“You’re too much” is a phrase I’ve heard my entire amorous life, especially in my dating experiences with men.
I used to take this as an insult, and for a period of my life, I dimmed my light to appeal more to the average male. The one who wanted me, from ages 14 through 25, to stop double, quadruple, sextuple-texting. Who wanted to chase a girl, and not be ambushed at their house, or have life-sized cardboard cutouts made of them.
We all want to be desired. To feel wanted. To get laid. But my way of approaching those goals led to what my therapist calls “massive overshooting.” It’s a conclusion I’m not insensible to — at least intellectually . Because from personal experience, I can tell you that calling men you just meet “Princess,” showing them your collection of taxidermy weasels, and forcing them to tell you their three favorite things about you upon meeting you kind of gets in the way of forming long-term stable relationships.
“Maybe I’m not enough” — the opposite of what I get called to my face— is a creeping feeling I’ve never been able to escape. I’ve spent my entire twenty-five years of life single. I’ve never been in a romantic relationship that has lasted longer than the two-week casual talking — and fucking — stage.
Few men have stuck around after hooking up with me. After boning me once or twice — at my place, their place, in the bathrooms at sticky dive bars that stink of beer and piss — they explain, “I’m just not looking for anything serious,” and start dating someone else shortly after ending things with me. It’s enough to make you crazy.
Too much. Not enough. Trying to find the balance between being my full-blown self and pretending to be someone I’m not, to seem more desirable, has left me in a constant state of an identity crisis.
***
“Paul, you seem so delirious — I need this energy in my life,” I commented on a boy’s Hinge profile in response to a picture of him wearing nothing but a thong and a Hillary Clinton mask while streaking across a high school football field. It was my first year living in New York City. At 23, I’d moved here from Iowa to take a job as an Associate at a New York-based private equity firm.
Although I was creating highly structured deals on the job, my romantic life was much looser. A good part of the time, I was thoroughly enjoying my casual hookups with men I met on dating apps and in grimy sports bars. At other points, I wanted to connect — then cling, the way a peach wants to clutch at a pit for its center. T hat’s how I met Paul.
“I read this as delicious but somehow I’m more flattered by what you actually said,” Paul replied.
Thrilled that he replied, I battered out an excess of verbiage:
“HAHAHAHA”
“Paul!”
“This is the energy I need”
“WHAT’S UP, BROTHA”
“Also you are so handsome just had to say that. OK, done simping forever.”
“Can we make a pact?”
As I fired off that series of messages, an alarm on my phone went off, accompanied by a print reminder that read: “TAKE YOUR ANTI-PSYCHOTICS, YOU FREAK.”
I had pressed snooze and failed to abide by my aggressive instructions for the past three days. Instead, I spent the night compiling a curated collection of over one hundred Shrek memes and making AI generated pictures of Shrek and I getting married in his swamp.
But Paul didn’t know this. As I stopped long enough to pop the top to my pill vial, then swallow a dose, chased by a few sips of water, I watched him type back: “Just landed back in the homeland after two days of flight delays and an entire paycheck going to the Jacksonville Chilis. I’m down for a pact. Are we talking like blood oath or…?”
Reading this, I was so excited that I actually squawked. The light filling my apartment seemed luminescent.
Paul matched my energy. I hadn’t had this much fun messaging someone on a dating app, ever. Before the anti-psychotics could stabilize my nervous system, I continued to lean into the banter we had going:
“Let’s start with a pact to get beers and whoever taps out first gets to choose the loser’s punishment.”
“I love a good pact as well,” he banged out. “The more out of left field the better. Like a pact where every time there’s a lunar eclipse, we buy you lingerie? I mean that one specifically is pretty one-sided but you get the idea. What about tomorrow?” he added, suggesting we meet at a bar on the lower east side after work.
“I could make tomorrow work,” I replied.
Of course I could. I had never turned down an invite from a man from my Hinge standouts to meet. They said come, and I went.
***
In a past life, I was most definitely an FBI agent because I’ve learned I can find almost anyone on the internet knowing only their first name and one or two other key identifying factors. Paul’s Hinge profile made my latest quest all too easy; he had his university, hometown, job title, and company name all listed. I opened a tab on my laptop and pulled up Linkedin’s search engine.
