Don't be angry when lovers reject you - Diary 29th Oct 2024

'Sorry I didn't sleep with you' letter follow up and my unfinished business in the Big Apple

If there is one thing in this life that animates me more than British men, it must be American men.

I woke up at 5:30 am this morning, jetlagged in the second-best country in the world and the best and only city: New York City.

The last memory I have of here is me poured over the back seat of a cab on my way to the airport to go back to London, crying my eyes out listening to Electric Love by Børns:

Baby, you're like lightning in a bottle
I can't let you go now that I got it

It was 2016 during the Democratic primaries that got Hilary the nomination and I was in the US for a few months doing field organising for the first Bernie Sanders campaign, which took me from Des Moine, Iowa, to Las Vegas, Nevada, to Cleveland, Ohio and finally, to the city that dreams sink or swim: New York, New York!!!

I lost my political innocence on that campaign. Why can’t my side win for once?

Anyway, that’s not why I was crying.

What left me bereft was leaving behind a Yalie Wallstreet boy, let’s call him Zach, who did coke off my ass¹ and saved his number on my phone as ‘Zach American Dream’.

Till then, I would blanket swipe left on all men who did anything remotely related to finance or jobs that pay off mortgages (I prefer old money, thanks).

But Zach, wasn’t having any of it. What is this socialism nonsense Stella, get in line behind Hilary dog. Before our first drinks arrived, he told me he loved money. All he wanted was to make lots of it. His bed fit the perimeter of his room and there was enough standing room from his door to his clothes rack for two people. He didn’t need more space, he came home at 3:00 am most nights and was back out by 7:00 am. Investment banking does that to ya.

When I left him the following morning, I high-fived myself because I thought I just had my first one-night stand!!! Achievement unlocked! Alas, Zach was a greedy boy, and men love stepping on women’s achievements so we continued seeing each other for the weeks I was there.

He was funny and boyish, my favourite combo, and made me love music gigs that lasted till the early hours of the day, even though I am not a music fan and like to be in bed by 10. He broke my heart one night when I returned to his room to find out he had written on his mini whiteboard ‘text Effie girl from House of Yes’. He had met another girl in a night out and drunkenly left a note for his sober self. Ethically, it was a fine thing to do. I lived on another continent, but the soft animal inside us doesn’t care about humanity’s autistic moral codes.

I haven’t seen him since, but we did video call during the first lockdown while I was quaranteening in Greece. I am seeing him later this week. He’s engaged now. I’ll make sure to tell him he still got it, even if he’s gained weight, and to get married pronto.

On the flight here, I watched The Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith. It’s a great film. It is about a salesman, Chris Gardner, who tries to raise his son while being homeless and penniless when he gets an unpaid internship at a stockbroker firm, which could change his life trajectory. He references a line in the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson writes that all people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

The pursuit of happiness.

Happiness is not a human right, ponders the struggling father. The only thing you are guaranteed is that you will be allowed to pursue it (very Tufton st).

As the oracle of the romantic and sexual anxieties of my generation and the confidant of enough people to occupy, if not Wall Street, then at least one of its side roads, I see so many for whom happiness depends on other people.

I would say 80% of my millennial friends (ages 29-42) who are financially secure and healthy are tortured over romance. The women mostly get tortured by men who won’t commit or who commit badly. The men mostly get tortured because they are not sure they want to commit and feel guilt over it.

I don’t like it when I feel my blog pours fuel into this misery fire because my posts make me sound wounded. I don’t want you guys reading my blog and feeling despair about your love lives or the future of dating. Much of my writing is my ‘art’, which I type on my phone through tears (not sadness usually; I just tear up a lot in private) when I walk home at night, either drunk or high on life. It is meant to be a bit unhinged because I am a very very very passionate and intense person and this is how I like to live. I could probably cut out caffeine, go back on the pill, pick a dull man and career and call it a day, find peace etc. But I obviously don’t want to. Having is evidence of wanting.

Despite the wave of emotions I sail through and the intense situations I put myself through, I am generally quite stoic. I want my readers to sail with me, not drown in my own abyss of feelings.

I have this ‘friend’ who I met on a dating app 7 years ago. He went out with me once and then went into a relationship with another girl but kept in touch with me. We worked in the same sectors, and at the time, he was working in the same government department that I was shadowing in my job in Parliament.

TLDR over the 7 years, he would get in and out of relationships and get flirty when he was single, maybe go on a date with me (we never did more than kiss), then get back into a relationship with another girl. I cut my losses and used him as a receptacle for all my male grievances. I told him about all of my crashes and harassed him for advice. I knew that would mean all romantic prospects between us would vanish. There is no going back to being romantically entangled with a man who knows all the ways other men have hurt you. One piece of bad bitch dating advice I have to give is never tell men other men have not treated you well. They value you less after that, no matter what they say. Men want what other men want.

