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This Almost Relationship Has Reached Its Peak, So I'm Walking Away

I can’t be the side chick, the fuck buddy, the 1 a.m. whiskey call.

Early on I believed he might care, and perhaps early on he still did: he came by my apartment, unannounced, to say hello; his texts came in hours before nightfall, asking about my day. I introduced him to my friends and he was kind to all my family. 

In those conversations, somewhere in the time it was just he and I, I found pieces of him appealing, handsome. I have since chalked up his sensitivity to foreplay. That is fine. I’m not mad. I’m just ending things.

I have tried to do things his way. Millions of people, men and women alike, do things his way: they acknowledge our animal instincts, our need for companionship, and they have taken fondly to the no-strings-attached quasi-relationship. What works for some – and more specifically, what works for him – does not work for me. I shouldn’t be shamed for desiring nothing short of a committed relationship.

As it stands, I feel good enough for short-term company, good enough for the length of a TV show and a sleep over, but never good enough to meet the parents under any preferred title. 

I am the company he keeps for cheap fast food, the company he prefers when he prefers to not be left alone with the Xbox. I get his weekdays. Our societal infrastructure is built to wall off intimacy. By keeping me on the side, keeping me at a comfortable distance, as a selfish afterthought, I can only question: is intimacy dead? We let chivalry die: are relationships, as our culture has known them to be, a thing of the past?

With time – what I have learned to be inevitable – I will feel insecure. I will wonder about the other girls with whom I share his time. I will wonder which side of the bed she sleeps on, or whether he stays at her place. 

I will wonder if the brown strand of hair on the pillowcase belongs to me, or to her. Or, to another her. Does she enjoy the shows he records on his DVR? Does he take her to the movies or dinner, all the places he offered but was too busy to take me? I will imagine them over a bottle of wine, eating the same bowl of spaghetti. 

I will ask myself: what about her keeps him distanced from me, or, on other occasions, what about me keeps him distanced from me? Ultimately it will end, six days or six months from now, and I will receive the news via an Instagram upload, them working out together at the gym that I didn’t go to with him.

The role I play in his life is replaceable; my stay is transient. What we share is convenience, a cure to fight off loneliness, an answer to too much pornography. It is hard to swallow that I am the person in his life that he would be OK with losing. 

He and I are an extracurricular, a hobby to pass the time. Once the time has passed, he and I are the awkward goodbye at Christmas parties. I am the archived slew of drunken text messages, the “hey bro, do you remember that girl?” at an overcrowded bar. He will make eye contact and I will run my fingers through my hair, regret my shirt, turn to my friend and say: “Do I look all right?” I will take my whiskey from the bar top because my hands need something to do. He will tell me about his work for his business and never mention his girlfriend, but I know all about her –  her hair, her mutual respect for the gym – because, in care of appearances, I never deleted him from Facebook. He will say, “Do you remember that time we went to the winery and things got wild fast”. And of course, I do. I also remember that he didn’t call again for a week.

I am tired of being the girl you don’t want to bring home. This shit about hanging out but not going out or wanting to be official is for the dogs. It is not benefitting me to feel thrown to the side and not good enough. To long for your text or calls even if it is late at night and only wanting a piece of ass. I have better things to do like live my life and be successful. 

So, no, we are not just hanging out. No, this cannot just be casual. No, it is 2 a.m., I am sure you have someone else you can call. I, for one, have better things I can do. Be prepared for your txt to go unanswered even if it breaks my heart.