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Let’s be honest, there are celebrities we wish we could bag, but those celebrities overlook us and get married to someone else. Yes, we are heartbroken, but their partners are equally hot and gorgeous, so nothing spoil. We just want these celebrities to open their marriage for us to enter.
Here’s a list of some of the celebrities we are begging to do this for us:
1. Nse Ikpe-Etim and Clifford Sule
Each time Nse Ikpe-Etim appears on the screen, we are blown away by her hotness. Now imagine how we felt when we found out about her equally hot husband. See ehn, we are not even asking for much. If it’s to be sleeping on the bedroom floor, we will take it like that. They should just open this marriage small, we are already at the door.
2. Daniel Etim Effiong and Toyosi Phillips
Daniel Etim Effiong can get it anytime. And his wife? She can own it forever. But do they want it though? That’s why we are praying and fasting for them to open this marriage. We promise not to bring anybody else in. Once we enter, they can padlock it back.
3. Linda Ejiofor and Ibrahim Suleiman
Each time we see this couple declare love and sweet things to each other, we are reminded of how single we are and how tired our duvets are. Dear Linda and Ibrahim, we beg you in the name of Eros, the Greek god of love. Please nau, give us some of this sweet things you are enjoying. We just want to wear matching pyjamas with you this Christmas.
4. Naeto C and Nicole Chikwe
See power couple nau. Just look at the beauty. Naeto C and Nicole Chikwe, we know you both are “5 and 6“, and there’s nothing between both numbers, but we beg you, can we be the “&” symbol so we are sandwiched between you both? 🥺
5. Simi and AG Baby
AG Baby and Simi should just hurry up and let us in. Is it Deja? They should not worry, we will take care of her. Just open this marriage and give us chair. We will braid AG Baby’s hair and do back-up for Simi, if we have to. Just let us in!
6. Banky W and Adesua Etomi
We are already a part of Susu and Banky’s marriage, they just don’t know it yet. It is when they wake up one midnight and see us blowing them breeze that they will realise it. Love kuku conquers all.
7. Ladipoe and whoever he is married to.
LADIPOE? LADIPOE? LADIPOE? How many times did we call you? First of all, we thought you were single, and then we heard the gist that you are married. We are not angry, we even wrote an article about 8 Simple Ways To Snatch Someone’s Husband And Go Scot-Free, but that did not work. So, we come to you as a publication to beg you for space. We don’t know who you’re married to, but we promise to love her equally.
8. Joke Silva and Olu Jacobs
We just want a love that will last, the same way Olu Jacobs and Joke Silva have lasted together this long. Please ma, please sir, just shift small, let us enter this union and tap anointing. Please.
9. Temi Otedola and Mr. Eazi
Yes, we know they’re not married, but we are booking space in advance for when they marry. Relationship is already sweet, and there is money plus fame. Even if they put us in the backyard, we are fine with it.
10. Ebuka Obi-Uchendu and Cynthia Obi-Uchendu
Ebuka is drop dead gorgeous with a top-notch fashion sense. As if that is not enough, he is married to Cynthia, an equally gorgeous woman. We often see their banter on Twitter, and their chemistry is enough to zap us out of loneliness. So, we beg and grovel and plead: Dear Ebuka and Cynthia, we have brought our own padlock and spare key. Please open the door of your marriage for us, let us enjoy some of what you are enjoying.
Love Lifeis a Zikoko weekly series about love, relationships, situationships, entanglements and everything in between.
Audio: Opening Our Marriage Felt Natural
Charles*, 31, and Rukky*, 30, have been together for a little over a decade. For today’s Love Life, they talk about opening their marriage, dating other people as a unit and why communication is the most important thing.
What’s your earliest memory of each other?
Rukky: This was around 2009. We were in the same faculty and had mutual friends, so we always ran into each other. The day I noticed that I liked him, however, was when I tagged along with a friend to his place.
We talked for a bit about a bunch of different topics, and I just found him interesting.
Charles: One of my friends invited me to a birthday party, and Rukky came with another of our friends. We started talking then, but apparently, she don dey eye me since. This is the story I’m sticking to.
Wait. These are two different scenarios.
Charles: LMAO. Yes. She had come to my house a day or two before the birthday party, but I didn’t really notice her. You know this thing where you see your guy with a chick, but you don’t really see her? Like, she’s just another bro? Yeah.
