PSA: You’re worth more than that bottle of lube you bought for that hook up you used to validate you
- Anonymous
- Oct 9, 2017
- 4 min read
Dating in 2017 has become a complicated and tiring affair. We find that we ask ourselves simple questions like “are we dating?” only to give ourselves complicated answers like “what even is dating?”.
People are open to the idea of love, and as humans we crave the feeling. We seek it where we can and we feel unaccomplished when we don’t get it. In the process of finding love, we find ourselves getting caught up in trying to fill that void, which begs the question: are we actually in need of love, and willing to give and receive it, or are we just on a hunt for attention that will temporarily inflate our egos?
It’s during these moments of ego inflation that we realise that we want more. More intimacy, more sex, more moments that make us feel like we’re worth something. In the moments in between, when we’re coming down from the high of casual hook-ups and quickly getting dressed, eager to escape the forced conversations that usually follow a casual sex sesh, we can sometimes question our actions.
Sometimes I find myself wanting to high five the guy who lasted more than 7 minutes, as a super casual way of showing my appreciation for his efforts, but I don’t, because his efforts didn’t mean anything to him and the fact that we had sex isn’t meant to mean anything to anyone.
Personally, I’ve become accustomed to meaningless sex. By choice I’ve joined that 2017 dating culture, thinking that all I wanted was to satisfy my needs with someone who equally needed their needs satisfied, and I did. That is genuinely what I wanted. I’m probably not ready for a serious relationship, and I likely haven’t found the person who I would want to share my life with. Initially, my intentions seemed simple enough, and the whole concept of hooking up with friends, sneaking around, and sending that 2am “you up?” text and getting a response seemed great, and it is. It’s efficient and the concept itself is seemingly uncomplicated.
It’s only when you start to question your worth that these casual arrangements become complicated. Regardless of whether you’ve fallen head over heels for the guy who is purely using you for sex, even though he told you from the beginning that he wanted nothing more, or if you just genuinely begin to doubt yourself, this dating culture that everyone thinks is normal, isn’t.
I try to tell myself that one day, something good will come from these arrangements. That one day I’ll meet someone by chance who is attracted to me, and I him, and because it’s easier we’ll begin to see each other casually, but then we’ll soon realise that there’s more to us than sex. That whole fantasy is hypocritical because I’ve found myself being intimate with not only strangers, but also close friends, or even more so, strangers who because of our casual hook-up, have become close friends. When this happens, surely you’ve got to think about whether your sexual compatibility and your close friendship would be grounds enough to consider taking things a step further and committing to that person.
This is where the complications begin. Once you begin to value your FWB, you begin to rely on their attention, and their need for you. I’ve come to a point where I feel almost worthless because I don’t feel wanted. I was never the type of person who would seek validation from anyone; I knew who I was, and it wouldn’t bother me if someone I was seeing happened to meet a really pretty girl, because I felt that to them, I was still a 10/10. I’ve started to doubt myself, and feel ridiculously insecure about hypothetical situations, like them meeting someone who makes them think less of me. I began to over think even the simplest of things, and when he asked “do you have feelings for me?”, stupidly I panicked and blurted out “yes”, something that I knew from the beginning shouldn’t have been an option.
For me, that experience of having someone who you felt was comfortable with you, subconsciously push you away, affected me more than I thought it would. The irony is that as a way to comfort myself, instead of stopping the sexual relationship, I continued as if everything was okay, and then, the more worthless I felt, the more I searched for comfort in the wrong places. I started hitting up old flames, flirting with people I wasn’t really interested in just so they could flirt with me, sending Snapchats to that random I met up with once, and all the while feeling genuinely shit about that one guy who’s attention I valued over the rest. Notice how I didn’t say he was the guy I fell for, or the one who I could see myself raising a family with? I considered writing that, but in writing it I realised that it wasn’t true. He was the guy who made me a feel special, who put more effort in than the rest, who showed me a different way to experience intimacy. I valued him because he seemed to be the best, not because we were in love and it just didn’t work out.
As a 20 year old, living in 2017, I don’t know what love is. I’ve never experienced it; I’ve never been in a serious relationship and I’ve never had sex with someone who loved me, or I them; and I think that’s sad. I’m not a romantic person who correlates sex with love or believes in love at first sight or soulmates; but I am someone who is sick of this fear of commitment, sick of pretending that I’m emotionless, and above all, sick of feeling like I’m worth less than the bottle of lube I brought on the way to his house.
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