I typed in all the identifying data points I knew about Paul from his profile, and he came right up, allowing me to uncover his last name. I could then find him on Instagram and continue my investigation.
His profile bio was none other than future dilf.
Another woman, in a different frame of mind, might have stopped to think, “Hmm. THAT’s telling."
Not me. What did I do? Exactly what any other extremely mentally unstable person probably would: change my own bio to read future dilf, before giving him my username to look up, so he’d think something along the lines of “this girl gets it,” and fall in love with me.
Before I could press “save changes,” my phone rang, flashing a 212 caller ID. I had the number memorized. It was Duane Reade, reminding me to pick up my refilled meds. I ignored it, so I could continue chasing Paul, the stranger I’d met online just seven minutes ago.
I clicked the button on Instagram and announced to the site’s over one billion users that my life's ambition was to be a Dad I’d Like to Fuck.
“What’s your Instagram?” I asked him. “You’re too handsome, I think you might be a catfish or something.”
“What’s yours? I’ll give you a follow and you can stalk,” Paul suggested.
If “stalking” was the term he used to describe what he gave me permission to do, I don't want to know the term that describes what I already did. In the mood to gaslight him and continue my joke, I asked, “Did you change your Instagram bio to future dilf to match mine, you weirdo?”
“Something tells me you somehow found my Instagram before I gave it to you and did that yourself,” he replied.
Beads of sweat formed on my forehead. I panicked as the grey iMessage dots kept popping up and disappearing. I blew it. I took it too far, I thought.
Words hit my screen. “That’s really funny. I laughed when I saw it and figured you did that.”
How did that not scare him off? Let alone make him laugh? Maybe I finally found someone I wasn’t too much for.
We’d only exchanged a few messages, but I was already starting to feel like a part of myself, one I was often told to suppress, could come out. Recently, I’d posted a slideshow of intimate pictures capturing my quest to buy a pregnancy test, with the last photos showing me on the toilet, peeing on the testing stick, and then rejoicing that the result was negative. The general reaction from men I got to sharing those pics? Also negative.
I felt like I could be myself around Paul in ways I hadn’t been able to in years.
Just the week before, I’d matched with another guy on Hinge and he came over for drinks. We hit it off, but the next day he started his slow fade via text. He finally admitted to finding my social media accounts and told me they were '”too much” — especially “the one of you pissing on a stick” — and that, if we were to become something, he would be extremely embarrassed for his friends and family to meet me.
While he made a valid point, he was just one of a dozen guys that have made me feel like an embarrassment, simply for being who I am. Each of them, when they pulled away, partially extinguished the flame that fueled my sense of humor. The flame was about to burn out, but it slowly started to light up again through my conversation with Paul.
The next night, we didn’t get drinks like we’d discussed. Paul claimed he forgot about his bowling league game, and I genuinely forgot about a party I’d committed to attending. We continued texting intermittently, but the longer we went without hanging out, the rarer our contacts became.
Several weeks passed since we’d matched, and despite his excuses, I continued to pester Paul to meet up with me. He’d plead, “sorry, got plans,” every single time I asked. Finally, I grew some pride and stopped reaching out. Until one Friday night, following many tequila shots and several back-to-back days of forgoing my meds, again. That night, I decided to pull a Hail Mary.
During this time, I struggled to take my meds consistently. I was in the early stages of my bipolar II diagnosis, and I was afraid my anti-psychotics would make me loose my spark. I hated the intense lows my depressive episodes brought me to, but I was addicted to the highs of my manic episodes.
I wanted to get Paul’s attention, intriguing him enough to come home with me after our separate nights out partying. I walked into West Village’s Finest Deli drunk, horny, and desperate to devise a plan.
Noticing the most enormous tub of egg salad I’d ever seen, all tricked out — majestically yellow and moist — under the neon lights of the deli’s display window, I knew it was exactly what I needed to get laid that night. I whipped out my phone, snapped a picture of the ginormous tub of yolks in vinegar and mayonnaise, and posted it on Instagram, tagging Paul.
