Paul was startled out of his dream by his phone ringing… He was taking an afternoon siesta when he found himself in dream land…he was glad to be awakened by the phone as the dream he was having was giving him cold sweat.

It was his childhood friend on the phone, who was calling to ask about him and catch up on old times. After much banter and laughter, his friend asked him,”How’s your wife?”.

Paul was in his mid thirties, a dashing young man, with a responsible , serious mien around him.  He’s held in high esteem, and highly thought of by all and sundry. He was a role model of hard work, consistency and integrity.

One of the guiding principles Paul lived by, is to be sincere in his actions and relations with people. He never camouflaged his dislike nor his like, he was plain as day.

“What do you want with me? Why are you not asking me out? What’s the definition of what we have?” Oge fired this questions at Paul when he went visiting her. He was quite surprised and slightly amused at the questions she asked. “What do you expect”…i have always answered you” Paul countered her question…She fired back at him, “I have asked you all these while, but you never responded!”

He chuckled to himself, truthfully, she had asked him that question each time they saw but had always wondered, what else she wanted seeing the relationship had been defined years ago…”just friends..no dating”. He informed her, “You had defined it earlier, are you now changing your mind about it?” “You have been coming around, we are close, we talk about different things..i tell my Mum about you, and our friends are always asking, why are you guys not dating?!” Paul countered, “But i come around like once in two months, you hardly pick your calls when i call you and you rarely respond to pings on bbm so how on earth is it adding up??!!”  He continued,”you are hardly available,  and i have others who are much more accessible than you”.

Has he left for home, he meditated on their conversation and tried to do the maths on it, but came up with negative. It all didn’t add. Given all the women around him, she never entered into the top 3. Well, not that he was a ladies man but the few he had..it just never occurred to him and still didn’t fit into the image of the kind of wife he want to have in his home.

“It seems this week, people are really on my case as regards marriage oo!” He thought to himself. Earlier in the week, two of his customers had approached him and in the course of interaction asked him if he was married and the Ladies, elderly women were taken aback that he was not. One of them, told him point-blank, “Its a priority for me to make sure you get married in the next 3 months!” He smiled sheepishly, as he remembered the encounter asked himself, “is it that i can’t love or i don’t want to deceive?”

He thought of Oge, he knew all her antecedents, and her encounters… Is it after been there, done that, that she’s looking for someone more responsible to settle down with and get her life in the balance? “Are you judging her?” The question popped in his mind, and he answered, “Far be it from it….everyone has a past they want to forget and a future they want to cling too” To him, she’s just trying to make a volte-face on the issue after meeting with several disappointments and let down. He liked it the way it had been defined earlier, no strings attached, friendship and fun. But now changing the rules of the game, is the least thing he was expecting, it will be the height of deception to go along with it.

“Hi Paul, where are you?” “Hi Tinu, am en route work, anything?”

Tinu, he met through a friend, and they had struck it up immediately. Interestingly, he had asked Tinu out a while back in which she responded she had a boyfriend, its best for them to keep it at the level it was. They both talk alot and see often, mostly on weekends when they are both free and enjoy each other’s company.

Paul had one bad attribute, he knows how to connect dates, events and sayings together to piece together whatever story anyone is feeding him. He had probed Tinu, during one of their times together about her boyfriend and found her response to be inconsistent with what she had told him earlier on, and with the factual dates and time frame. And truly, Tinu didn’t want Paul knowing somethings about her which she was scared will scare him off or make him think of her the less. When Paul had confronted her when they had a disagreement over an issue sometime past which alluded to her past, she had used a bold face for him and denied knowing what Paul was confronting her on….She’s was not sure Paul believed her, but one thing she knew, Paul will go for the kill if he finds out the truth eventually, and that she was scared.

For Paul, Tinu was playing a game of keep and let’s keep keeping. He wanted to love her and give her his attention, but the story he heard and that he knew of which, he had confronted her on and she denied, burns at the back of his mind begging for an answer that was not forthcoming. In his mind, he can’t see how it will work out, knowing his friend had cheated on his fiancé then with her….and she was not forthcoming on it. Tinu stands a fairer chance than Oge with him, and she has been quite close to him of late. But his heart is not with her. He’s just after the motions which s what he fears the most. In his mind, it’s better we know what we are dealing with head on, than try to act like nothing is amiss. Knowing the kind of person she was, he can easily play the game of loving her while not really loving her still he meets the one he truly loves and then ditch her. It’s a game he had seen his friends play and had consciously avoided playing it to avoid a guilty conscience. But seems now, its a game of love and deception they both want to play. May the best man win!

For Paul, he had believed that, don’t go into a date if you are not ready to ahead with marriage. In all his encounters with his many ‘girlfriends’ he had consciously stayed out of the troubled waters of going into a relationship, making his friends label him as JJ Okocha, that will dribble but will not score a goal. Most of the women he met way back in school that had hoped for something from him, were now married so also most of his pals. Most played the game, others didn’t play the game.

So when his friend asked him, “What of your wife?” He realized right there that all his friends were almost married with kids. He is still dilly dallying playing the game of love and deceit. But its a game that is bound to be played depending on the rules you want to play by.

You either play by the Good BOOK or you play by the book. Talking about love and deception does not necessarily translate into the literal meaning. The process of finding the right person is not absolute and without its rigors. The good BOOK says, “he that finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” Its he that finds…..meaning in the process, you will find things that are not valuable and things that are valuable. Its like digging for gold and diamonds.

You pass through dirt and sweat to get to it. And when you find it, you have hit  a jackpot of wealth if the source is a natural source that runs deep into the recess of the earth. In this wise, the source is from God.

Love and deception, gains and loss, risk and investment all go hand in hand till the right mix is established.

For Paul, he needs to play that game, if he want to be wealthy the way he ought to be according to the divine will.

And play he must!!!