If it’s not a Fuck YES then say Fuck NO

http://markmanson.net/fuck-yes/

A great article which lays out something which should be simple for all of us. Yet, I know I am guilty all the time of wanting to be with people who didn’t want to be with me. Of stringing people along whom I don’t really want to be with. If you don’t think Fuck Yes to someone, then why waste your time on feelings which aren’t truly reciprocal, passionate or pleasing.

I recently had to say Fuck NO to the guy I had been seeing. More on that later, and the string of ridiculous and sensual sexual encounters I’ve been having with other guys. My old beau didn’t satisfy me. He didn’t want what I wanted. He told me he wasn’t sure if he would ever date me and yet for a moment I wanted to convince him to. Why convince someone who doesn’t want to be with you to be with you? Every time you’re tempted to do that, remember that there are guys out there that will. And if they won’t be with you, they at least won’t make a casual sex thing parade as a relationship because they’re total dipshits. And if all else fails, there’s always Tinder land of the DTF and also surprisingly good looking Greek guys with beautiful accents.

Read this, internalize it and respect yourself more in your future relationships. If it’s not a Fuck Yes, say Fuck No and go.

 

Whoa I just got a little cheesy, inspirational speaker on ya, my bad. Read it bitches (and brahs).

College Dating: The Game of Who Could Care Less

I’ve graduated college, but since I’m still in my college town it seems my dating life hasn’t quite graduated with me. After spending the beginning half of my summer banging long-haired stoner dudes on Tinder, it seemed everything was taking a turn. Then, I met a nice guy at bars, we kept going on successful dates and he even made a concerted effort to wait to have sex with me until, get this, we actually knew one another. I felt like I finally was moving on from the slutventures of my college youth into the world of real life dating. But, the guy I’m seeing, while he is older and seems mature, may not be on the same dating page as me. Sure, he’s in grad school, but I think he may still be in the college state of mind. As a friend recently said, in college dating is like playing a game of who can care less and it seems once again I’ve been dealt those cards. 

I could tell the moment I saw him at the bar that something was off. He seemed surprised, yet slightly happy to see me. He hadn’t texted me back about whether he was out or what his plans were so I went on with my night not expecting to see him. In fact, I had decided I hoped against it. I had the lingering remnants of a UTI and all my wine induced haze yearned for was pizza. But, there he was, so it seemed my fate were not to make sweet love to a cheesy slice. He had friends there and a lot going on and for some reason drunk me took offense to it.

I thought, given that he hadn’t texted me back, maybe he didn’t really care to see me. I felt sort of silly and weird and wanted to act like I didn’t care that he was there. As I tried to play it cool, I saw him talking to another girl. Okay, fine, talk to girls. Hell, I live in a house of predominately males and was at the bar with only guys, so talk away. But, I felt in my gut that something about this interaction was different. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe I was misunderstanding. Maybe the Chardonnay was making me a crazy, jealous bitch. 

I woke up the next day still drunk and only vaguely remembered a moment of drunken, crying babbling weakness between he and I. I couldn’t remember what I had cried about or how much I had said. But, I knew it wasn’t good. Shit, that’s not playing it cool, I thought. I sent him an apology for what I could only assume had been drunk me creating boohoo white girl problems and waited anxiously for his response. I thought I had probably ruined our relationship by being so college, so ridiculous. Then, as his response that I had nothing to be sorry for binged into my inbox, it all came washing back. The girl, the flirting, the things he said about it all on our walk home. As these memories flooded back, I felt immediately stupid for apologizing and even more stupid for crying. In the game of who could care less, I definitely wasn’t coming out on top. 

Is he over her? Did he really flirt with another girl right in front of me? Did I really apologize to him for crying over it? Did he really not apologize to me for it? These were all questions I asked myself as I trudged to a morning work-shift much earlier than what I could handle. 

I don’t know what their status is or whether I misunderstood things. Our conversation on the walk home has all become a blur. I don’t know if we’re together monogamously or if, depending on what the nature of his relationship with this girl is at the moment, I even want to be. 

