Scarlet letters

M,

Remember the man that I told you about – the wildly inappropriate one, a bad choice? We’ve been talking, texting (sexting), seeing each other for a month or so.

I slept with him Saturday night. Then, of course, fell asleep with tears still in my eyes Sunday night after I realized he’d already joined the MIA Dickbrigade.

I’m really stupid. It’s not like I thought this was going somewhere. I at least knew that it couldn’t end well. I deserve no sympathy. I looked at the minefield that the thing with him and me was… I stared at it, analyzed the consequences and frolicked through it anyway.

But the bigger picture here – this theme of men pursuing me, and then discarding me once we have sex – every time it happens, it robs me a little bit more of my sexual confidence and security. So him being inappropriate for me aside (though that’s pretty impossible, I understand), I feel shitty because he did that exact thing.

When it happened (the realization that I was in the post-coitus discard pile) last night – I sent him a text saying, “Right. You got what you wanted, and you’re done now. Cool. Congrats.” I turned off my phone and left it at home today. Mature? Maybe not. I don’t know.

I feel jaded because I know how this story goes. He will 1) say I’m imagining things, making me doubt myself  2) place the blame on me, which will make me feel crazy (ie – that text assumed things, accused things, you’re imagining things) all to not appear to be an asshole, further compromising my feelings for his gain.

Maybe me saying I know he has already discarded me is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I’ve been here so many times that I’ve memorized the script; I know this feeling in my heart and gut too well (his cold turkey stop to the flirting and texting was a hint, too). 

I thought it all through before I sent the text. I know the routine, and I’ve let it work on me – I’ve doubted myself, blamed myself and apologized, only to realize how played I was and repeat the cycle with someone else. It stops now. It has to.

Anyway. That was that. I’m hurting, maybe more than I should be, over this. It was just another guy, I guess, but in all the possible negative outcomes to this situation, I never expected he’d simply toss me out like yesterday’s trash, or maybe I just hoped.

I made a poor choice, and I’m moving on.

C

C,

Doing this one thing that you wish you hadn’t doesn’t make you a bad person.

I mean, it’s true — each time something like this happens, you lose a bit of the excitement of an active sex life. You’re no longer the free sexual being that you are, but someone who’s a little afraid of the effects of sex, someone who doesn’t feel in control of her sex life or her post-sex life. And that’s the real tragedy in the whole situation.

In order to take care of yourself, you need to start choosing better situations. And I mean, the only way we choose better situations — or are more confident in our choices — is by having these bad choices under our belts, for context, for comparison, for the future.

I love you so much. It breaks my heart every time I hear about these assholes and the aftermath of what’s supposed to be fun. Any advice or opinion I give to you doesn’t come from a place of I could do that better or C could do that better – but from an objective position of, that didn’t seem to work for her last time, but she’s probably too close to the situation to see the similarities.

I think it’s a good you left your phone at home today.

I’m sorry. I love you.

M