Finding Mr Huggie-Wuggie!

In which Tosin…

I am really conscious of the fact that I might give the impression that I am perfect, or that I think I’m perfect regarding guys and relationships. This post is to correct that impression on 2 counts. Firstly, I am not perfect (although yes, I do strive for excellence) and secondly I don’t think I’m perfect, although I do know I strive for excellence. I am a little wary of giving Too Much Information but as a quick summary firstly, absolutely nothing happened, nothing almost happened, but if I was ever in danger of thinking I was “perfect” before, or rather that I was not susceptible to the usual dangers associated with cute guys – I certainly don’t think that now! That’s part of the reason why I am now so careful with everyone! So I am not sitting here writing all this because I am somehow beyond all this. I write this blog as someone who is very, very human to other people who I know are also human. If ever I say “Take to your heels and run!”, it’s not because I don’t understand the way these feelings things work. Please trust me, I do, as much as anyone else who has ever had a crazy crush. And I also think, that sometimes reading my blog you would be forgiven for thinking that I don’t really like guys – but please believe me that honestly, seriously, that is not true!

These situations where nothing happened involved 2 very different guys, years apart, and ahem, neither of them Christians. At which point someone might be shooting me evil thoughts from the other side of the city, or of the country, or of the continent. OK, I know that one was not a Christian at all, the other one may have claimed Christian faith, but at least he would not have been the kind of Christian that my husband needs to be. Oh dear, this “Christian” thing is awkward now, and it was just as awkward then! To be blunt, I was INSANELY attracted to both of these guys. And even when I say “but nothing whatsoever happened”, I am just so grateful to God – it’s only by the grace of God that I can say that, because seriously – wow!

In fact, I still owe one of these guys an unbelievably big apology – because my behaviour was seriously, seriously atrocious and abominable, and utterly rude… If you were to read this blog, or my other blog, Tosin’s Bible Blog, then whenever I talk about myself, I talk about how I strive for Christlikeness and purity, and I pray, and I have made it my business to strive after Christ and God in every way. And that is totally true and sincere. And it was even true back then, at uni. But to this guy, I did not display excellent conduct at all. I opened my sanctified, holy, mouth, and I totally lied. My goodness, I even inadvertently played the race card. I NEVER play the race card. It’s just not my style – it never has been, it never will be.

I sometimes think, “Tosin, get over yourself, neither of these guys are reading your blog.” They probably barely remember who you are…. (after all, you know what guys are like….) OK yes, but even so, I am posting this apology here just in case there is the teeniest, weensiest chance that he may see this – that is Guy No 1. Guy No 2, I think we both know that I do not need to apologise to you (any further…)! (Well how do I know which one I was, 1 or 2 – well were you at uni with me? No? Then it’s unlikely that you’ll be 1, isn’t it! Tosin rolls her eyes….) So anyway, back to Guy No 1 – genuinely I am SO sorry. All I can say is that I am SO sorry.

OK, if nothing happened, this is what actually did happen:
Guy 1: I was SO RUDE to him, while he was unfailingly gracious to me. Once again, I don’t want to give out too much information about this (Tosin winces into her hands). In the ultra-committed Christian family that I had been brought up in, it had been drummed into our ears non-stop that God was absolutely everything, and we did not have to be told that we were not even to look at guys who did not share our faith. And then naturally, I had to go and develop this insane crush on this guy who was so emphatically not a Christian. And something you need to appreciate about my uni – it was filled to the brim, literally, with passionate and active Christians, most of them male. I spent my uni years literally running around from church meeting, to house fellowship, to Christian Union. And I met literally hundreds of Christian guys – no exaggeration. So you’d think, that if I was to choose anyone to lose my head over, I would at least have had the sense to choose a Christian! But no, right from one end of uni right through to the other end….

Why him? I have so often asked myself – “Why him?” What exactly was it about him… I know it was not a looks thing – not because there was anything at all wrong with how he looked, but frankly, the most handsome, best looking guys at the uni were actually Christians. I’m thinking of two in particular. One of these was so physically attractive, and a semi-professional athlete (I hope I have not revealed too much there!) Naturally, I did not even look at him for a second – so clearly I am not all that superficial! The other one was tall, dark, and into prayer. Did I spare even a glance in his direction? OK, actually, one or two glances, but nothing compared to the millions I lavished upon our non-Christian friend. And it was not because I was in any way a tepid or lukewarm Christian at the time, either. I have made a few extra determinations concerning my Christian walk since then, but generally, as I am committed now, so I was then. If it had been anyone else who admitted that they fancied a non-Christian, believe me that I would have been the one, not merely shouting, but even screaming the loudest. “What do you mean you like him? BUT HE’S NOT A CHRISTIAN! What part of this do you not get?! HE IS NOT A CHRISTIAN! END OF STORY!”