In college, it was all about acting nonchalant. Lines like “do you maybe want to hang out at some point sometime?” or “you’re pretty cool, I guess” or “I hope I run into you at bars” replace people being up front about their feelings. But, is that even dating anymore? 

I haven’t talked to him about what happened, and I’m not sure how that conversation will go, but I am sure of one thing. I am done with playing the game of who could care less. I am done with acting coy and carefree. I am done with guys who would rather get hammered and flirt with the endless possibilities at bars rather than just be content with me. I hope that my new guy is done with the college dating game, too, but if not it’s on to the next one. 

Playing if Safe: Why Comfortable Doesn’t Have to be Boring

With him I feel something I haven’t felt in awhile. I feel safe. I feel comfortable. Safe and comfortable? Those are attributes of relationships that would usually lead me to scoff. I thrive in the unknown. I revel in the excitement of spontaneity. But, I’ve decided to start playing it safe (not that a relationship that starts on Tinder is necessarily safe). I’ve learned being comfortable doesn’t have to be boring.

I often look at those couples and think they are deluded- you know the ones I’m talking about? The girl who stops wearing makeup and walks around in sweats and doesn’t go out with her betches anymore because she’s so comfortable in her relationship. I’m all for being comfortable with your significant other, but that’s definitely not the comfortable I’m talking about.

Likewise, when I say playing it safe, I don’t mean to say not taking risks in a relationship. However, don’t take risks which are unneccesary. Yes, that douchebag that keeps texting you at 1AM could be an exciting lay, but what good will that lead to? It may be fun and exciting and nowhere close to the comfortable mentioned above, but it probably won’t end in anything other than waking up with rumpled hair missing your favorite black thong.

I’ve barely been seeing TheStonerBoy for long now, but I already feel comfortable with him. Comfortable? In less than two weeks? But, doesn’t that sound a little too soon to already feel comfortable with someone? In a way it does. In no way am I saying this is my future husband or that we are already in wifed up bliss. However, I do feel comfortable. I can say how I feel, I can say what I mean and for once I don’t feel scared. Literally I can’t remember the last time I felt at ease in a relationship. As I said in How I Became a Heartbreaker, I’m almost constantly playing a guessing game of when a relationship is going to end which usually drives me crazy and leads to self sabotage. Although I don’t know what this has in store, I don’t feel like I need to play that game.

I don’t just feel comfortable because I’ve had some kind of catharsis, but rather, he helps make me feel comfortable. He reassures me. He texts me goodnight and tells me he will text me in the morning- then he texts me in the morning! He checks in on me during the day. He says he will hang out with me at a given time on a given day and then guess what? We hang out at that given time on that given day. He actively seeks to create an open line of communication. He asks me questions because and I quote “he wants to learn more about me.” He lauds me with compliments and he’s a dork and he uses emoticons and sometimes he even uses the wrong your. But, I like him and for once I don’t feel like I need to question whether he likes me back. Because, and get this, he actually TALKS to me. That’s more than can be said for either of my two most recent “exes.”

He’s sweet, he’s incredibly thoughtful and hell he’s even a little predictable, but I love that he is predictable. As much as I’ve enjoyed this whole conquest and conquer thing, it’s so nice to know to be able to rely on someone. It’s so nice to know that I can expect to hear from him. He’s like the perfect cure to my abandonment issues.

So, playing it safe and comfortable may seem boring, but sometimes having a nice, predictable guy can fit the bill. Unpredictable can be fun, but it can also be tumultuous. Safe doesn’t really mean boring. Instead, it means knowing that a guy is actually going to text you when he says he will. It’s knowing that a hang out is actually going to happen unless there’s a legitimate reason for it not to. It’s knowing that if he changed his mind he’d say something, because he cares about communicating.

