A Clash of Types

She has prayed for so long for a boyfriend. She has waited, created mind pictures of him, fantasized... and longed for so long for that day to come... In fact, she can clearly remember – even deep in her sleep - the last time she had a boyfriend: she has never had any.

She was almost giving up... giving up on love and these #RelationshipTingz, until she met him: tall but not so tall, toned down with every muscle in the right place. She turned her head, looked over and saw him. She looked again. She never looks twice. But this day, she did…

His name is Adrian. She knows where he stays. She knows all his friends. Yeah, she can even tell just how sad or happy he was on July 16, 2011 – hah - and how he was dressed. She can also tell just how much he talked on that day. What? July 16, 2011? What's so special about July 16, 2011 anyway? Actually, nothing specific. It was just another day. A day just like any other day. But to her, it was special. It was the day she laid her eyes on him... Since then, she has never looked back. 

I’ll tell you the story she told me, yes, my friend does tell stories…

She had gone to pick up a movie or two from her movie guy across the street, after which she had planned to pass through the mall and get back home after an hour or so. 
It was 2pm, Saturday, 16^th July, 2011. A hot afternoon, but as it is natural and common on this side of the world at such a time of the year, it was indicative of prevailing showers of rain in the evening – a deceptive camouflage of nature, so to say.

She was prepared to run through town really first before heading back home then to church. So she moved by the road, up the streets, via the Mama mboga, past the barber shop, through the back street, across the petrol station, again through the street… absent-mindedly waving her thoughts to-and-fro as it is typical of most her Saturdays…

But just before she crossed over to the mall, he happened. He did happen. 16^th July, 2011. Saturday. He happened.

She almost fell down. The dude was exactly angelic. Exactly. His countenance, his demeanor, his smile, his dressing code, the way he moved his hand and fingers, the way he stared and glanced, the excitement in his eyes… oh my, she was smitten!! He was with one of her friends. Just a common friendship so to say... She wanted to greet her friend and by excuse say hi! to him. She wanted to, but never found enough strength to do so. She actually never did say hi!

Since that day – Saturday, July 16, 2011 - she has always anticipated their next meeting. She dresses her best, does her hair, trims and does her nails, borrows her friend's shoes and phone... because she wants to smite him this time. But the moment he is in the room, he never seems to notice her. It is like she doesn't exist. To him, she does not.

Her name is Annabelle. Annabelle never seems to exist in the eyes of Adrian.

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He (Adrian), on the other hand, is a hundred miles hushed and travelling in his own tough relationship world. He has this girl he met way back in 2012 – December 2012 to be precise - that he just has never gotten over. Oh well, they say guys don’t bend easily. They do say so. It may be true, or it may not be. But deep within him, he knows that it is impossible that she did not melt a big chunk of his heart. Every time he sees her, it seems like he gets lost. Somehow.

Here is his story;

It was in December, 2012. He had gone to visit his brother who lives in the East and therefore he was extremely excited about a change of environment and stuff. So here he was, stolen by the proximity of a new environment and the endless possibility of adventure. On that day – he says – he was dressed in print shorts with a casual short-sleeved white shirt and his feet, he was wearing branded African leather open shoes. He was on a mountain bike heading, er, nowhere actually. He was just on his routine spontaneous rides. He had just turned the second corner, stopped and was now resting for a while with his left feet on the pedal and the right one on the ground, before thinking of cycling on to the other side of the road. As he looked up from where he was, while wiping the sweat off his face, he spotted her. His heart stopped, er, it skipped (his words, not mine…). He was blanked.

Her name is Trizah. She was amazing. Fragile. Heavenly. Beautiful. Breathtaking. She was like no woman he had ever seen. He felt so drawn to her. But how was he going to make it in (at least) making her his friend in this short period of time he was at his brother’s? 2 weeks. “Arrrgghh! 2 weeks!?” He thought deep within himself how much good agony she had brought to his heart. So he said hi!

She did reply. But shyly and in a manner full of lack of interest – like he was a nuisance to her existence or something like that. He ignored this as lack of familiarity and he thoughtfully went on his way.

Back at home, while on his bed meditating on the activities of the day, that is when he realized that a spell had been cast, and that he was now caught in a love net he was not willing to draw himself out from – he was attracted to a girl he knew not.

The following two weeks marked a period of his despair - a period when he made all the efforts in his social books to get to make her his friend but he realized that she can never be into him in the same way he is into her… His name is Adrian.

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Days have gone by and now here are Adrian and Annabelle. Anabelle daily wishes and prays so hard (to her Lord) that Adrian will notice her, while Adrian still struggles with the denial he met in the East from that lady called Trizah.

