I once told a boyfriend that I didn’t need him, I wanted him. What followed was an education on how to throw a brilliant passive aggressive tantrum. I took notes, packed a lunch and calmly waited it out.
“Do you want to stay over?” I asked when I thought enough time had passed for him to grow the fuck up.
“Do you need me to or do you want me to?”
“Well…I don’t necessary need to have sex and you are making it easy for me to not want to have sex with you, so I don’t really know…”
I went to sleep alone that night reading a childhood copy of a Babysitters Club book while wondering why something I thought to be positive was such a non-negotiable negative to someone else.
I have always fantasized that in the event I Do/Date/Divorce Prince Harry, The News Of The World can print pictures of us drunkingly falling out of a club under the headline “When Harry Met Sally”.
“If I believed in fate, that would encapsulate it,” I told my girl friend.
“What? Billy Crystal and fake orgasms?”
“I have faked orgasms with someone who sold ice cream for a living. I would have no ethical problem faking it for a prince.”
People fake entire relationships. My parents, for example, continue to maintain that we are biologically related. I have had so few boyfriends in my life because of an inability to pretend that I am That into someone if I am really not and, let’s be honest, other peoples inability to spend an extended amount of time with me.
“If I want to be with you, it means I have acknowledged the possibility of one day falling in love with you,” I have said. “I don’t play pretend.”
My relationship number is so low because I simply don’t need a boyfriend, while my magic list number is much higher because I am proud to acknowledge that I occasionally do need to get laid.
My boy friends continuously tell me that boys want to be needed.
“But I don’t need them,” I insist.
“That doesn’t matter. Pretend that you do.”
“So…lie?”
“I am just telling you how it is…”
“That it would be better to play pretend than enjoy your own company?”
“Do you want to get laid forever or not?”
I do. That is why I am single. Who knows who my next great sex will be?
Absolutely Stunning Hot Boy I Probably Should Never Have Talked To has [unfortunately] joined the list of boys who only needed to exist for twenty minutes in my life rather than become the one I want to exist for much longer. The honesty between us appears to have been on a “need to know” policy and, as I don’t want to deal with drama in the birth of a relationship, I realized that I also didn’t need to.
“That sucks. I am sorry,” one boy friend appeared to be genuinely sympathetic.
“It is OK. I am disappointed but it isn’t the end of the world.”
“So…Who do you want now?”
Human beings have a bizarre obsession with maintaining the status quo or accepting scenarios because they are told they are normal. If this mentality was successful, royalty would still only be allowed to marry royalty and I would not have a shot in Hell of ever being a princess. Instead, evolution of thought and society has been the successful route paved by people who say, “What the fucking fuck? No, I’m sorry. Not cool.”
Whenever I am told that men don’t want strong women, or that honesty is not the best policy or that people should change want they want just so they can have a relationship, I have to wonder what peoples standards for themselves actually are. It isn’t simply gender specific and I refuse to believe that any man worth dating (hello, Prince Harry) needs to feel powerful by way of being a necessity. If I was with someone because I needed to be, I would feel like I was fucking my babysitter.
Having a crush or a boyfriend can be so much fun. When you suddenly don’t have That anymore, there are many positives that exist to make what could be a negative situation much more fun, starting with the mystery of Who your next great sex will be with and even more free time to find out what You want.
I think I want ice cream.