So what exactly about him was it? Honestly, to this day, I could not categorically say. Where did these all-consuming feelings come from?!! I was literally, sitting down, casually minding my own business, the LAST person in the universe who would have gone to uni with the slightest hope or expectation of getting a husband – in fact when I went to uni, I was still secretly hoping that I could be a child for ever, and never have to grow up – when suddenly I was assailed by these relentless feelings which totally refused to go away. And yet absolutely nothing happened. Seriously there were no talks, no discussion, NOTHING.

My one saving grace at uni, despite the magnitude of these feelings, was that I was unbelievably shy, but only with guys and only regarding these issues. Please understand that I would rather have boarded a space shuttle and flown to the other side of the universe than admit to anyone, absolutely anyone that I fancied him, let alone someone who was not a Christian. Frankly, I was so shy that even if it had been a different guy, a Christian, someone whom I could feasibly have married, who had admitted first that he liked me, even if my feelings had been exactly the same, I would still have run away. People always find it hard to believe that I ever had issues with shyness. For instance today I write different blogs, I ran a comedy channel with my sister, I put myself “out there”, I challenge different doctrines and even world-renowned pastors, “without blinking an eyelid.” However as a child, I used to be shy almost to the point of being pathologically shy – but I totally grew out of that in secondary school. The only thing that remained and refused to go, no matter how logically I lectured myself etc, was this irrational fear of guys EVEN IF THE GUY LIKED ME AS WELL! How strange was that?!

So with him, nothing happened. Nothing upon nothing upon nothing happened. (Beyond a thousand million looks, of course! So while I never admitted it, he obviously could work it out for himself…- and when I recently wrote about “staring deep into one another’s eyes” and why I would avoid that before marriage, please believe me that I was speaking from experience…) Seriously, I can say that this is someone that I never even accidentally brushed against in any way, because I was so aware of him that if we came even as close as a metre to one another, I would have started shaking uncontrollably. What I am ashamed of regarding him is that I was so rude. I would blank him completely. I barely exchanged any words with him. I physically ran past him at least twice, when we were clearly going to the same place, where the normal and friendly thing to do would have been to talk with him as we walked down. The one time I spoke to him, I attempted to justify my behaviour, and then I opened my mouth and lied, which only made things a hundred times worse. While he was unfailingly gracious(at least at first – until he started catching my behaviour! And then I thought – “Oh great!  Now I’ve even managed to corrupt him!”). Oh the shame!

So you know for ages I have known that I owe this guy a serious apology – but how to do it? These feelings were so intense – I cannot play with them, I cannot casually allude to them, I cannot even laugh it off that this was a long time ago. This was someone I just cannot be friends with for the rest of my life. I cannot add him as a friend on Facebook. I just have to keep a nice wide berth. If I could I would say “Please don’t hate me! Please don’t feel awkward around Black women because of me….! I know you might think that I hate you, but that was part of the lie! OK, admittedly there was that too, but I am totally over that by now!”
And then there is the even bigger question of faith. This guy was not a Christian. I ask myself – “Tosin, how could your actions possibly have been calculated to bring him closer to Christ?” As he watched me being totally rude, and lying, surely this could only have been the biggest turn-off…. So when I’m writing out these words, I always think that there is at least one person who is entitled to laugh very sarcastically when I talk about my ideals and my striving for high standards.
So yes, that was Guy No 1!

But you know what, it is because of him that I have made up my mind that I HAVE to be crazy, like totally crazy, about my husband. People might look at this account of this non-relationship, and think “Infatuation!” Well you know what, if that was infatuation, then there is going to have to be a great deal of this same infatuation in my eventual marriage, and I am not going anywhere without it! (Tosin crosses her arms and glowers angrily like a naughty child…) It is also because of all of this that I know I am not immune to adultery, let’s be blunt, and I can never deceive myself that I am in any way immune. But it was also after all this that I made up my mind, that by the grace of God, I must NEVER, NEVER make a guy-shaped mistake. That includes pre-marital sex, and it also includes adultery after marriage. But you know what, it also includes marrying the wrong guy. All of these are just too costly. That is why I am SO CAREFUL with guys. And yet, and yet… Tosin sighs – let’s go on to Guy No 2!

