Interpersonal mystery

There’s a type of guy online who apparently thinks and talks about little else other than how much sex women are having. According to these men, if a woman has had sex with more than a certain number of people she has rendered herself unmarriable, which sounds like a win-win to me. I conduct my personal life as if it’s a box of chocolates and I can eat as many as I want without getting sick. This is mostly accurate. Colliding with strangers can be good sport, but of course it can also be unpredictable and unsatisfying at times. Usually I pride myself on being able to take the L and gloat about the fact that none of these twerps can get me down for more than a couple of days. But as much as I like to downplay it I’m still susceptible to strong feelings and extended torment.

Usually if I tell anyone about this stuff it’s trusted friends only. I don’t really care if people judge me for playing the field, but it makes for pretty low-stakes anecdotes if for example some guy did me dirty, but I still have three others. So it was out of character when I recently went on an embarrassing emotional jaunt, doing Instagram-story therapy about “one of the top 3 best first dates I’ve ever had” who subsequently ghosted me. At that stage it was kind of an interesting interpersonal mystery, but that was really just an excuse to post about something that was putting me through the wringer emotionally. As mentioned I’d had a fantastic date with someone I was very excited about seeing again. I went in maybe wanting to fuck and left feeling like I was on the threshold of a beautiful new era of seeing this person in whatever capacity. I don’t think I have to explain what a good first date is, but it was all of those things. The next part is humiliating because it’s so cliche, but they gotta become cliches somehow. Despite being so solicitous about arranging a date with me and telling me how much he liked it after, he disappeared. I’m way too proud to confront someone about something like that, so I was stuck in a stalemate as each day that passed made it less and less likely that I’d hear from him again. After being left on read for a week I made the Instagram post which I regretted by the next day, but since I already put my business out there I’m going to talk about it more.

Every crush is a crush on a fictional character. My sister said that once, I don’t know if it was an original or if someone famous said it first. I’d go one further, it’s probably a crush on two fictional characters: your idea of them and the version of yourself that you could be with them. Meeting strangers from apps certainly lends itself to these fantasies, especially when they stop communicating with you. Untethered from reality they can blossom into an impossibly attractive prince who was always too good for you, and simultaneously some kind of sociopathic demon who mentally tortures women for pleasure. The most basic level of rumination in this phase is “did I do something wrong”. Could I have played my cards differently to control the situation? I don’t spend much time on this phase but I’m more susceptible to, “did they do something wrong that I was oblivious to, or even attracted to”. Maybe I have some tragic flaw that drives me towards people who aren’t particularly interested in me. Of course I can’t resist connecting it with past experiences to wire myself a tiara of woe. What about that charismatic art daddy who never asked me out again? What about the guy I didn’t even like that much who kissed me against a wall in Newtown and then never replied to my messages? Being run through is a state of mind and enough experiences like this will do it to ya. Which usually leads me to “men are dogs”, or more politely, “no one is that great”. Everyone in this world has their own agenda and there are only four or five likely reasons why someone would drop you, and you can’t control any of them, and it doesn’t actually matter which one it was. I think this one is reasonably true or at least useful.

I’ve re-written this several times because I thought I’d gotten to a denouement then something else happened. First of all we did exchange a few more messages, which I proceeded with in good faith, but wasn’t surprised when he stopped replying again. I concluded that he’d still ghosted me but in the more cowardly and mundane way. Then I saw him on my lunch break one day buying a bratwurst and got really pissed off because he looked so hot and carefree, and who gets a fucking bratwurst for lunch? That time I went with “feckless man who thought nothing of me”. Finally he sent me a long message after a month of silence, explaining that he has issues with relationships and communication. It was just flattering enough to remind me of the way I felt at the start, but ultimately pretty insulting for someone to think I might still want to see them after treating me like that. I'm afraid I do though. I politely declined further contact but I’m still kind of a believer. What if there were an increasingly implausible series of events that contradicted all the evidence of experience and common sense, undoing all the bad parts and delivering the fantasy untarnished? What if sexual chemistry could cut through everything and deliver one soul cleansing fuck that could get it out of my system? When you say things like this they never happen.

The three other people I’m sleeping with are all doing good.

Would you still let this guy hit it? Sound off below Purgies!