We fought for a while, he backtracked a lot, and we made up. I don’t think he meant for it to make me feel the way that it did. Honestly the worst thing that happened was I wrote some truly appalling poetry about it.
No one was going to make me think women were supposed to hate sex. I knew I was right, which is a comfortable place for me, even when I’m really pissed off. But it rattled me. I found it troubling, because I wondered if other guys felt the same way.
We didn’t last much longer. He drove to my apartment one afternoon—on a day that I had miraculously bothered to do my hair and makeup—and said he felt like it wasn’t working anymore. At first, I thought I could just ignore that it was happening. I kept going about business in my room. “You’re right, I need to make more of an effort. We should hang out with your friends more, I know that.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. I just think— Can you sit down?”
Okay. Crap. We’re really doing this. And it sucks. But at least I look half cute.
Our relationship had started as an experiment in adulthood, but I was really invested now (Oh! Real emotional investment—Check!) and he was dumping me. Deep breaths. Obviously, a breakup wasn’t on my checklist, but I wanted to make the best of a bad situation.
“So,” I said, “what happens now?” He was giving me this horrible concerned face. The pity stung worse than the rejection. I wanted to punch him.
“Well, we can stay friends if you want. I know I’d like to. But I’ll understand if you—”
“No, I mean what happens right now. Like, how do you finish a breakup? Like . . . how does this scene end?”
(Okay. A word here: I’m not some sociopath who can’t tell the difference between real life and a movie. I was just using “scene” to differentiate the immediate situation from our hypothetical future dynamic. That said, my deliberately robotic demeanor probably confirmed that he was right to cut and run.)
He’d gotten the ball rolling; I wasn’t planning to change his mind. I just needed to know how to wrap it up. Still, he was taken aback.
“Um . . . I don’t know. Do you want me to stay for a while?”
“So we can make ‘pity’ faces at each other for half an hour? I’d rather you just leave.” I was being vindictive, but give me a break, I was getting dumped.
“Okay . . .” He was doing a good job of looking appropriately bewildered by my callous response. Whatever, I reasoned, I totally let that guy off the hook. Easiest breakup ever.
I cried after he left. And it wasn’t just something I needed to “get under my belt.” It sucked. And my ego hurt. That night my roommates stayed home with me. We watched bad movies and ate cookie dough straight from the tube and talked about what a jerk my ex-boyfriend was—Check!
I went ahead and hated Landon passionately, but only because I thought it was another requirement of my relationship experiment. If you’d asked me about him while we were still dating, I doubt I would have said, “I can’t get enough of him and I feel great about where our relationship is heading.”
Half of my brain knew it was a blessing. The other half screamed, “How dare he dump me?!” That feeling only lasted about a week, and then I got comfortable knowing that I had an “ex-boyfriend.” Talking about “my ex” was just another thing that normalized me, so I counted it as a win.
The lingering confusion about how liking sex with my boyfriend could be a turnoff messed with me for a little while, but no more so than the virgin/whore stuff that’s everywhere in our culture. The hard part is that Landon is a good guy, and sometimes good people can still hurt each other.
I didn’t have sex again for a year, but based on who I was hanging out with during that period of my life, I doubt I missed anything spectacular. Lesson for young men: if you want your eventual wife to be excited about sucking your dick for forty years, don’t create a generation of women who think enthusiasm about sex is a bad thing.
I ran into Landon about a year after we broke up and immediately realized I didn’t hate him at all, and we’ve been close friends since. His favorite thing to do is drag me to Starbucks even though he knows I don’t drink coffee anymore. My favorite thing to do is whisper “He beats me” to the barista when Landon turns his back. He does not find it funny at all.
I went to his wedding last year. When his wife walked down the aisle he cried his ass off. It was beautiful. During the ceremony, the minister talked about having a healthy sexual relationship and how the marital bed was a place for love and honesty and respect, and I was glad that religion and intimacy were finding balance in Landon’s life. Then Pastor “Marital Bed” McGee expounded on the subject for another seven minutes and made everyone tremendously uncomfortable.