When I’m with him I am calm. Head on his chest. A silent kind of happiness. When I’m with him, in ways that the spontaneity and uncertainty of my sexual liberation never granted me, I am truly free. Because I know that in the morning, when my hair is messed up from a night of heavy making out and drinking, I can look at him and laugh and he will tell me I still look beautiful. And I’ll know that it’s not to get in my pants, but to reassure me. I don’t need him to reassure me, but as his hand playfully pushing my bangs back into place, we will both smile and he’ll pull me tighter into his chest. I don’t need any of this, but I want it. I look at his face as he keeps me safe and know that we both do.

Accidental Mental Monogamy

What are we? It’s a question most guys loathe. It’s a question that, frankly, even I loathe a bit. According to Urban Dictionary a DTR is as follows:

 

Understanding what a relationship is is a key facet to feeling comfortable and able to grow within its confines. I’ve been seeing a new guy recently, thanks Tinder and its going very well. Sure, I met him on Tinder, but we also had a boatload of mutual friends to the point that it was weird we’d never met in real life. We haven’t been seeing each other long, but I can sense that there’s something different about this budding relationship than any of the others I’ve been in this past year. Without any words, any form of DTR, I’ve started to feel attached to him.

But, I woke up this morning in an unfamiliar bed and I felt disillusioned. The guy kissed the back of my neck and I pulled away. For a moment I considered kissing him back, but I knew I didn’t want to. It wasn’t just that I was hungover as fuck, or that he didn’t look how I remembered or even that I was worried my breath would smell like a million Fireball shots. I was upset because I knew what bed I would have wanted to end up in last night and it was not that guy. Why did it feel so wrong to wake up in a different guy’s bed, though? I’m single. But, I guess in a way I’m not totally single. Usually that wouldn’t bother me a bit. We haven’t DTRed, hell we haven’t even been seeing one another that long. So, why did I feel guilty for my drunken transgression?

I had officially waltzed into the land of accidental mental monogamy. It’s unsaid, but it’s there. We haven’t talked about it, but we don’t have to talk about it. He texts me good morning and I see him everyday. He says things like “I can’t wait to really pleasure you” and in this giddy school girl sort of way I just can’t stop thinking about him. In my mind, I am no longer single not because I’m not single, but because at the end of the day I truly don’t have any desire to see anyone else. Never thought I’d hear myself say that one.

He’s kind and thoughtful and a lot of other adjectives which sound empty and meaningless unless you actually know the person. He fills those words with life. Am I getting too gushy for you? Sorry- He also has stellar arms which I can’t wait to ravage me.

I’m lying in bed in my oversized flannel with my ceiling fan on and he’s texting me and I can’t stop smiling. I don’t want to see anyone else right now. Usually I boy juggle to make myself feel more secure. If he doesn’t work out, so what I have three more right? But, with LongHairBoy it’s different. I feel totally comfortable with him. I can’t see other people. Not because he told me I can’t or even because I know that he isn’t. I can’t because I don’t want to. I didn’t even realize it had happened until this morning when I felt disgusted by the other human in bed with me. I genuinely had no desire to be with anyone else and hell I even felt a little guilty about it.

I’m supposed to see him later tonight and I’m sort of nervous. I usually jump into sex too fast and I don’t want to do that with him. I’ve had my period as a reason for not doing it, not that he’s been pressuring me, but that has officially ceased. I think that it’s time we talked about actual monogamy and from what I can tell by his demeanor he won’t be opposed to it. I feel comfortable telling him I don’t just want to jump right into sex.

I’m going to give this monogamy thing another go. Hopefully this time works out better than all my disastrous attempts of yesteryear. Maybe it will help that I met this guy on Tinder? How ironic.

The End of an Era

I just finished my last final exam. Ever. I did well, maybe. I certainly felt my ability to BS had increased. As I walked out of my exam, I felt relief. But, I’ll admit I felt a little nostalgic, too. Not really just about school, but more about all the experiences I’ve had while at the University. 

While here I had my first random one night stand, my first orgasm, my first proposition for a threesome (which was politely declined), my first blackout, my first and only soiree into BDSM, my first and only taste into the land of married men and I’m coming out of it still single and still figuring things out. 

