There have been assumptions that when one loves something so much it’s hard to let it go but that’s not true. In most cases letting go might just be what you need.  

While growing up, I always wanted to have the perfect marriage; a great partner and beautiful children. My wedding day was supposed to be the best at whatever cost.  

Unfortunately, the guys I dated didn’t turn out the way I wanted. But one beautiful day I met James (not real name). He had about six things on my check list, leaving him with only four to be my perfect man. 

But he had six qualities, so I decided to date him because I felt he was as close to ‘the one’ as I was going to get. I started cohabiting with him. My friends and family wondered what was keeping him from popping the question after our relationship reached its third year. 

I remember at some point I even went as far as yearning to have his child and thought of not taking the birth control pills I was on.  We both initially felt we still had to build our careers before starting a family. 

Little did I know that James had a child when he was in high school. His cousin told me in passing without realising that James had hid it from me.  I was so disappointed that I decided to confront him on how he could keep such information from me. I felt cheated and I decided to move out of the house. 

We still communicated but I decided to call the relationship off.  It was after eight months that I decided to let another man in my life. With him, everything seemed so easy that it got me thinking it was too good to be true. 

Everything happened so fast. Ian was what some girls in the world would wish for. I felt like I was on top of the world – so much that it blinded me. Before I knew it, Ian had proposed.

Just a year in the relationship, Ian and I where planning our wedding. But we started having problems when I asked him about his friends who were to attend the wedding besides his workmates. He started acting weird.

When I asked who his best man would be, he told me his colleague. When I asked how someone he had known for just 16 months would be his best man he became rude. This was when I sat back and thought; this guy had never showed me off to his old friends or his family. The only people I’d met were his colleagues and his mother who was mostly silent when we visited her.  Three months to our wedding I took the initiative to investigate and find out his past and what I discovered was not good at all. 

I found out that he was formerly a drug addict and had mental disabilities because of drugs; he had stopped communicating and associating with most of his family and friends because they had told him to tell me the truth before getting serious. 

I was in a state of shock. I realised that it was all a lie. 

I decided to talk to him to give him a chance to explain himself, instead he became violent.  The following day he apologised for what he had done saying he did not know what had gotten into him. This is when I stood my ground and told him it was over between us and I was calling the wedding off. Letting him go is still the hardest decision I have ever had to make but it was something I had to do.  

As told to Doreen Umutesi