So you’d think that I’d have thoroughly learnt my lesson about guys who were not Christians, right?! But you’d be wrong! Unfortunately, there was an added complication with Guy No 2 that he came from one of these countries where people automatically think of themselves and refer to themselves as being Christians – a country steeped in thousands of years of Christian heritage, and where people always go to Church and light candles and chant prayers at Christmas and Easter, but where practically speaking, the idea of having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God might seem a bit alien, or even wacky, and where faith does not really touch people’s lives, beyond aiming to be “a good person”. So if I were to look at someone, I would say “this person is not a Christian, because he does not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. Whereas this person might say “Of course I’m a Christian….” And then of course there’s the fact that my own African background is so comparatively new to the faith. How dare someone from Africa challenge him like that! We did not actually have this discussion. I’m just trying to imagine what he might have made of all this.

I went from one extreme in shyness with 1 to another extreme with 2 – in that, oh my goodness, I chased him. Like seriously, I did not mince my words at all. But you know what, that is not what I am ashamed of. Part of the chasing thing was part of the circumstances of the thing – I accidentally revealed that I liked him, and then I just kept going on about it. What he did not know was that in going on and on about it I was trying to defeat my own guy-shyness demons. I would never have voluntarily admitted that I liked him to him either, but since he definitely knew, and this genie was never going back into the bottle, I just kept going on about it. If he’d witnessed my behaviour a few years earlier, he might have understood.
Actually, I lied to him too – but this time it was without opening my mouth – all the same, he never trusted me – and who could blame him? But even that is not what I am ashamed of. What I am ashamed with regarding him is that (it’s so hard to say these words!) I once danced very, very provocatively for his viewing benefit, and I gave him this very hot look – I flirted outrageously. Thankfully this guy did not flirt back. Now all of this took place in a very public venue with lots of people, and thankfully something eventually stirred in me, and I thought “What am I doing here?!” And I took to my feet and I ran away as fast as I could. So thankfully, once again God preserved me. But that is definitely the closest I ever want to come to doing anything so stupid.

Part of me would love to downplay this dance and this look and pretend for you all that they were not that bad but believe me, they were bad. It was like pure seduction. The poor guy did not know where to look. Now unfortunately this came after the whole “I know you’re a Christian but you’re not quite the right kind of Christian for me”… thing. (Not because he asked me out, but because I was pre-empting him.) And I thought – “Great, now he’s going to think I am trying to seduce him into some weird kind of cult… ” So then I had to apologise, but because I was too shy to apologise in person I had to apologise via….. In fact, I was too shy to conduct any of these communications face to face….

And I needed to convince him that I was a real Christian, and that I subscribed to the standard Bible, and that I believed and professed the standard word of God….and that is how Tosin’s Bible Blog was born! I had been planning and thinking of writing a Christian themed blog for some time – I had been working on the comedy channel with my sister, and while I loved that, and still do, I always felt as if my first priority was to focus on something to glorify God specifically. So I finally jumped into it. It’s funny, as he is now long gone, but the blog remains. In fact, he is now married. I had already “let it go” by the time he got married, but still, I was a little disappointed…
Naturally, this is also someone with whom I have had to break off all interactions.

What I got from No 2 is that while “guy rules” are good, and absolutely necessary, I have to be aggressive about uprooting these feelings from my heart. Actually, I should also have learnt that from Guy 1…( “Guy rules” are these basic and common sense principles I put into place after Guy 1 to prevent myself from getting too close to guys, or getting into silly situations, especially late at night, when everyone is tired, and judgement is impaired…However, I always knew that they failed to address the issue of my own thoughts, and the whole Guy 2 thing emphatically demonstrated this!)
With Guy 2, I kept thinking “Well God, this is after all the second time this has happened to me! If I were to walk away from this guy, would I ever find someone else I could feel crazy about like this guy?” Guy 1 had been years ago. “God, am I to wait another x years before I find someone I could be crazy about like this again?” So I really did not want to uproot these feelings from my heart. However, I hope I’m a bit wiser now.

After the whole chasing thing with Guy 2, I have also stopped being shy. I don’t know how it happened, but I can suddenly now speak to guys. I think that with any guy who expresses an interest in me, (or vice versa! – but I’m definitely not going to chase a guy again) it is still going to be incredibly awkward – but nowhere near to the same level as before, where I used to be paralysed, and I physically could not admit these things. I honestly don’t know where or how that shyness went, but it has finally gone, and it has gone for good!

So sometimes, when I’m writing away on my Huggie-Wuggie blog, I think “Hmm, perhaps I’m only writing this, itemising criteria in such precise detail, because I am not REALLY crazy about someone. How many of these criteria would stand when I actually meet someone who manages to stir up these feelings to the extent that these two guys managed it?!”