Annabelle wonders: “But why? I guess I am more beautiful than that chiq he's obsessed with, right? I guess I am more endowed in all things than she is… I am saved like he is. I serve the Lord, bla bla bla…" Of late, Annabelle has put in more effort in drawing closer to him: she has learnt his hobbies so that she can do the stuff he does and let him notice her, she has befriended his friends and known most of them in a greater way, she has called herself something else on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and befriended him, she has stalked him endlessly, she has his WhatsApp… she has already put to work all the written things in the book of How To Get Him Interested but Adrian just never seems to notice her…

Oh well, one day he did – but all that moment earned her was a smile and a disguised date that never happened… He leaves her devastated.

Adrian wonders too: “Am I not tall enough for her? Ladies love tall guys, right? (His words, not mine) Is it my personality she doesn’t like? Am I too childish? Does my face betray my maturity? Am I not good enough for her? Do I joke or talk too much? Maybe it is my voice, right? And so forth and so on...” These questions surge endlessly through his mind. They stir him to wondering why he is being denied a simple relationship with a girl who overturned his world. He thinks that he can never fall for another lady the way he did with this one…

Yeah it was attraction at first sight, but after stalking her for a while (yeah, he does stalk her from time to time as escalated by his visits to his brother’s place which have become as monotonous as the rising and setting of the sun… and in these escapades, he manages to know a few things about her; that her name is Trizah, and that she is cooooooool like that – just what he wanted in a lady… he even has her WhatsApp (oh my!) but it now seems that her chatting tendencies are like drops of rain in the Sahara…) and talking her over, he has decided that fate (yes, he thinks that it is fate) has denied him his place in her heart.

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And this cycle between Annabelle, Adrian and Trizah continues. It goes on forever. It goes on forever because Adrian says that Annabelle is not his type and that there is no way he can ever fall in love with her; although he appreciates that she is a good lady who deserves another man – just not him! Annabelle on the other side thinks he is the perfect guy dropped down from the Heaven of God just for her but one who keeps treating gold as trash... Again, Trizah does not think Adrian is her type. She thinks he deserves better (yeah, that is what she always tells him on the few occasions she manages to reply to his messages) which is something Adrian is always perplexed at because according to him, she is his best!!

I chose to call this cycle a clash of types. It is where love, affection, interests and so on are not reciprocated in the way the giver was expecting or deserves. It is where one person suffers that blunt of not being loved back or being cared for the way they deserve. It is where people struggle to love and care for the other who loves them too much. It is where people lie about so many things in order to make the other feel good about themselves and the relationships yet all they are telling are lies (God forbid). It is where she is interested, while he is not; because he is into another who is not. It is called a clash of types.

Can we ever solve a clash of types to make impossible relationships work? Maybe. Maybe not. I propose the following (which I will expound on later in another blog titled “So You Want Him/Her to Be Your Boyfriend/Girlfriend…?”) as ways on trying to solve a clash of types;

1. Get over it and move on
2. Play your cool, you still have a chance
3. Study their game and become their type – the art of the love language and love through suggestion
4. Have a life – stop being predictable and boring
5. Get your type to whom you are their type.

See you next time.

Bonface Morris.

I Have A Type

People interested in how I am doing - relationships-wise and generally in life - have been asking me a lot of questions of late.

These questions have been centered upon current trends in relationships and things like on-line dating (inclusive of social media hookups, stalking and WhatsApp what-nots), having "types" (which is what I am trying to address in this post) and getting the eternally evasive "Mr/Mrs Right".

These are common relationship concerns amongst people of my age, and it is obvious that we cannot (in the widest use of the word) conclusively dissolve them in a few minutes. Nope. They require time, and research, and blabbering (lots of blabbering :-)), and yeah, agreement, in order to get everyone on the same page and drive the point home. Questions on relationships are like thus... (methinks.)

So with the many questions I have been being asked, something came up: types, yeah, types. And in that discussion, we revolved around TV Shows like Tujuane (now being aired on NTV) and Are You My Type (aired on KTN).
I will give you an account of the latter.

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Just the other day, @KTNKenya started airing a dating reality TV Show called "Are You My Type?". The name on its own baffled many and it somehow stirred excitement in all of us - the kind of excitement that is always common amongst middle income Kenyans when new stuff is being introduced on our TV screens. But after the show premiered, and knowing the kind of background our African culture has handed over to us, and that we have not yet fully come to terms with adopting Reality TV Shows or anything close to them, the program has not yet received placable positive feedback (at least from what I gather on various webosphere streets).

@KTNKenya's "Are You My Type?" (#KTNMyType) is aired on Saturdays from 8-9pm, EAT.