When did you stop seeing her as “just another bro”?
Rukky: When he gave me penis. LOL.
Charles: LMAO. One day, I saw her outside, and she looked so hot. Her legs just kept going and going and going — they seemed to go on forever. I spent about 30 seconds gawking at her, and that’s when I stopped seeing her as a bro.
I knew I wanted to be all up in her guts.
LMAO. What happened next?
Charles: I had to make sure we were on the same page. Thankfully, she was feeling the boy already. The next thing I did was to talk to the guy I met her with. I didn’t want it to seem like I snatched his babe, so I went to him as a man.
He said they were just friends, and it was fine for me to toast; something I had already started doing.
Rukky: Since we always ran into each other, I never made concrete plans to see him; I just knew I would. Then we started chatting on Facebook regularly and hanging out at events. We just kept spending more and more time together.
When were feelings caught?
Charles: I’m not sure. We both came into this not wanting anything serious; it was just meant to be fun. Once her neighbours in the hostel knew my name, we knew it was getting serious.
We were spending more time together than apart. She said she loved me for the first time while we were having sex, but I ignored it. You can’t trust anything a woman says while getting pipe.
Well, it turns out she was serious. It took me a bit longer to get there despite having the same feelings. Moving away from the “We’re just having fun” mindset into an “I love you” one was hard.
Rukky: I didn’t plan to put any expectations on him, but I also needed him to know that my feelings were getting strong; I could see that his were too. So, I wanted to know if it was what I thought or if I’d need to begin curbing my feelings.
Even if he didn’t feel the same, I was ready to remain friends. I just needed to know.
When did it become official?
Charles: The minute I said, “I love you.” You don’t say that kind of thing and then act like you’re not dating. I sort of feel bad I never asked her out officially. I feel like we let many of our relationship milestones happen organically.
No big “Be my girlfriend” or “Be my wife” speech. She is against big shows.
Rukky: That’s why I love our relationship. Everything has been effortless.
How long did you date before you got married?
Charles: For about six years. We moved in together very early though.
What was dating like?
Rukky: It was like hanging out with my best friend all the time. We had so much fun, and even the not-so-fun times were spent together. We helped each other through everything, and we were always there for each other.
Sometimes, I don’t blame our families for the way they reacted to us.
How did they react?
Rukky: I think they felt we were too intense. They still feel that way. We were in our little bubble, and they felt left out. I see how that kind of dynamic could go very wrong, but in our case, it went right.
Charles: Yeah. I mean, try introducing a woman to your mother for the first time with the line: “This one is going to be my wife.” It was shock and one million questions about tribe and all of that. I’m a stubborn goat, so I shut that down really early.
Our parents say we’re not really married, we’re just friends living together.
Rukky: LMAO. We still do everything together — the same way we did as boyfriend and girlfriend. I get why it worried them. It’s like giving birth and 25 years later, you somehow see your single kid as a conjoined twin.
It might be why we find it easy to handle more people. We are essentially one unit.
Charles: Wow. I never thought about it like that. You see why I married you, smarty pants.
Wait. What do you mean by “handle more people”?
Rukky: Our marriage is open, so handling more people in our relationship.
Oh? What’s that like?
Charles: It’s not open in the way most people immediately think. Yes, you can sleep with other people, but you have to have a conversation about the person first. The other partner has to be completely fine with it for it to happen.
Interesting. When did you decide to open your relationship?
Charles: Hard to say. As with most things in our relationship, it happened organically. It developed from honest conversations about the people we fancied and our confidence in our relationship.
Rukky: It was probably within the first few years. Around that time, I was owning my bisexuality, and he was willing to follow me on that journey. It kind of evolved from that into an open relationship.
Rukky, tell me about the journey of owning your bisexuality?
Rukky: So, I’ve always known I like men and women, but I thought I had to choose one. I chose men. I still felt the attraction to women, but I thought I couldn’t pursue that. With Charles, I found that I could.
I started letting myself appreciate the bodies of women. I would beg Charles to gist with women I found attractive so he could find out if they swung that way. Sometimes they agreed, sometimes they didn’t.
It took me a while to get comfortable with sleeping with women. The first woman I ever slept with was with Charles in a threesome. I’ve grown since then, and I’ve had different kinds of relationships with women, but they’re usually with Charles.