Not five minutes went by before I received a text from him. “Why did you post a picture of a gigantic bucket of egg salad and tag me in it?”
“Do you want to come over?” I replied.
“What’s your address?” I imagined the hesitation in his voice.
But it worked. West Village Finest Deli’s egg salad (and the lack of antipsychotic medication in my bloodstream) was about to get me laid by this man I’d been chasing for weeks.
“You’re such a weirdo,” he chuckled, as I opened my apartment door to let him in. He was wearing a checkered bowling shirt and grey chinos. His hazel eyes twinkled in the dim hallway lighting and his dark brown hair looked like it was thinning, but was just full enough to cover his entire head.
“Your voice is more scraggly than I imagined,” I replied, closing the door behind him.
We stayed up until 6:00 am talking, mostly laughing. I couldn’t tell if he wasn’t making a move because he was trying to be respectful, or if he genuinely enjoyed talking to me and didn’t want to stop. I told myself it was the latter, but in reality, I think he was just trying to buy himself time to sober up and avoid a case of whiskey dick.
***
“It’s not you. It’s me. I know that sounds lame, but I have an issue after drinking, where I can’t get hard,” he reassured me with his limp penis in hand.
“Me luring you over here using egg salad probably didn’t help the case either,” I replied. “Next time, I’ll try a nude or something.”
We fell asleep for a few hours and got up around 9:00 am. I had woken up a few minutes before Paul did, so I pulled out my entire collection of taxidermy weasels and poked him with one. In college, I started buying the things on Etsy when I decided I needed a gimmick — something with dead eyes — to grab peoples’ interest. The first weasel I came across on the site was a taxidermy weasel backscratcher, handmade by a lady called Tara. After purchasing, she messaged me and told me she can make me any type of weasel creation I can think of, and thus, became my weasel dealer that would grow my collection.
“What the fuck is that thing?” His voice was groggy and his eyes were only half open.
“It’s one of my taxidermy weasels!” I exclaimed.
“One of? Well, let’s see the rest,” he smiled.
I then gave him what I call a “weasel haul,” putting on a show-and-tell presentation with my pillowcase full of dead rodents. He, of course, was in shock, especially when I pulled out the taxidermy weasel crown with its hidden butt plug. Imagine a white, hairy rodent with black beady eyes wrapped around a silver plastic crown, the long tail reaching down to my lower back.
But he went along with every second of it.
I do this bit quite frequently with my hookups. It gives them the perfect cue to leave the next morning without either one of us feeling like we need to force some awkward chitchat . The morning-after small talk is always just a placeholder for men to buy themselves a few extra minutes to make it seem like they didn’t just come over to fuck and leave. Scaring men off with my dead weasels is my way of making myself look in control of when they exit. It helps me feel a little less used.
I figured Paul would follow the suit of all the men who’d experienced my weasel show before, but he didn’t. He lingered for several hours.
***
“What’s that poster that looks like a little kid drew it?” Paul asked, as he pointed to a framed image hanging on the wall opposite to my bed as he tugged up his grey boxer briefs, then his chinos, buttoning them while squinting at the far wall.
“That’s my favorite piece of artwork I own!” I smiled. “It’s by an Iowan artist who paints child-like caricatures and writes corresponding poems to accompany each painting.”
“Well, what does that one say? I can’t read it,” Paul replied.
I am a self-proclaimed maximalist, meaning my bedroom’s filled with artwork, trinkets, books, handmade ceramics, planters shaped like pairs of tits, pictures of half-naked women, etc. This was the only piece he commented on.
The painting is called Kindred Spirits, and the accompanying poem reads, “You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met, she said, & I said me too, and we decided to know each other a long time.”
“I hope to see you around soon,” Paul said on his way out.
He wants to see me soon, I repeated to myself.
I began planning our wedding before Paul had even left my apartment building. I never dreamed of my wedding as a little girl, or throughout my adult life. I convinced myself I didn’t want one, until this moment.
