A Bad Choice
breaking up with my boyfriend to be faithful to my crush
My crush followed me on Instagram, so you can consider everything I said in my last post about “rejecting longing” to be a joke. I’m not sure where I got the idea that I could ever successfully turn my back on a crush, especially when they start paying attention to me.
I saw his follow request while I was driving to work, and nearly swerved off the road to accept it. Over the next few days, I devolved like a cave creature back to my lowest form — a vibrating mass of cells that only assembles into a person if I have someone hot to perform for. Any wisdom or knowledge I’ve gained in my 30’s lies in some obscured cell in my brain that will remain inaccessible until I stop thinking about this man. Considering that we’re going to have sex tonight, that will probably never happen. I will eventually have to be lobotomized.
Since the portal to my crush is Instagram, my brain has further atrophied by spending hours a day on the brain rot platform, concocting delusional ways to be seen by him. I’ve now matured past traditional thirst traps and jealousy pics to intellectual one-upping and virtue signaling. A mirror selfie of me at my best angle with my ass poked out and my breasts partially obscured feels too desperate these days, too on the nose to get someone’s attention in a meaningful way. Instead, my stories have been dominated by Spotify previews of songs I’ve been listening to (to show my excellent taste in music, to subtly hint at my depth and intensity of feeling, and to scare him a little), selective leftist political news (to prove I’m not a fucking idiot and to make it seem like I’m a responsible, evolved, and well-informed person), Zohran Mamdani reposts (to show I used to live in NY without “bragging”), a few quotes about communism and Marxism (to scare him), a couple Letterboxd reviews, and plenty of sweet notes from my students to show what a compassionate, dedicated, and beloved middle school teacher I am. It worked, and he started DMing me about movies. Turns out, he’s the only other person within a 50 mile radius of me who also has a Letterboxd account, so fucking him is inevitable.
There have been times in my life where I knew very well that I was making a bad decision, but couldn’t stop myself from making it. I am keenly aware that this might be one of those times. I just broke up with my sweet, loving boyfriend to pursue a fuckboi. This feels very reminiscent of 10 years ago, when I broke up with my very sweet and loving husband material boyfriend in order to be in a two year situationship with my coworker. He was an Italian man who wore loafers with no socks and owned more jewelry than I did. At least now, unlike then, I broke up with my boyfriend before cheating on him. At least this time I was honest enough to realize a few months in that I wasn’t in love, instead of dragging out the ambivalence for years.
When the husband material boyfriend of 10 years ago got married recently, I kinda wanted to die. Since we’d broken up, I’d had a handful of situationships that had each broken me in unique and devastating ways. Dating had gotten so bad and so hopeless that I started to think I was cursed/deserved it for once cheating on someone who loved me so much. At 35, all I wanted was to have a baby, and there was no one to do it with. I desperately wanted to go back in time and make different decisions.
I realize now that even if I had chosen differently, I still wouldn’t be happy. I would just be unhappy with a man I don’t love, and a couple innocent kids who might be irreparably maimed by the resentment in our relationship (see: me).
I know better now than to fall into the mind trap of “what if.” Still, finding myself at a similar precipice all these years later, I have an eerie feeling that I am going to regret the choices I’m currently engaging in. I spent the last few years longing to be loved and swearing that if a man ever loved me again, I would just do what women are expected to do and settle for him. I told myself that sometimes sacrifices have to be made to get what we so badly want out of life, and I felt prepared to sacrifice passion for stability.
Of course, once I got stability, I couldn’t fucking stand it. I stuck it out for months in the hope that my feelings would change. When I started to dread seeing my boyfriend because we had nothing to talk about and that made me feel dead inside, I knew I could not have a baby with him. Or maybe with anyone. And actually, I’m ok with it. If having a baby comes at the price of settling for someone I’m not in love with, then I do not want the baby badly enough.
That’s why I’m now about to fuck a man who is probably going to hurt my feelings. As Lena Dunham writes in Famesick chapter 20, “… I saw him, and I knew, in a matter of seconds, that I was going to throw all that hard-earned peace away to make bad choices - sober, self-aware, full-throated bad choices with this fucking guy.” Staying away from men has brought me so much peace, and yet here I am, sabotaging it. I need SLAA.
I need SLAA meetings also, according to my ex. but that's the set up in modern marriage/relationships and the myth that it's on us to choose a soulmate or divorce. I'm afraid the institution of marriage is over in any legitimate way, so this post is from the future.