Charles: Yeah. Threesomes made the option of opening our marriage palatable. They were a way for us to understand the dynamic. Funnily enough, I think we’re both lowkey still in love with the first babe we had a threesome with.
LMAO. Really?
Charles: Yeah. We’re friends. We hang out whenever we can, but it’s not a relationship.
So, there have been relationships with other people?
Rukky: Yeah. We are dating someone right now — it’s lasted for over a year.
Charles: The plan was just to have a threesome oh, and we ended up in a relationship. LMAO. This is becoming a thing in my life. I start off wanting to just get laid and end up in a long-term relationship.
How does having a third partner in the marriage work?
Charles: It’s definitely different. You know, it’s one more person. We have to make her feel like an active member of the relationship, even though we don’t see her as much as we’d like — she lives in a different city.
So, it’s about communication, lots of communication. All the time.
Rukky: It’s been really good though.
Have you dated anyone else?
Rukky:Not really. This has been our longest and most intentional relationship.
Charles: Yeah. The others didn’t really count as dating.
Do you always sleep with other people as a unit?
Charles: Not always, but that’s mostly the case. The preference is sleeping with people together, but once in a while, I meet a woman that’s as straight as an arrow. Then I have to decide whether I want to sleep with her alone or not at all.
The answer is usually not at all, but there have been exceptions.
Rukky: I prefer when we do it as a unit. It’s easier, and to be honest, more enjoyable.
What’s the hardest thing about being open?
Charles: In the beginning, it was jealousy for sure. Talking to your partner about sleeping with another person is not easy. There was some initial awkwardness on my part.
Even with some of those bumps in the road, one thing that remained constant was communication. I truly believe that once the communication is steady, you can work through anything.
Rukky: Yeah. We took it one step at a time. We talked at every stage and constantly checked in with each other. Plus, we remain accountable to ourselves and each other. That has helped a lot.
How has this dynamic affected your marriage?
Charles: It has made the relationship more loving and honest. We can separate sex with other people from the relationship we have. What’s important is our marriage and that it stands the test of time.
Rukky: Communication is so much more important to us, and that’s helped us become closer, which I didn’t think was possible. We understand each other a lot better, and I hope we continue understanding each other.
What about fights? Have there been any?
Charles: It’s mostly about Rukky feeling excluded. I’m more hands-on with our women, so it often feels like I have a better relationship with them — like, we have a deeper bond that is independent of her. It’s not something I agree with, but I understand it.
Rukky isn’t really about social media, and that’s how you keep in touch with people these days. So, I tend to communicate with our women more often, which contributes to how those relationships evolve.
To make her feel more included, we ensure we discuss everything.
Rukky: Exactly.Whenever there is an issue, we discuss it. If anyone does something the other doesn’t like, we talk about it. We rarely fight because we endeavour to be honest, and it’s usually easier to sort things out when the truth is on the table.
I deal with feeling excluded on a case by case basis, but mostly, I talk to him about it and trust in what we have.
What do you love the most about each other?
Charles: If I say she has a fat ass now, you’ll say I’m being silly. But seriously, she is a great human being. She sees the world with child-like wonder, admiration and hope. Her mere presence makes the worst days so much better.
Rukky: I love everything about him, but if I had to pick one thing, it would be his open-mindedness. I wasn’t sure I’d find anyone, besides my family, that was truly open-minded. Then I found him, and now, we are family.
He also has the ability to further open your mind. Being with him is like visiting a new city.
That’s so sweet. How would you rate your relationship on a scale of 1 to 10?
Rukky: If I say 100, this man will call me an illiterate, so I’ll say 9 on the bad days and 10 on the good.
Charles: I’ll give it a9 because, as a Nigerian professor would say, 10 is for God. And also, you need to have something to aim for.
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An open marriage is a form of non-monogamy where the partners agree that the other partner may engage in extra-marital sexual relations without this being regarded as infidelity. It’s more or less like Jada and Will’s marriage, although the rules often vary.
Needless to say, this isn’t a very popular arrangement with most people, and much less so among Nigerians. Despite this, I had the pleasure of meeting a 30-year-old Nigerian man who has been in an open marriage for two years, and before that, an open relationship for 10 years. We talked about his marriage, what it demands and why more people should consider open marriages.
So, how did it begin?
