This story is based on real patterns of queer survival in Nigeria and real conversations. Names and identifying details have been changed for protection.
The day Chris married Amanda, his best friend of seventeen years, there were no butterflies in his stomach–only the quiet ache of survival. They smiled for the cameras. They cut the cake. They danced to Flavour’s love songs while his mother dabbed happy tears with her lace handkerchief. Everyone said they were a match made in heaven. No one knew they had made a pact beneath a sky full of secrets.
In Nigeria, being gay isn’t just taboo, it’s a criminal offense. It’s a life lived under erasure. You can be arrested, disowned, beaten, or worse. The law doesn’t just deny you, it gives people permission to hunt you. Growing up in Enugu, Chris learned early to bury his truth deep inside him. His mother, a devout Catholic and a widow, used to remind him constantly: “You are my only son. Your children will keep your father’s name alive.”
He didn’t have the courage to tell her he was gay.
Amanda was the only person who knew. He came out to her during their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year of mandatory service, crying into a bottle of beer as she held his hand and told him, “I’ll never leave you stranded.” At the time, he didn’t realize how much weight those words would carry in the years ahead.
The pressure to marry ramped up as Chris approached 35. Aunties came knocking with “intentions.” Church elders dropped hints wrapped in Bible verses. His mother began calling more often, worried he would grow old without fulfilling his duty to their bloodline.
It was Amanda who finally voiced the question neither of them had dared to ask: “What if we got married?”
Chris laughed at first, but then they both stopped laughing. The idea made a cruel kind of sense, a camouflage, but it was also a relief, a cover that might finally end the daily pressure and intrusive questions. Amanda had no desire for a traditional marriage either. “I’m not built for that kind of life,” she’d said once. “But I can love someone with my loyalty.”
So, they planned the wedding.
They moved into an apartment in Lagos. They posted carefully curated photos on Instagram–of them in matching outfits, filtered beach selfies, casual videos of cooking jollof together. The illusion was perfect. Chris’s mother rejoiced. Neighbors praised their “beautiful union.” Meanwhile, the two of them lived as housemates and allies, building a shared world built on truth behind closed doors and performance outside it.
Then came the matter of children.
In Nigeria, two or three years of marriage without pregnancy is enough to invite gossip, unsolicited prayers, and deep suspicion. The whispers can be louder than any siren: “Is she barren?,” “Is he impotent?,” “What kind of marriage is that?”
Amanda expected these questions. And each time, she defended them both.
She chose a donor— a friend, discreet and emotionally unattached— and she got pregnant. Only they knew the arrangement. When the baby arrived, Chris’s mother wept with joy. “My first grandchild, my blessing and my bloodline” she cried, dancing barefoot in the hospital hallway. Two years later, Amanda had a second child, and the circle of protection widened.
I met Chris through a mutual friend, and over time, he opened up about his situation. He wasn’t looking for pity, just space to breathe. As I listened to him, I realized how many layers of bravery their story held. This wasn’t just a survival strategy. It was an act of quiet rebellion. Two people refusing to be broken by a society that sees their existence as shameful.
Sometimes, he told me, he lies awake wondering what it might feel like to live openly. To hold the hand of the man he truly loves. To explain to his children someday that their father isn’t sick or sinful, just hidden.
But this country is not yet ready for that truth.
Chris and Amanda’s story is not an isolated one. There are many like them— men and women forced into cover marriages to escape violence, rejection, or social extinction. Some do it with sorrow. Others, like Chris and Amanda, do it with friendship, loyalty, and a quiet kind of hope. They are not deceivers. They are architects of survival, crafting homes in the cracks of a hostile world.
Sometimes I ask myself what would happen if Nigeria chose compassion instead of condemnation. If we allowed our queer brothers and sisters to live and love freely. If mothers like Chris’s could embrace their sons without demanding they abandon their truth.
Maybe one day that will happen.
Until then, people like Chris and Amanda will keep building lifelines where others see dead ends. They will keep showing us what love can look like – even when it has to hide.
Bella Chacha is a Nigerian writer whose work explores identity, memory, and the quiet revolutions of everyday life. Her stories and essays have appeared inBrittle Paper, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, and are forthcoming in Cast of Wonders and Finalist in the Defenestration 2025 Short Story Contest. She lives in Enugu and writes with a soft spot for ghosts, girls, and glittering language.
