution is that women have a shorter prime than men. Between 20 and 29, most women aspire to have most of their big landmarks.

Experiences, marriage, kids, material comforts.

Your timeline isn’t the same as theirs, and that is fine. Don’t fight it.
Apart from the fact that you’d just be traumatizing yourself for no reason, you can also end up wasting their time by forcing them to choose “love” with you when you’re not ready, over themselves.

They have less time than you – you cannot replace their time. You must let go.
Your “love” is not going to solve their problems or give them the things they want and need. Millions of years of evolution have not shaped them to “wait” for you.

It’s neither fair nor unfair. It just is what it is. Don’t traumatize yourself trying to fight evolution. Let go.
I like the guy in the QT, you refuse to let her go, and you blackmail her into waiting with you for a future that may never come, bear in mind that she is going to blame you one day for wasting her life – and rightfully so.

If you love something, set it free.
Rachael and I loved each other to death back then. Now we’re strangers and we haven’t spoken in 9 years – and we’re both living our best lives. She found someone on her timetable, and for what it’s worth, I did too.

And life goes on. It’s not that deep, honestly.
TLDR: As a man, learn to accept the reality that you do not own the right to a woman’s time and attention, and your timetable is not the same as hers.

Likewise, accept that she is just 1 of 4 billion women, so there is no need to traumatize yourself in pursuit of love.

Let go.