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A woman can spend months, sometimes years, building a relationship with a man only to discover that the version of the relationship she understood wasn’t the one he was living. This possibility is at the centre of the controversy surrounding Audrey Cyril, a Christian TikTok creator whose engagement to Mr Presh has become the subject of a growing social media controversy after several women came forward with claims that they had been romantically involved with him.
Audrey had kept her partner out of her public content before the engagement. In July, Presh proposed, describing their reunion as a return to a relationship that began years earlier. He said they had been out of contact for about 10 years before he reached out to her again, and that she responded almost immediately. Wedding preparations followed.
The relationship began attracting a very different kind of attention in September when a woman identified as Oma publicly described her own involvement with Presh. Oma said she had been in regular contact with him and that they had spent time together, including going on staycations. She said she remained in contact with him until January and believed they were in a relationship, only to later discover that he had allegedly been with Audrey for about two years and had proposed to her.
Other women have now shared their own accounts. One woman said Presh told her he was single, took her on dates, and spent time with her on movie nights before she discovered he had become engaged to Audrey. Another shared photographs and videos of herself at places she identified as Presh’s home and claimed to have been involved with him. Audrey has somehow become a major focus of the controversy. People have speculated that she has decided to go ahead with the wedding, which has attracted criticism, with some people questioning why she would proceed despite what has been circulating online.
But as more accounts have surfaced, attention has not stayed on the man being accused of maintaining these relationships. Audrey, the woman he proposed to, has also faced intense scrutiny for her choices and for wanting to marry him in the first place.
Former Big Brother Naija housemate Vee Iye joined the conversation on September 21. In a video responding to the controversy, Vee acknowledged that Audrey was being dragged for “the actions of another man,” but also warned women about what she described as desperation for marriage.
“Your desperation for marriage will land you in trouble.”
She went on saying that wanting to settle down, have children or get married is normal, but that women can become vulnerable when the desire becomes strong enough to override their judgement. According to Vee, men can recognise that desperation and use it against women. Vee also questioned the way women are socialised to understand marriage and womanhood, saying
“A lot of women have been sold a dream, a fairytale of what womanhood is meant to look like.”
Her comments eventually returned to marriage itself. Vee questioned why women are often the ones seen praying, worrying and agonising over marriage, while men are not subjected to the same social pressure to secure one.
“There’s a reason why you do not see men rolling on the floor in church praying for their marriages.”
She ended by reiterating that women can want marriage while still exercising judgement, saying
“It’s okay to want marriage, it’s okay to want to settle down, it’s okay to want love, but you have to apply logic at the same time.”
Vee makes a useful point: women are often expected to approach relationships as something they must successfully manage, and marriage remains heavily tied to ideas of female respectability and adulthood. A woman can be taught to regard becoming a wife as something worth preserving herself for, waiting for and building towards, while receiving far less preparation for the possibility that the man she chooses may lie to her, but it’s also unfair to, in turn, assign responsibility for men’s behaviour to women.
Vee’s comments were not the only reaction focused on Audrey. Some called her desperate, while others speculated that she would continue with the wedding plans after the allegations surfaced.
The women who came forward are not responsible for proving that Audrey was foolish. Their accounts concern their own experiences with the same man. Audrey does not need to have been perfect, suspicious enough or be cynical for another person’s lies and deception to be wrong. At the same time, Vee’s question about what happens when women ignore information cannot simply be dismissed. At some point, protecting oneself requires taking seriously what one knows about a partner, particularly when a pattern of behaviour repeats itself.
There is a difference between asking what Audrey knew and when she knew it, and treating her desire for marriage as an explanation for this man’s dishonesty. The first thing is everyone treating this like it’s an individual relationship, and the second feeds into the expectation placed on women that they are responsible not only for anticipating his bad behaviours, managing it and somehow protecting themselves from his capacity to deceive.
That’s why this ridicule directed at Audrey’s desire for marriage deserves a bit of scrutiny. Women are encouraged to prepare for marriage, to preserve themselves for it, and to regard finding a husband as an important marker of their entire existence, but when the relationship fails, that same investment can become evidence that a woman was too eager, too trusting, or too willing to overlook what was happening. Marriage is still sold to women as one of the major achievements of their lives, and for many women, the pressure is not simply to find someone they love, but to become the kind of woman who can be chosen, settled with and eventually presented as a wife.
Audrey’s desire for marriage has become part of the entertainment around the controversy, even though wanting to marry someone does not give that person permission to lie. Her decision to wait until marriage for sex does not make her responsible for what her fiancé allegedly did with other women. And being very invested in a relationship does not give a man a licence to take advantage of that investment. And for women, perhaps the more useful lesson is not that wanting marriage itself is dangerous. It is that the entire institution of marriage should never require surrendering one’s capacity to question the person being chosen. Wanting a husband should not make a woman foolish, and when a relationship is built around marriage, the woman should not have to carry the burden of being both a partner and a private investigator while the man is simply expected to do whatever he wants.
