Love Life is a Naijaonpoint weekly series about love, relationships, situationships, entanglements and everything in between.
Rosie (29) and Xo (33) met in August 2023, a year into Rosie’s US embassy posting in Nigeria, when she was still struggling to feel at home.
On this week’s Love Life, they talk about a seven-hour first date, a breakup sparked by malaria, and how they rebuilt trust and their relationship across continents before deciding to build a business together too.
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Rosie: I’d arrived in Nigeria in 2022 for work and struggled to settle in during the first year. I didn’t have many friends and wasn’t acclimated to the environment. Around August 2023, a colleague I’d known for a year mentioned this guy she thought I’d get along with. She said he was hardworking, was building a business, and was open to making new friends.
I gave her permission to pass along my number, and that’s how we started talking.
Xo: I’d actually worked with our mutual friend on an interior design job. One day, she reached out and told me about her amazing friend she thought I’d connect with. I asked if she meant just friends or something more, and she said she’d leave that up to us. I said, “Sure, send me the number.”
Rosie: Oh yes, I did. And the only one I got was from the COVID era. He had a mask on, so all I could really see were his eyes. Still, I was very drawn to his eyes. They looked kind. I told myself, even if he turns out to be ugly, he seems like he’d make a good friend.
Xo: My friend sent me a picture of Rosie, too, and my first question was, “She’s not Nigerian?” I hadn’t really been around people outside my race, so even the idea of just being friends felt new and exciting. But honestly, I couldn’t miss the fact that she was beautiful.
Rosie: He texted first and asked if he could call, and I immediately said no. I’m not a phone call person, especially with someone I don’t know yet. But he didn’t have a problem with my preference, so we got into texting.
Xo: The conversations were pretty basic, since I was often out of town and only texted when I had free moments. I don’t think she was too impressed with how reluctant I seemed, but we kept it going.
Rosie: It was a lot of getting to know each other, and we went back and forth for a few weeks before he finally asked us to meet in person.
Xo: I was going to be in town the following week and wanted to see her. We met for the first time on August 26, 2023.
Rosie: I remember being so strict about the details. I told him to give me an exact time and place because I don’t like waiting around. I think that’s part of why he chose to meet somewhere near his workplace, since he knew for sure he’d be there.
Xo: I still had to work that day, so I told her I’d be finishing up on my laptop when she arrived and asked if it was fine. She completely understood. When she got there, I stepped outside to meet her, and she just looked incredible in her black dress. When we got inside, I closed my laptop and tried to make conversation to avoid any awkwardness.
After I finished up with work, we went to a restaurant in Wuse. We also went to see a movie, but while we waited for the time slot, we killed time with margaritas at a Mexican spot. We continued talking, and everything felt so natural. Before we knew it, we’d spent about seven hours on our first date.
Rosie: Everything he said. He was already being sweet and kind from the moment I arrived. He opened doors, checked in on me and constantly made sure I was comfortable. I actually liked that we met near his workplace. I’d been looking for someone with the same hardworking energy as me, and seeing him in his element shifted things for me almost immediately. I went from “oh, this could just be a friend,” to wanting to explore this romantically. And yes, he was very good-looking in person, which helped.
The date was really sweet, even though I was nervous.
Rosie: I’m actually not a nervous person because my job requires me to interact with people constantly. But I felt that way because some part of me already knew I’d just met my future husband.
Rosie: I went home smiling and called my mum immediately to tell her all about him. We kept texting after that, though I’ll say Xo was a pretty bad texter it was honestly annoying.
About a week later, he asked to meet up again, and I figured, let’s just see how the second date goes, maybe he’s just bad at texting but good at showing up.
The second date was also really good. We went to eat and tried an activity I’d never tried before. I think he’d picked up on my love for new experiences from our earlier conversations. After that date, I told him directly that he needed to work on his texting, and he explained he was just deep in the building phase of his company at the time.
Xo: You know, on our first date, I told her I was going to marry her. It wasn’t a serious down on one knee kind of statement, more just something I felt deep down and said out loud. But even though I knew that early, we didn’t rush into anything. We’d actually talked about it and agreed we weren’t looking for a relationship at that point, so we kept things as they were for a while.
