I crossed paths with a stranger a few years ago during one of my trips. He had mentioned his age but it didn’t matter to me as I wasn’t looking for anything, though during that meeting I did think, wow, fun company. I thought nothing more of it, we exchanged contacts and that was it. We kept in touch and met less than a handful of times for dinner whilst I was traveling, would connect every now and then over the phone until the conversation started to steer.
During one of our phone conversations, he mentioned he had something to confess. Says he is older, ten years older than the initial number he had given me, if I am not mistaken. I thought it was weird, and his intention clearly was not pure. Otherwise why would he lie about something so basic yet important and, as a result, possibly put me at a disadvantage.
Not long after, in came the overdrawn flattery and professing, and when I asked him to elaborate to give me some understanding, he hit me with the “let’s go with the flow and see what happens.” You see, if there is one thing I do not take lightly, it is older people who present as noble while in the same breath try to insult my intelligence. A woman who accepts “let’s just chill and go with the flow” is what you raise your daughters to be. “Let’s go with the flow” is the leftovers you serve your dogs if you keep any, but you have no right trying to offer such absurdity to somebody else’s daughter.
I was sickened by the patronizing attitude I was met with when I asked for some understanding, which obviously did not match the performative grand language, flattery, and intensity of the sudden pursuit. There was no excuse, as this was someone old enough to know better. So, without wasting another second, I nipped it in the bud, or so I thought.
A year or so passed, then came a call whilst I was in high spirits. I picked it up, and we became reacquainted. He is going in for the kill again, and I’m thinking, he seems relentless and there are still lessons to be learnt, so why not? I bite, and he is once again full force with the flattery and pursuit.
Being the practical woman that I am, I go in with a practical test. I introduce something urgent, concrete, not outrageous but solvable, to see whether his proclaimed seriousness translated into actual provision, reliability, or action. He immediately redirected toward fantasy, travel, emotional language, and sexual escalation. Honestly, I should have ended it there again because his behavior in that instant already told me all I needed to know. People reveal priorities through what they enthusiastically move toward versus what they strategically avoid, but that would not have been much fun, so I indulged more.
I’m observing, salacious demands are being made, I’m playing coy and asking for clarity, and my excuse is I do not want to shoot myself in the foot and assume what is not there. Regardless of my intention, the request was pretty logical, and any well-intentioned person would’ve been more than happy to give me some or any clarity. But here I was being made to feel like the rigid and immature one. What came to mind in that instant was our saying I like to use with a little twist of mine: who mean you well no go stress you.
Then came the grand discovery, “we’re both adults.” You don’t say! That was closely followed by, “let’s just go with the flow and see what happens,” and one of my other favorites, “We like each other, let’s just chill.” My oh my! By then, I was ready to throw in the towel and admit I wasn’t cut out for these mind games after all. In all honesty, I imagine I was moreso disappointed because a tiny part of me held out hope. I wanted to be proven wrong about everything. Instead, reality struck and the image completely collapsed.
Don’t get me wrong, my expectations of people are usually quite low. I assume most people are simple-minded and act accordingly. If they manage to rise above that, I’m left thinking, wow, I didn’t know they had it in them. If they don’t, they are simply meeting my baseline. But every now and then, I guess the human in me does come out after all.
Still, I put my big girl’s boots on, created some space, and let him get comfortable to see what other tricks he had up his sleeves. We were talking, and once again, I found myself listening in complete bewilderment to emotionally loaded words that held absolutely no concrete meaning. He spoke about wanting to give me “all of himself,” wanting to care for my “mind, body, and spirit,” and presented himself as emotionally expansive and deeply intentional, yet every attempt to obtain practical clarity collapsed into vagueness, abstraction, or deflection. And let’s be honest, “let’s go with the flow” sounds entirely ridiculous coming from a grown man with adult children who should at least be intentional about how he treats people.
It suddenly dawned on me that many people hide behind emotionally aesthetic language because concrete language creates accountability. The moment things are plainly defined, their words can also be evaluated plainly.
At this point, I’m at my wits’ end. I’ve had enough, and there is no salvaging this. It was clearly ridiculous of me to expect an older, established man to at least be coherent, direct, and self-aware about the dynamic he was hinting at. Instead, he constantly and intentionally oscillated between grand emotional rhetoric and strategic ambiguity.
It was a rollercoaster, and I was happy to be done with it. But a short while later, another call came through. I answered and listened attentively to his half-hearted apologies when suddenly, the conversation took an abrupt sexual turn. Wasting no time, I reintroduced my earlier test.
In what I suppose was an attempt to embarrass me, he dropped the “gold digger” question which, in all honesty, was just comical because we both know that no woman my age is looking at a man his age because he is her fairytale prince. And so stripping that delusion away leaves only one obvious incentive. Knowing that he knew that I knew exactly what was happening, his motive for asking that question completely exposed him.
I didn’t back down. I answered yes and even added a full elaboration to go with my response, pro bono. I suppose my bluntness shocked him because he immediately tried to backtrack, attempting to make light of the very trap he had tried to set. He then pivoted and claimed he was going to give me what I wanted.