I fantasized about a large gathering with all of Paul and I’s family and friends (at this point I didn’t know a single one of Paul’s friends’ names yet) that would take place in a gorgeous Tribeca loft, where I’d descend down a spiral staircase covered in white flowers as my aisle. My daydream was interrupted minutes later when I realized I needed to pick up my meds from the pharmacy. They had been ready for three days.
***
A few days went by, and I hadn’t heard from Paul. He told me he wasn’t looking for anything serious, so I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t reached out — but I was ready to settle for anything. In finance, that’s called satisficing. In my dating life, it was the baseline scenario.
A week after we hooked up, I finally heard from him. He didn’t send me a message with actual words, it was simply a picture of him holding his golf clubs on the train.
“Why did you send me this, Paul Idiot?”
“Paul Idiot” was how I saved his name in my phone’s list of contacts, because 1) his name is Paul, and 2) he was, in fact, an (endearing) idiot, so it felt like a fitting nickname.
“How’s your week been?” he replied.
“It’s been fine, Paul Idiot. Don’t ever send me a mass photo that I know you sent to your entire roster, ever again.”
“Hahaha, I did not send it to the roster. Just to you, actually.”
“Ok, Paul Idiot. Do you think that makes me feel special or something?” I asked.
“What can I do to make you feel special, Claire Bear?” he replied.
Honestly, I didn’t know. I hadn’t ever had someone try before. As I sat at my desk, pondering his question, I realized I couldn’t think of a single time a man went out of his way to make me feel special. In high school, I wasn’t the type of girl boys were interested in. I never got asked to school dances. I hadn’t been called pretty by a guy, like the rest of my friends had. In my early twenties, when I found myself getting male attention for the first time, I felt lucky and undeserving. I’d often ask men what they liked about me because I didn’t believe they actually did.
I turned it into a game where I began asking every man I slept with one thing they liked about me and one thing they didn’t. I never held to heart what they said they didn’t like about me, but I always held onto what they did. I craved their validation. I needed the compliment to feel like I was, in fact, deserving of the attention they gave me.
So now I typed to Paul, “You can tell me three things you like about me so far.” I wasn’t ready to hear what he didn’t like about me, and I wanted to see how he would respond to having to come up with multiple answers.
“1) You’re much hotter than I expected. 2) The more I talk to you, the more intrigued I am. 3) You have a confidence that matches mine/gives no fucks.”
Over the next few days, I re-read his message a dozen times. We continued exchanging a few texts every so often. But they were never anything substantial, just light banter, like “what’s up idiot” and “not much, weasel girl.”
One morning, a few weeks later, he sent a message asking how I got into private equity, as he was looking to make a career change from real estate consulting to investing. He claimed he wanted a more challenging job to fulfill him. His apartment building was directly across from my office building in downtown Manhattan, which I knew from stalking his Snapchat location, so I suggested we take a walk over lunch and chat about what I could do to help him with his career .
I was flattered. As a woman in a male-dominated field, I often felt overlooked and underappreciated by the men around me. I felt like someone was finally seeing me for my intelligence. But in the back of my mind, I wondered if Paul was using my clear liking towards him to his advantage.
We talked about his professional interests and goals, and I offered to mentor him and do what I could to help prepare him for a career in investing. We hadn’t had sex since the first night we met, but we hadn’t discussed if it were something that would happen again, yet.
We began holding weekly sessions where we’d grab beers at bars in the Financial District, where we usually split the bill. I’d teach him technical finance skills, like basic leveraged buyout modeling, and share materials I had, such as online courses and old college textbooks, to help him learn what he needed to land an investment position to make a career change.
My professional generosity had a direct correlation to my sexual availability with Paul. I thought if I gave him support in the ways I knew how to, he would give me love in return.
But the thing with love is, it’s not something we earn from the people we give it to.
Paul slowly stopped flirting with me, and we began getting to know each other as friends, but we were still in an unchartered in-between phase. We weren’t hooking up, but we hadn’t ruled it off the table for it to happen again.
One night, shortly after I began helping Paul, and we separately gone out drinking with friends (he had never taken me out on a date), I mustered up the liquid courage to test the waters and text him as soon as I unlocked my front door and yanked off my topsiders.
Me: “Are you still out?”