Honestly? It’s not something we really thought about. At least, we never called it an open relationship, when we were dating. Or even a relationship. It was basically, “Yes, I love you and you love me, but we both still find other people sexually attractive. So what are we going to do?” We had a lot of back-and-forths about what that meant and what we could do about it.
Initially, the relationship wasn’t open at all. We had been dating for a few years when, one day, she suddenly came to me and said: “I found someone I think you’d find sexually interesting.” That’s how it started. We discuss it frequently to touch base and see what the other person is thinking.
What do you think were her motivations for giving you the green light to sleep with someone else?
To be honest, it’s probably a hodgepodge of factors. Firstly, she is bisexual. Secondly, she enjoys watching me having sex and she loves it when I tell her about other women I’m having sex with and how. Also, there were women she found sexually appealing but she wasn’t comfortable about her sexuality with other women at that time. So she’d offer the women to me and live vicariously through me. Eventually, she decided to try women.
Interesting. What are the details of your arrangement?
Basically, both of us can sleep with whomever we want. The only condition is that we obtain consent from each other before sleeping with other people. There have been instances where we both didn’t agree to let the other sleep with someone else but it’s always for a good reason.
What would you say is required to be in this kind of relationship?
Lot’s of work and honesty. From the outside, it looks easy, but in reality, there’s a lot of work required. We have to talk and talk and fine-tune things a lot.
Our relationship is pretty private, but now and again, we raise some eyebrows. When we are with friends and a lover of either of us or both of us is around, our friends tend to give us weird looks, thinking that we are cheating on the other partner. They think it’s weird that a married person is hanging with someone else, and even more surprised that the other partner doesn’t care about it.
One time, I was with my friends and I had one of my girlfriends with me. My girlfriend kept talking about my wife; not in the I-shouldn’t-be-with-you type of way and more in a playful “I will tell your wife you’re not treating me nicely” type of way. My guys were looking at me funny. They don’t know about the arrangement and I’d like to keep it that way
Wow. Do you worry that either you or your wife might catch feelings for someone else? What’s the contingency plan?
The thought that either of us might have feelings for other people crosses our minds, honestly. It’s only logical that if you keep fucking the same person, feelings will inevitably come into play. That’s why we emphasise on honesty. Also, we already know we’ll spend the rest of our lives together. We know that even if you catch feelings for someone else, it’s only half the truth. My wife and I know our full truths with each other and it makes us both happy.
If it happens, we’ll deal with it the same way we deal with other matters; discussing honestly and finding solutions together. It’s us against any issues bothering one person.
Have you had any disagreements over this arrangement?
Ah yes. And it was absolutely my fault too. I’m an emotional guy, really, and I can only have sex with people I like and have a real connection with. At some point, it got a bit too emotional with one of my women, and when my wife pointed it out to me, I got defensive, and even worse, started to feel like I needed to hide parts of that relationship from her. I refused to do any introspection for a while. But at some stage, you gotta listen when your own woman insists on something like that. I regret it very much; hurting her was never part of the arrangement.
Do you plan on having children?
We do plan on having children, a little down the road. Of course, we think about how having children will have an impact on the nature of our relationship. It’ll definitely means having less random partners. We’ll settle for regular partners so that we aren’t introducing the kids to strangers every two weeks. It also means meeting out of town more often and having fewer partners.
Sounds like it’s all planned out.
Again, we talk and talk and talk. It’s hard, but it’s the only way it works.
Between the two of you, how many partners would you say there are?
Lmao. This is hard. There are some regular ones, there are seasonal ones and there are part-time ones. But currently, I’d say three. Of course, we have partners outside of each other. Some of our partners are in relationships of their own. However, we do have a favourite girlfriend. She’s in a relationship with both of us together and individually.
The next thing on our agenda is dating a couple similar to us. It sounds really interesting. We aren’t rushing it because sometimes, you just have to let things happen. So far, it hasn’t happened yet. Although it’d be nice if such a couple reaches out.
That’s interesting. Do you think more people should consider open marriages and relationships or do you think it’s only suited to a select few?
It’s definitely not for everybody. It’s also not a response to infidelity or an inability to be loyal. It demands even more accountability that normal relationships don’t ask of you.
I think more people should be honest about the fact that loving someone doesn’t mean you never want to fuck someone else. Once we all come to that place, the rest is just housekeeping and figuring out what works.