“Give me what I want?” I asked.
He affirmed it, telling me he would call me back so I could tell him exactly what I wanted from him.
“Tell you what I want from you?” I repeated.
He said yes.
I chuckled, utterly unable to believe the sheer farce and audacity of a man who initially presented as a harmless mentor, then offered friendship, and suddenly wanted intimacy disguised as romantic pursuit, only to turn around and shift the responsibility onto me to define his intentions and do his emotional work. Mind you, at this point, I truly did not believe he could manage to be any more disappointing, but boy, was I mistaken. He could hear the disbelief in my voice, and I imagine that in a desperate bid to salvage the situation, he blurted out that I knew him and that he was “good for it.”
I told him I did not in fact know him and, as a matter of fact, our actual interaction history did not substantiate that level of certainty either. Less than a handful of dinners, a few long phone calls over several years, and intermittent pursuit are not remotely enough evidence to genuinely “know” someone, especially a potentially married man whose real day-to-day life I have never fully shared.
In all of this, what broke my heart most was the glaring realization that many naive women would never stand a chance against this person and others of his kind. It is unfortunate, but the reality is that many women are unable to distinguish between emotional language and demonstrated reality. They tend to collapse those two concepts together merely because someone sounds sincere, articulate, generous, emotionally expressive, mature, or is simply their type.
His “you know me, and you know I’m good for it” was one of the weakest plays in his very basic game because it tried to bypass the very process through which trust is actually built. You see, trust is not declared into existence; rather, it is accumulated through observable behavior over time within a real, accountable context. Only a person’s behavior can expose the limits of their proclaimed intentions, which is why the practical moments often reveal far more truth than the poetic ones.
Operating with emotional expansiveness while simultaneously refusing to give clarity, attempting sexual access anyway, dodging practical support, and then framing a simple request as potential gold digging creates a very sinister form of psychological whiplash. It is a textbook display of predatory behavior, a calculated mind game disguised as a soul connection, engineered by a predator who weaponizes pseudo-spiritual intimacy just to mask his utter lack of substance and real character.
This is where many women sadly fail: they get emotionally affected by words instead of analyzing behavior structurally. For a certain class of men, women are nothing but prey, hunted with the sole intention of being devoured by a voracious lust that not even Almighty Mother Nature can slow down. As my people say: fine girl wey no get sense, na in between her legs dey suffer. And so for this reason, discernment for women is not optional; it is instrumental to our very survival if we desire a healthy and meaningful life, one that will not leave us bitter and filled with resentment in our old age.
For women, vulnerability without discernment is weakness and detrimental to our very existence. Those who cannot evaluate the congruence between words, actions, incentives, and reality are easily destabilized, especially by men skilled at emotional performance. The worst part is that manipulation rarely looks like manipulation at first. Oftentimes, it arrives wrapped in warmth, sophistication, patience, emotional language, perceived wisdom, age, status, or tenderness. Labels like “girl dad” and “doting father,” or proclamations like “everything I’m doing is for my daughter,” become emotionally loaded tools weaponized to work you, and often not in your favor. Yet women are socialized to interpret this expressive language as evidence of sincerity or depth, especially when it comes from older men or men in general who appear polished or experienced.
This is also why, in spite of my culture and upbringing, an older person will never get automatic respect from me simply because of their age. Life has taught me that old age alone does not produce integrity, wisdom, or discipline. More often than not, it merely creates a more refined and sophisticated manipulator. With time, many people simply become more sophisticated at presentation and not necessarily more ethical.
Therefore, discernment, which is the ability to separate what sounds profound from what is materially and behaviorally consistent, is the only skill set that can protect women from these ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing.
I know it might be hard for some women to recognize, but the truth is someone can spend hours or weeks on the phone with you, speak softly, sound emotionally intelligent, talk about spirituality and connection, praise your mind, discuss destiny and care, and say they want to “pour into you,” while still fundamentally operating from self-interest and opportunism.
When a man genuinely means those grand promises of care, he can easily explain them in practical, observable terms. True intent is backed by emotional consistency, acts of provision, and a clear effort to improve your life both materially and psychologically. But when someone continually speaks in abstract, emotionally grand language that collapses under scrutiny, it means the feeling they want to create is clearer than the actual reality they are offering because, in the end, clarity usually simplifies while manipulative ambiguity always expands.
So please, do not fall for the long, philosophical-sounding monologues that sound emotionally deep while remaining structurally weightless, serving as mere smoke and mirrors to cloud your judgment. Feign ignorance if you must and make him explain it to you, because specificity instantly exposes whether substance actually exists underneath the rhetoric.
Who mean you well no go stress you. In the end, no man who genuinely means you well will approach you with poetic abstraction as opposed to tangible definition. Still, you should sharpen your mind so you can spot their basic game from anywhere and be able to tell them to kick rocks as they are clearly inconsequential to your existence.
Prior to this, I always thought the most dangerous men were the ones who were obviously reckless, but I now realize I was mistaken. The most dangerous men are those who package selfishness inside gentleness, emotional fluency, mentorship, provision language, or pseudo-depth.