Paul: “On my way home now, what’s up?”
Me: “Do you want to come over: yes or no?”
Paul: “It’s no — mostly because I haven’t eaten yet.”
My heart began to sink. I knew where this was going.
Me: “I mean, I have food here, but I’ll just take your excuse as a no, I guess”.
Paul: “Feels like, at this point, there’s a far greater chance of our not hating each other if we don’t fuck. But open to your opinion on that.”
No man had ever turned me down for sex before, so I figured this was just his nice way of telling me he wasn’t attracted to me.
Head buzzing, I walked into my bathroom and stared in the mirror. My nose appeared bigger than usual, and my hair felt shorter and frizzier. My breasts looked small and pointy in my white wife-beater tank top. My jawline was as round as a balloon. I felt distorted, and I couldn’t unsee it. “I’m just not pretty enough for him,” I thought.
Holding my phone out, far in front of my eyes so that it almost blocked them, I had a nauseous impulse to take a mirror selfie just then and send it to Paul.
Instead, I typed: “I’ve been rejected enough to know that’s a nice cop-out to say you aren’t interested, so I’ll stop trying, I guess.”
“Claire, it’s really not that,” he typed back, “I actually feel like I care for you as a person at this point.”
Care for me as a person? So much so that he was turning down sex? I was in disbelief.
Most, if not all the guys I've hooked up with have never really seen me as a human being, let alone one they cared about. Statistically, half of those I've hooked up with have never spoken to me again. The other half have hit me up only to continue to tap ass. I was beginning to accept the idea that no man ever would care about me. It wasn’t self-pity; it was a technical conclusion based on experience. I’ve done the math. Of the dozens of men I’ve slept with during this period in my life, I only ever saw three of them for a second time. The statistical analysis indicates men lose interest after they conquer their quest to get in my pants.
Put less scientifically: the majority of men that have bellyflopped into my life have made it clear they have the emotional intelligence of a goldfish . I genuinely believed men were incapable of caring about women, even as friends, until I met Paul.
“I’ve had a rough day; this isn’t how I want to end my night,” I lied, banging out a final line. I hadn’t really had a rough day, until this conversation. I just didn’t know how else to wrap it up, without embracing myself further.
My screen lit up: “If you need a friend and want to sleep here, I’d love to have you.”
Dropping my dignity at my front door, I hopped in an Uber with my bag packed for the next day at work — including a toothbrush, a clean thong, and deodorant — and made my way to Paul’s apartment. “I’m here for Paul, 10D,” I sheepishly told the doorman at the front desk in the lobby. It was just past 2:00 am. He didn’t have to ask why I was there. Smiling from ear to ear, he said, “Paul! My man! Have a good time, miss.”
My hands were shaking so violently that I accidentally pressed the buttons for three different floors. I hoped that Paul’s reservations about the blurred lines of what we were and where things were going would clear up when he saw me, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t be the case.
“Either your doorman really likes you, or you have a lot of different girls over here,” I muttered as he opened his front door.
“What do you mean?” he laughed, leaning in to give me a hug. He smelled like cedar wood and pine, and his touch felt so good I didn’t press him for an answer. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by killing my fantasy I was the main, and only, girl in his life.
We crawled into his bed, laughing.
I rolled over, and he moved closer, holding my body tightly against his. It wasn’t sexual, but it was intimate. “Why are you holding me like that if you just want to be friends, idiot?” I asked him.
“Claire, I really care about you,” he choked up. “I haven’t met many people since moving from Michigan in these six months that I’ve connected with as much. You’re, like, my favorite new person,” he said softly. “I’m not ready for anything serious, and if we keep sleeping together, that’s where this is headed. Then you’re going to hate me because I can’t give you what you want or deserve from me.”
“You don’t have to go to these lengths to spare my feelings. Just say you aren’t into me; it’s not a big deal,” I said as abrasively as I could, while discreetly holding back tears.
“I’d rather have you in my life than not. And if we keep sleeping together, I will fuck it up and lose you as a person.”
Why did he care so much about me? Why did he want me in his life so badly? What was so special about me that he liked so much? These were the questions racing through my head as I tried to jumble words together to respond.