Nevertheless, I think the TV Show (or program depending on what you think of it) is still achieving it's goal: bringing in discussions on relationships and dating and whether we can boldly and openly give a portrait of a specific person and the traits we would want to have in a partner or not. It has led to many of us pretending that "we don't have a type" or that "we DO have a type, but it is complicated", and others maintaining that a type is overrated, yet still, others calmly saying that they Do have a type.
This post is part of those discussions.

So, anyway, what is "a type?" 
To me, a type is a preference someone has for someone of the opposite sex based on various habits, character, behavior, personality and values they find [attractive] in the other person. That is a type.

And if that is the correct definition of a type, then I guess I am right to say that we all have types. Right? We all prefer a certain people to others. We all are choosy when it comes to relationships. We would rather hang around a certain league of friends, and not others. We tend to like a certain person more because of who and what they are as perceived by us (whether objectively or impulsively), and not just because they are a person. We all have a type. 

Consider this...

Take for instance, Adrian and James. They are two friends with different tastes (another word that is used alongside a type) in women. Let's say that they both are born again Christians and that they both will have one central criterion in choosing which woman suits their world - a saved lady.

Mmmmhhh... And given that time, opportunity and chance and all the other constraining factors are put at a constant, Adrian, when asked which lady he'd prefer as his woman, will give the following description; saved (as a central factor), beautiful, homely, kind, generous, outgoing, extroverted, sensitive, intuitive and so forth and so on...
On the other hand, when asked, his friend will come up with the following qualities; saved (as a central factor), faithful, introverted, calm, obedient, thoughtful, independent...
Adrian thinks that obedient and introverted women are wimps and, er, douchebags (forgive me for that), but James reiterates that such women are supportive, warmly, encouraging and comforting (considering the kind of work he does...).
You can see that there are a few differences in the choices made by the two about a lady that each would prefer - one which fits in their world, about their type...

Also consider this...

Annabelle and Susan are good friends. They have been friends from five years of age when their families were relocated to the same town and begun living in the same estate. One almost knows what the other may want in life - including men (or so they think.) Both of them are saved ladies, and will both want a saved man (that is their central factor) for a relationship. But when asked, these BFF cannot have the same choice in what they want in that saved man, or any saved man in particular!

Annabelle prefers a man that is tall, yet to Susan, height is not a factor. Annabelle prefers a well groomed man: short hair, fashion-sensitive and savvy (not necessarily formal but cool), with good eye contact, assertive and ambitious and not necessarily wealthy but earning a living and able to take care of her and her babies (yeah, she's already thinking of marriage :-)); but her friend on the other hand prefers a laid back man, well-groomed (and specifically one that loves suits and is formal in his dressing code), educated, ambitious and one who can literally "spoil her with goodies" (wealthy). Annabelle thinks that wealthy men are insensitive, loud-mouthed and braggarts, while her friend denies it and says that such men offer security both to her and to the future family...
The two friends differ in their choice of the kind of man they like.
They have types. 

A type is the key to falling in love.

After the lecture above (which actually is my distorted research), there are a few things we need to understand about having a type;

1. You have a type. He/she exists. Whether saved or not, you have a preferred type of person/spouse you want in your life and not just anyone. No one just fits in your life. No. Your relationship life revolves around picking out people with a certain balance of characteristics and values, so, yes, you have a type. Me too. :-)
2. Neither your friends nor your family conclusively know your type. They may give you suggestions and pointers, but you need to follow your heart/gut. It knows better. Like in the two illustrations above, Adrian cannot choose a lady for James, nor can James do the same for Adrian. The same goes to the ladies. One can give suggestions on what they think can suit the other but it should never be the final word. It will be catastrophic if Annabelle or either of the guys decides to put the future and worth of their relationships in their friend's hands. They'll get lost and end up regretting it in the long run. Why? Because whatever one sees in one person, is never always what the other sees in the same person... We all view and perceive people differently.
3. There are only two people that know your type: you and God, so stick to that script.
4. Sometimes, it is important to give people time. They may become your type, eventually. Don't push people away with so-called "first impressions". They may just have slipped from the norm, so give them time. Note: Remember I said sometimes... not always. Know the difference.
5. What dating (or courtship in Christian circles) does is to help one gauge the other person against various wants and needs they have. Dating/courtship is a selfish (but good way, or woreva way) of sieving amongst many people, in order to get the right type. It is a way of saying, "I am secretly interviewing you for a job, a job of taking care of me and all that I am, and I need you to fit that criterion..." :-)
6. Types are at the center of falling in love. Yes, you heard me right. We fall in love based on how other people make us feel when they are in sync with our love language (I will talk in length about the love language soon.)

Now you know you have a type, and that I have one too. Let's deal with it. We can continue living in denial -  as a way of dealing with it - or we can accept it as it is and be dealing with it too...

So, be it as it may, let's just deal with it anyway.

Until some other time,


Bonface Morris.