The Guy Was a Toxic Player: The Discourse of Heterosexual Non-Marital-Relationship Breakups among Female Youth in Nigeria

ABSTRACT This article examines the subjective narratives and experiences of urban female youth in heterosexual-relationship breakups in the Calabar metropolis, southeastern Nigeria, where they “do gender” and reposition female heterosexuality in order to gain access to new social spaces. Drawing on ethnographic qualitative data sourced through purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews conducted with 30 participants who had unilaterally cut romantic ties in the previous eighteen months, I interrogate from participants’ nuanced perspectives their previous relationship quality, causes of breakups, and social and structural factors that informed their decision to quit from the account of “doing gender” – a social-constructionist approach to gender which conceives the phenomenon as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction that recreates and reinforces the cultural meaning of gender. The results, based on linguistic evidence, demonstrate that narratives of gender equality, access to secure livelihood, and needs for emotional well-being as motivators for ending relationships reflect an agentic shift in the way young Nigerian women enact gendered scripts in heterosexual partnerships. The study concludes that breakups provide avenues for participants to exercise autonomy in decision-making and to negotiate gender and sexuality under conditions of patriarchal dominance and inequality in-line with broader social changes.