Before Paul, every guy I had liked had told me I was “too much”: too loud, too crazy, too outspoken, too weird, too embarrassing to ever be with. These guys all wanted my body behind closed doors, but wanted nothing to do with me as a person. I have been both too much and not enough for them, all at once.
Now Paul was declining to have sex with me. Was this love from a man? Why didn’t it feel as good as I’d imagined?
He wiped my tears and held me in his arms until I got up to leave for work the next morning.
***
“I hate your pencil holder,” I said on my way out. On his desk sat a plastic baseball cap, the kind that eight-year-olds take home from MLB games as souvenirs. He’d flipped it upside down and filled it with writing utensils. “I couldn’t sleep, so I posted a picture of it on my Instagram story, with a poll asking if getting the ick from a guy with this pencil holder was valid. So far, 3,000 people have voted, and 96% of them said ‘yes,’” I told him. “Everyone else hates your pencil holder too.”
“You’re one of the strangest people I’ve ever met,” he laughed.
“You are, too,” I replied, smiling.
“I’m excited I’ll get to know you for a long time,” he smiled back, picking out a blue dress shirt from his closet.
The image of the “Kindred Spirits” print on my wall flashed into my mind. I didn’t think he meant to quote, almost verbatim, from the same print that he’d pointed out just a month before. In fact, I doubted he even remembered it, which made it even better, I told myself. Maybe we were, in fact, kindred spirits after all, I thought — like key characters in the same epic script.
***
You know where this is — was — always headed. Paul was the main character in my life. I played just a supporting role in his.
One August Friday, around 2:00 pm, I received a text from him at work.
“Got off early, summer Friday hours. Want to get some drinks?”
“Meet me on the Lower East Side, at Donnybrook, in 30,” I replied.
With my boss already in the Hamptons and the rest of our office working from home that day, I slammed shut my laptop without saving my work, locked up the office, and raced home to freshen up before meeting Paul. After slugging down my fourth or fifth round of Bud Lights, I worked up the courage to ask about his dating life.
“So, have you fucked any baddies lately?” I asked, unprompted. Paul smiled and covered his mouth, trying not to spit out his beer from laughing at my question. “Fucked a solid six, I met at a party last weekend. Won’t be seeing her again, though; she was kind of weird.”
“Weirder than dragging a sack of dead weasels from her closet, the morning after you hooked up with her?” I smirked, as he shook his head.
Listening to him talk about his hookups didn’t bother me. If anything, it boosted my ego to hear about his fuck buddies ; he kept me around, but not all the other girls. I knew this egotistical feeling was rooted in misogyny, but at the time, I didn’t really care. All that mattered was that Paul liked me the most.
“There is something I wanted to get your opinion on actually,” he said. “There’s this girl I’ve kind of been with for the past five years or so now. We aren’t dating, but she’s my best friend.” My heart dropped and I became largely deaf as he continued to tell me their backstory: I heard the words “college,” “we agreed” and “doesn’t mind,” before staring blankly at the bottles of Cointreau behind the bartender’s head, without comprehending anything further.
How could there be someone else? Does he love her? Five years is half a fucking decade, and he’s just now telling me about her? My eyes began to glass over with tears I held back. “The other night, she told me she’s in love with me. I love her, I’m just not sure I’m in love with her,” he continued. “I think one day I’ll get there. I’ve been holding myself back. I think she’s the girl I’m going to marry, I’m just not ready yet. But I don’t want to lose her.”
From the moment I opened my apartment door, the first night Paul came over, I felt as close to what people describe as “love at first sight.” It was the strangest feeling, almost euphoric – like a child on a swing, soaring higher and higher, their stomach dropping each time they plummet back down.
I was so sure about my feelings for him, and after just a few weeks, that if there were a weasel flag that stands for overwhelming love, I was flying it. So I couldn’t understand how Paul claimed not to be in love with this girl, yet saw himself marrying her. I also couldn’t grasp why he wanted a woman who was in love with him to stick around, despite knowing that he didn’t feel the same way about her yet — if he ever would.
How could he love her, as a friend, and be so selfish at the same time?