I remember when I came to college I went in assuming that I’d be one of those stories of a girl who meets a guy in her 100 person lecture hall the first day, forms a fast friendship, starts dating the second half of the first year of college and then ends up getting married and having the life that everyone yearns for. I figured life would just fall into place in that formulaic way that society expects of you. Meet your true love in college, get engaged a year or so after, get married with all your college friends there, have a kid, get a house and work dutifully at my career. I figured I’d find the person I’d grow old with. 

Instead, I embraced the saucy spirit I always had inside. The spirt that led me to put my high school boyfriend on a break so that I could have a tryst with a tenth grader who I thought was the bees knees. The spirit that led me to make out with both of the guys that had crushes on me at the same senior party and yet manage to play it off so effectively that they both later asked me to be their girlfriends. The same spirit that led me to give the school heartthrob a hand job in an empty classroom during our teacher’s planning period. 

It led me to many heartbreaks and failures, but also many discoveries about myself. I took risks, sometimes misguided, but I took them. In the same way that when I started college I thought a 3 page paper was a task and by the end I could write a 20 page paper in about a day and a half, I learned from those mistakes. I reconditioned myself and I grew. I dated boys in law school, dated nerds, dated fratdeuches and even banged guys off Tinder. I dated guys I knew I’d have a future with and wistfully hoped I could have futures with some I knew I never could have them with. I ran away from guys who would do anything for me and flew across the ocean for ones I wished would do anything for me. 

This marks the end of an epic era. I am officially closing the college chapter of my life and its certainly bittersweet. It will be weird to leave all of those memories behind. But, at the same time it will be cathartic to close that book. But, don’t expect that to end my shenanigans or my posts! 

P.s. I considered revealing the school I go to here to see if any of my followers might know me, but I thought twice about it. I sometimes wonder if anyone I’m close to somehow follows my blog without realizing it. But, everything I pour onto these pages is so raw and personal that I think maybe it’s better for me not to say. Maybe it’s better if someone does know me for them to just have a gnawing suspicion rather than a confirmed ammunition. 

To all of you college gals who have taken inspiration from or advice from my blog, I hope you help my legacy of heartbreaking, slutdom live on and stay strong and proud! Happy summer and may it be filled with slutventures. 

Yours truly, 

Heartbreaker

Tinder: The App that gets you Ass

Welcome to Tinder: coy flirting, self-gratuitous conversations and validation all from the comfort of your tattered plaid couch. With a swipe left or right you either match or don’t with another individual and then BOOM conversation ensues. It’s entirely based on looks, which I appreciate. It’s all the bullshit of dating sites like OkCupid, but at least here there’s no pretending. Essentially Tinder is like going out to a bar and seeing a guy then ending up in his bed after one too many vodka sodas except now you can lie in bed and do it! After you make a match, it even prompts you to “keep playing.” When I talk to my friends we refer to it as “The Tinder Game.”

I recently started using the app and it’s a hoot and a half!

I’ll keep you all posted, but so far I have two invitations for drinks which in the tinder world essentially equates one drink and a quick lay.

Despite these two enticing invitations, one of the guys is one I would bang if I met at bars so why not, it is raining outside and I am currently loafing in my cotton leggings and a shirt with a giant mammoth on it. Geez guys I already had a date with my main man mac n cheese tonight, okay?

Here’s to getting some hot finals and graduation sex with guys I’ll never see again.

If you haven’t gotten on your Tinder game yet, and you are able-bodied, single and mildly attractive- do it. Casual sex is literally right at your fingertips and a click away.

Sometimes we have to learn to walk on by

“Run when the rhythms right
Go into the night
Go until you’re out of sight
And you’re out of my mind”

I am young, single, beautiful and free. A string of cliches we tell ourselves to feel better about the first, ahem, shameful one. But, slowly, I’m starting to mean it.

Sometimes, we have to learn to walk on by and let those who don’t fit the bill walk on by, too. There’s so much pressure to be not single, or “not bitter,” not that girl who is perpetually alone because people see it as a societal ill. So, instead, we end up trying to push together a color palette which muddies into a mess that should never have been painted in the first place.

