There were people in the warehouse party doing a sort of interpretive dance with their tops off, and I made him go over and join in with them. (I’ve talked about this guy before; he’s the one who went down my stairs on a chopping board, chipping every step on the way to the bottom.) We sat down on the sofa for a while after that, and he put his fingers in my drink and then flicked it at me, made fun of me when I kept saying “I digress”. It was the sort of flirting boys did at school when they didn’t want to admit that they liked you. Unfortunately, I fancy him so I thought it was cute, that he was cute–or I did, until I went off with our friends for a while, and when I found him again he was talking to a girl I didn’t recognise, his arm resting on the wall above her, leaning in.
How dare he? I thought. Does he know who I am? That I have a column in Vogue, that I’ve written a book? That sometimes lovely girls with lovely hair come over and say it changed their life. That I can walk in heels, have a cute little tattoo of a rose on my hip, ask dumb but interesting shit like, Which brand would you find it hardest to boycott? That I’ve got a big butt and dress like a rock chick from the ’90s, which is a look that happens to really, really suit me. That I often get a free coffee from Pret and have one of those warm, approachable faces that make people come over and ask the time. That I’m so disciplined I don’t go on my phone until after 4pm, and that I have lots of mesh underwear sets that now he won’t ever get to see because I am never going to get with him again.
Except I did still get with him later in the night. I didn’t mean to. He gave a good excuse about why he was talking to that girl and then touched the small of my back and I tripped and fell onto his face. Still, the next day, I really was over it. It didn’t happen straight away. I was going to text him saying, “Wanna hang out again soon?” but then I couldn’t send it, because I knew I was phrasing it in a specific way to show that I was being casual, not specifying when exactly we should hang out or including anything that might indicate it’s a date. And it annoyed me because I knew I shouldn’t have to trick anyone into spending time with me. He should just want to. He should be messaging me saying “What days are you free next week? Do you like spicy food?” because he has an idea about where he wants to take me.
I’ve been happier since I started protecting my peace in this way. Over the summer, I cut things off with someone because he was too scatty and unreliable. And because I’d been the one to call time on things, I didn’t feel rejected, or unsettled. I didn’t start wondering if my hairline was moving back or whether my smile lines were too deep, because I knew that it not working out had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him and what was going on in his life.
Being too proud to wait around for men is a relatively new thing for me. In the past, I would go to absolutely any length to be with someone I liked. At university, this guy on my course asked me if I was out one night, and even though I was inside with my flatmates watching Gossip Girl, I jumped up and put on a tiny dress and covered myself in make-up and L’Oreal hairspray and headed into town. When I found him, I pretended that I was already out and had just lost my friends. He had a girlfriend, and he wasn’t into me, but I stuck around for months, underlining sentences in books I thought he’d like, following bum workouts on YouTube in my room with a resistance band and little pink weights, carpet burns on my knees. We stayed late in the library taking notes together, went to the cinema and snuck in cans to drink in the back row, and I edged closer and closer to him until one day he became my boyfriend.
Winning someone over in this way gave me quite a skewed idea of romance. When the relationship ended and I got with other men, I put up with a lot, believing that, if I just tried hard enough, I would get what I wanted eventually. Guys bailed on me last minute, went hot and cold. One of them would always make these really niche excuses as to why he couldn’t stay over, like having left Tupperware out of the fridge. I told myself that it was fine because I knew that I was great and fabulous and that their behaviour only made me think of them less, but I’m not sure that’s true. In accepting what they gave me, part of me was still saying it’s okay for someone to treat me in that way, that it’s a fair exchange. And it made me go a bit mad. I would sit on my phone double checking I definitely connected to the WiFi in case that’s why I didn’t have any messages. I would go on Hinge to check if they’d changed their pictures recently.
After I decide not to text the stair-surfer, I feel very calm. I don’t think about whether or not he’s going to message me. I go to sleep early, tidy my room, batch cook a chicken traybake to eat all week. But then the calm shifts slightly so that it feels less like peace and more like flatness. I try to listen to music, but can’t think of a single song I’m in the mood for. I want to make plans, but then there’s no one I want to see. I feel as though I can predict how any given evening will play out, know the anecdote I’ll tell about getting locked out the other night. I try to watch a film but just scroll for ages scanning trailers until I can’t be bothered to even pick one. I see this TikTok that really encapsulates how I’m feeling: “No hoes. No situationship. No roster. No talking stage. No person of interest. At peace but at what cost?”
It’s good to be proud, but at the same time, pride can hold you back from the things you want: excitement, intrigue, someone who might not deserve you, but whose company you enjoy. Part of me also thinks that in this dating economy, you have to put up with some level of debasement in order to ever get with anyone. I don’t know a single person who has smoothly transitioned from a good first date, to sex, to a relationship. I watched the Beckham documentary, and no one is staying up all night on the phone anymore like David and Victoria. My ex and I used to, but I don’t think that type of romance exists in 2023. Everyone I know in a relationship has either put the other person through a lot, or been through a lot, constantly saying they only want something casual while acting in ways that contradict that, becoming freaked out at the slightest display of intimacy or care. Or commitment has happened to them almost accidentally, like that friend I mentioned the other week who was meant to be going to South America so opened up more than usual to the guy she was shagging, only to find she didn’t want to go to South America after all because they ended up becoming so obsessed with each other.
Sometimes I think of that guy I broke it off with over the summer and wonder what would have happened if I’d let it bumble along for a bit longer. Maybe we would have seen each other enough times that we would have become accustomed to each other’s company, enough to miss it when we were apart. Maybe one day I would have slipped over in front of loads of teenagers and that would have been a memory we bonded over, told as a joke at parties, taking turns to tell the story.
I do eventually text the stair-surfer, not because I’m weak, or because I don’t like myself, but because I’d like things to happen, something.
His loss, they always say, but his loss also means my loss–and I don’t want to lose out on anything.
This article first appeared on Vogue.co.uk
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