“I don’t think it's fair to her to keep stringing her along if you aren’t 100% sure you can get there with her,” I replied, after swallowing the lump in my throat. “If you don’t feel the same way about her, then it's selfish to continue this relationship, knowing she wants more than what you can give.”
As I watched sweat beads descend my final glass of beer, making the amber bottle look like it was crying (the same way I wanted to), I tried to put myself in her shoes. I knew that I gave Paul the right advice, but I felt immensely guilty for telling him he should end things with this girl, when I wanted him to be with me.
***
Paul ended up suggesting to this girl that they go on a break and see how they each felt after a few months. My guilty conscious tortured me; Paul took my advice, and this girl was probably heartbroken because of it.
At the same time, my feelings for Paul grew to the point where they were almost unmanageable. I stared at his Instagram page, when I should have been returning my clients’ calls. I stalked his Spotify activity to see what he was listening to, to gauge his mood and frame of mind. I daydreamed about building a life together when I should have been focused on my own.
I continued to mentor him and help him with his career. I cooked him dinners. I listened to him talk about his hookups and conflicted feelings about ending things with his five-year situationship. I was there for him for whatever he needed. I showed up without ever being asked. I loved him in every way I knew how to.
I tried to love him into loving me.
***
Four months into our friendship, I invited Paul over for dinner. My excuse was, I had bought too much arugula at the Brooklyn Farmers Market, so I needed to use it up in a communal vinaigrette salad. But at this point, my feelings for him were so overwhelming that I couldn’t hold back anymore.
“I like you, Paul,” I blurted out, as I stood up to clear his plate.
“I like you too, weirdo,” he replied while scrolling on his phone.
“No, I mean like, I more than like you. I’ve never felt this way about anyone,” I said, my voice softening.
He looked up from his phone and his hazel eyes locked with mine. He didn’t have to say anything; the look of disappointment on his face said it all. Disappointment from knowing he didn’t feel the same way, and that would hurt me. Disappointment from knowing we couldn’t continue our friendship if I was in love with him. Disappointment from knowing this would probably be the last time we see each other.
In that moment, I realized, you can love someone with all your heart, but you can’t love someone into loving you.
I gave Paul everything I had: my body, my mind, and my emotional energy. He drained all my personal resources without hesitation, without replenishing any in return.
***
For several months after saying goodbye to Paul, I often found myself taking walks down memory lane, because I loved running into him, and it was the only place I had left to do it. Or so, I thought.
On a brisk December morning, I arrived at my office earlier than usual and headed back out around 9:00 am to grab a coffee from the bodega down the block. My eyes teared up from the cold air and I thought back to the last time I cried; when I shut my apartment door behind Paul on his way out that night almost four months ago. I looked up from my phone to wipe my eyes when I saw a familiar, receding-looking, hair plug-fixed hairline. Next to him was another familiar face I recognized from stalking on social media; Paul’s ex situationship, who I suspected to be his now current girlfriend.
We walked by each other, unassumingly, exchanging smiles out of the corners of our mouths. Part of me was devastated. I had still been holding on hope that he would one day change his mind about his feelings for me. In that moment, I gained the clarity I had been yearning for. His feelings (or lack thereof) weren’t just going to magically change.
This is letting go.
A few months later, a man in a crowded bar walked past me and I was reminded of Paul—they seemed to share the same cologne. Without being able to help myself, I asked the man, “Sir, what cologne is that? It’s delightful!”
He said it was Le Labo’s Santal 33.
I remembered Paul saying he hated Santal 33, but I couldn’t remember what cologne he actually wore.
This is forgetting.
The following August, near the one-year anniversary of saying goodbye to him, I saw him on the F train. After all the time that had passed, the only place I had seen him was in my memory. And there he was—in the same subway car as me.
For a moment, I thought about saying hello. I remembered him saying “I am excited I’ll get to know you for a long time.”
I remembered him leaving my apartment, for good, just a few months after saying that.
So, I got off at the next stop without saying anything to him. Because although at one point, I did want to know him for a long time, I then decided, I didn’t want to know him anymore.
This is moving on.