My Brit is gone now. In the past, I tried to make that work when it was failing because I was desperate for something, for anything. I was unable to be satiated with letting something end and grasping for the blissful moments of the beginning. But, if the bliss fades it’s time to let go.

Don’t try to make things work when they don’t work. You will never force it to truly fit, but you will force yourself to not fit you anymore by trying. Look up at the grey in the sky and laugh because tomorrow it may not be grey, but if it still is at least you have an excuse to stay in a plush bed with a Ganesha throw and read a book (or marathon Netflix, let’s be real that’s really what you’ll do).

I tried to make the Brit in my class fit, too. He didn’t, but I wanted him to. In some twisted way I thought having some new British bloke on my arm would make me having been sort of single the past two years seem better to the world, my exBrit and also to me. I cried when he didn’t answer my texts and thought I had failed at being a woman for a moment.

When I think of my life right now, I think of a Sex and the City episode where Samantha tells her boyfriend: “I love you, but I love me more.” Harsh? Maybe. But, she gets at an incredibly important point in her archetypal behavior. We need to learn to love ourselves more. Not because it’s not possible to selflessly love someone. But we have to know and love ourselves the most before we can understand what level of selflessness, sacrifice and compromise will even work for us and not cause us to break. When a guy you don’t like isn’t working out don’t force it. Say “Honestly. You’re not fitting my bill here and I’m just trying to learn to be utterly happy with myself. You’re not helping that happen, so we can be friends or not, but this isn’t working for me.” Instead we wait and let it keep going and end up getting hurt over someone who was never right in the first place. All because we didn’t know how to say or believe “I love me more.”

What we need to do, when the guy doesn’t fit or when the end has come is say to ourselves:

“Run when the rhythms right
Go into the night
Go until you’re out of sight
And you’re out of my mind”

It felt like a dream

It felt like a dream, perhaps because I’ve had the same dream a million times over the past two years. I walked up and there he was waiting for me on the stone stairs. I almost didn’t recognize the cadence of his voice or the slope of his shoulders. The same sturdy fingers which had fumbled over the curves of my body, grabbed greedily at the clasp of my bra and then pushed me so quickly away. The same mouth in an oddly square jaw which I found appeasing despite its asymmetry.  The awkward silences and the sarcastic, at times indiscernible humor which had made our communication somewhat clumsy.

In the past, I would have expected something grandiose from our meeting. But, I knew that he never talked to the point, so I went in expecting the idle banter which had and would come to characterize all future correspondence between us. It was at once cathartic and anticlimactic at best, but this time I knew that.

A part of me wanted to tell him what a horrible person he had been to me. Two years ago I was naive, too patient, too understanding and all too romantic to realize how skillfully he played me. I wanted to tell him how unfair it was of him to take advantage of me. To take advantage of the romantic ideal I had invented of him. I wanted to tell him that in fact, I even blamed myself for the longest time for how terribly things went. But, two years and 3,796 miles later I realized that we both already knew that. His apology months before, while not satisfying, was the closest he would ever come to being honest with me about what a huge mistake he had made.

We shared an awkward hug and the typical polite farewells knowing that we will likely never see one another again. I had a realization, in that moment, that I am sad to say it took me two years to come by. In that moment I saw him and his square jaw, wavering slightly, his furrowed brow questioning and I realized he was just another human. He was just a human and I was just a human. Two humans whose paths were never meant to cross for long. Two humans who didn’t know each other anymore and never really had in the first place. Two humans who had invented a fantasy of the other for so long in their minds that nothing seemed real anymore. Just two flawed humans being flawed.

The rain patters on my windowpane outside and he’s at an airport somewhere about to go back to the life he always planned before and after meeting me. It’s time I got back to mine, too. I spent two years blaming myself for being too awkward, too stunted or too guarded to make that relationship happen. I’ll  never forget the months following my trip during my poetry class when a guy in my class said to me “whoever this mystery man is, he was lucky. I’ve never heard someone write something more beautiful about another person.”