Rosie: When he said that about marriage on the first date, I didn’t find it weird at all, which surprised me, because normally that kind of statement would freak me out. I think I even said something suggesting that I agreed.
But as I said, I had reservations about jumping into a relationship. I’d come out of a long-term relationship before, and I’d told myself the next person I dated had to be the one, no in between. So I wanted to really get to know him first, make sure I was okay with everything about him before committing.
Over the following months, he showed up consistently and intentionally. He planned dates around small things I’d mentioned in passing, like a tea party or having his team set up a mirror for me because I’d casually mentioned not having one. The fact that he actually listened meant a lot, and he eventually became a much better texter. But there was still this nagging worry, since I already knew my posting in Nigeria would end in late July 2024, and I didn’t know whether starting something serious made sense given the distance ahead.
Xo: Whenever she brought that up, my answer was always some version of, “We’ll figure it out.” I just wanted us to enjoy and cherish the moment we had together without borrowing grief from the future. And I managed to douse her worries until she asked us to take a pause.
Rosie: I travelled home to the US for Christmas around mid-December 2023, and before I left, I told him we should hold off for a bit. I needed time to think.
For that entire week apart, I was miserable and couldn’t stop thinking about reaching back out. I met up with a friend in the US who asked if I was seeing anyone, and when I brought up Xo, she pointed out that my whole face lit up when I talked about him. That was enough for me to reach out and apologise for suggesting we pause things.
Xo: I understood there were a lot of uncertainties for us, especially around where her job would post her next. But I commit fully once I set my mind on something. I already knew I wanted Rosie, so whatever it took, I was ready. When she said we should hold off, I wasn’t happy about it, but I gave her the space anyway and just hoped she’d come around, which she eventually did. And that’s when we became official.
Rosie: I travelled to Peru for two weeks after the US trip, and we were on FaceTime constantly the whole time. I remember hoping that we’d make it official once I got back to Nigeria, though I never said it outright. I think he picked up on it from how much we were talking. I returned to Nigeria around mid-January 2024.
Xo: When she got back, I went straight to the point. I told her there was no need to beat around the bush, that we both clearly knew how we felt. She agreed, and that was when I knew this was serious.
Rosie: It was beautiful. I like routines, so we settled into a weekly date rhythm, while he brought more spontaneity to things. We started planning our first trip together, and ended up in the Seychelles that May.
The trip was an emotional one. I cried more than half the time we were there, because I already knew my time in Nigeria was running out. We had a lot of conversations about how we’d manage long-distance, and I’d get frustrated when his answer was still just “We’ll figure it out.” But outside of our relationship, I also really got to know his culture, the food, the music. Before him, I couldn’t handle spicy food at all; now I’m the one asking for extra pepper. I also met his friends, and they were so welcoming. It reminded me of how warmly I’d been received when I first built a life in Nigeria.
Xo: That early stretch of the relationship was genuinely sweet and challenging at the same time. I knew I’d found someone I wanted to spend my life with, even as I knew she’d be leaving soon. It was a difficult trope to navigate.
Blending two different cultures wasn’t always smooth, especially around food and music, and there were quiet moments at home where I’d think, after all this, she’s just going to leave. But I never seriously considered walking away. I just kept telling myself, “Let’s make the memories now,” and I’d keep making the effort for us, regardless of what was coming.
Rosie: It was another bittersweet moment. So after all these months dreading the elephant in the room, the time to leave finally crept up on us. I got malaria that July. It was pretty bad, so I ended up in the hospital. It felt like the worst possible timing because I was supposed to be packing to leave. Luckily, my mum was around in Nigeria to help me pack.
During this time, Xo would come to the hospital, but he wasn’t there the entire time; he’d leave and come back. Where I come from, if your partner is hospitalised, you stay with them the entire time; you don’t go home. That difference in expectation became a real issue between us. It led to one of our biggest fights, and we’ve never shared this publicly before now.
Xo: Here’s the thing: I’m a Nigerian living in Nigeria. I get malaria myself every couple of months, and it was never a life-threatening condition. So my instinct was to treat it the way I always did. I didn’t realise how much harder it hit her since it was her first time getting malaria.
I was in and out of the hospital for about three days. But because of how she was feeling, physically and emotionally, she ended up telling me it wasn’t enough. She said I wasn’t there the way she needed me to be, and she broke things off with me.
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