Today, the sky is the same shade of pale, lilac gray that it was the day we went for a run in the rain in Paris. I close my eyes and remember the languor in the air as he glided ahead of me. I am over him and I am over blaming myself. I am over doubting what we had. Because while our short time together was not perfect, it was breathtaking.

I am over him, but there are moments when the sky is a certain shade of grey that I am overcome with the image of his bare back glistening with Paris rain in July. I used to be afraid to see this. I thought it made me weak to relish tainted memories. But, I realize now I don’t have to be afraid anymore. Because as we parted for the second and last time and he yelled a joke at me which I couldn’t clearly hear, I knew that he was never the picture I painted of him in the first place. A symbol of idyllic, unbridled youth. The soft accent mumbling to me that he wished he had “met me sooner” and even though that sentiment didn’t last, the knowledge that in that moment he had never meant something more passionately.

BREAKING SCIENTIFIC STUDY SAYS Guys Stop Maturing After Middle School

Breaking news from a recent study says that a majority of the general male populace ceases maturation around the seventh grade. Well, not really. But the action of every guy in my life lately is indicative of that truth. 

Artifact #1: Yesterday in class I went to grab water to nurse my raging hangover. I came back and sat there staring into space feeling the acute sensation that I was being watched. I had out my computer open to a word document and the professor said something of note so I went to jot it down. 

Sitting in my mostly blank word document was the utter realization that all guys are dipshits. While I was gone, the Brit who has for some reason decided he doesn’t like me left me a memento. 

poop

I looked at my word document and let out a laugh. Poop. Was that really his idea of humor? And he can’t talk to me in real life like a normal human, but he can write poop in my word document. I think it may have been his way of flirting. 

As I have yet to further collect artifacts of evidence that guys stop maturing after middle school I will unfortunately have to end this post. But, remember folks, don’t leave your computers unattended! You never know when someone might “poop” in it. 

Music Mondays: Do I wanna know?

This song, particularly this version, sums up my feelings on my love life far more articulately and accurately than I ever could. Excuse my current predilection for adverbs, listen and relate.

“Have you got colour in your cheeks?
Do you ever get that fear that you can’t shift
The type that sticks around like summat in your teeth?
Are there some aces up your sleeve?
Have you no idea that you’re in deep?
I dreamt about you nearly every night this week
How many secrets can you keep?
‘Cause there’s this tune I found that makes me think of you somehow and I play it on repeat
Until I fall asleep
Spilling drinks on my settee

(Do I wanna know)
If this feeling flows both ways?
(Sad to see you go)
Was sort of hoping that you’d stay
(Baby we both know)
That the nights were mainly made for saying things that you can’t say tomorrow day

Crawling back to you

Ever thought of calling when you’ve had a few?
‘Cause I always do
Maybe I’m too busy being yours to fall for somebody new
Now I’ve thought it through

Crawling back to you

So have you got the guts?
Been wondering if your heart’s still open and if so I wanna know what time it shuts
Simmer down and pucker up
I’m sorry to interrupt. It’s just I’m constantly on the cusp of trying to kiss you
I don’t know if you feel the same as I do
But we could be together if you wanted to

(Do I wanna know?)
If this feeling flows both ways?
(Sad to see you go)
Was sort of hoping that you’d stay
(Baby we both know)
That the nights were mainly made for saying things that you can’t say tomorrow day

Crawling back to you (crawling back to you)

Ever thought of calling when you’ve had a few? (you’ve had a few)
‘Cause I always do (’cause I always do)
Maybe I’m too (maybe I’m too busy) busy being yours to fall for somebody new
Now I’ve thought it through”

I cannot express how well this aligns with everything in my life. I’ve been listening to this song on repeat all day while I drink my redeye and try not to think about my British ex who’s visiting America, and specifically my university, this week. After two years of silence, it’s all I can do to distance myself and be better than “that girl” who goes crawling back to my ex like a lovestruck puppy dog. God give me the strength to get through this week.