This guy is great by the way. He is good-looking, has a great body, has an interesting career (i.e. politics), is funny, and smart but not too smart- masculine smart. Like he could invent fire if you left him alone in a cave but not penicillin if you dropped him in interwar London. I think he reads, but am confident he masturbates more- actually a good sign. I feel relaxed around him even though I know he is a dick in the way that men have been dicks through the centuries.

He recently got single again and invited himself to my flat to cook for him. He had said before that we should not date, and I agreed. I said I don’t think we are a match, but I only said that because I would like to think my romantic matches are men who believe I am worth pursuing. Don’t make me tap the sign.

On the night, he extended his grabby hands on me within the first 20-30 minutes of coming home after telling me we should remain friends. I had no make-up on and was wearing the £8 Zara top and loose jeans I wear to clean the house, and he kept on saying I was dressed to impress or something. How can I ever trust men’s compliments when they don’t even tailor them to what’s in front of them?

I faked resisting him for like an hour (my mother didn’t raise a WHORE) and then let him fuck me 3 times. I woke up the following day with an eye infection. There were suspicious stains all over my bed. My period was over a couple of days ago, but I think he restarted it.

He said we should only meet once a month not to develop feelings. I told him how about we go on a fucking date. He said no, no dates, we are not dating, you can use me for my cock (his words) but that’s it.

If I was younger and did not know him, that’s the kind of line that would have killed me, but when I used to feel like this, I did, in fact, avoid sleeping with him. I am less fragile now. I also still see him as a friend, so I am like, omg, LOL, you loser who says that. Textbook fuckboy millennial drama villain.

I have seen my friend run through numerous girls, taking them from their late 20s to their early 30s and dropping them. He is haunted by the pain he’s caused them. He always says I have been angry at him in the past, which is why he is reluctant to get involved with me, but I have never had an argument with him or even a tense conversation. It is all a projection from his experiences with his actual girlfriends. We have been super casual friends for the entirety of our relationship and 90% of my conversations with him for the last 7 years have been about other men. If anything, I feel he has indulged me- I would characterise my texts towards him as annoying little sister- and I am not exactly sure why he kept in touch so consistently.

I know many men will be jealous of his privileged position. He is doing well and has a buffet of interesting, good-looking women trying to date him, but when I listen to him speak about his relationship with women, all I see is dread. He is emotionally unavailable and can’t find it in him to commit, and he suffers from the hurt he sees he is causing to innocent women who he feels affection towards. He doesn’t seem particularly in love with any of them. None is special enough. That’s sad.

I don’t feel like that for the men who let me down; I don’t feel like that for this guy, either. Everyone is special to me. All of you losers who treat me with half the warmth and care I deserve. It feels much more pleasant for the human soul to make people feel flattered than to make them feel despairingly, soul-crushingly bad.

I love confessing feelings. One of my wise followers says I have a humiliation kink, and rather than exploring it in a sexual environment, I let it spill over to other areas of my life. Yes, and?

After my friend told me off for asking for a date, I sent him my ‘I am sorry I didn’t sleep with you’ letter. I told him I was thinking about him when I was writing it, and it was some of my best work.

If you are reading this and thinking what the fuck you bitch I thought the ‘sorry I didn’t sleep with you’ letter about me; you might be right. I was thinking about three different men while writing it (1/3 done, 2 more to go, let’s get it boys!!11!). Each section corresponds to the different circumstances surrounding my not sleeping with them- the guy who I thought got scared of my intensity, the guy who doesn’t do sleepovers, the guy who will get married to a less good-looking, more boring woman, etc.

When I die, in my will, I will bequeath each boy his specific references in my posts. I will print them out and colour code them with a highlighter: yellow for my socialist prince, pink for the Prime Minister of my heart, blue for the Disraeli to my Queen Elizabeth, green for my Wolf of Wallstreet, orange for my several Mr Darcys (I have a type, but they won’t need to share, I’ll print them separate manuscripts ala Miranda twins in Devil Wears Prada) etc.

The reason I exaggerated this man’s presence in my writing comes back to my desire to coddle people’s egos, to fluff them and put them back on the bench all puffed up before some other ass crushes them again.

More people would be more self-content if they had the self-awareness to know why they act the way they do. Many react with anger when their love interest doesn’t respond how they want it to. I see a lot of women who will idealise a man while he love bombs them but the moment he withdraws the attention they take everything good they said about him back, he is now a useless, narcissistic asshole.

This tactic may soften the blow of rejection in the short term, but in the long term, it only leads to self-loathing. If he was so unworthy of your love, why did you give it to him? Your subconscious fears what that says of your judgement, or worse, your desperation to be loved. I don’t like that. If I find someone remarkable when they are in my DMs they don’t stop being so when they’ve muted my stories. I mourn the loss of connection, but the inspiration and joy I get from people who move me intellectually, emotionally and physically stay with me. They are not dead, after all. They are still walking around God’s green earth, looking like snacks in need of unwrapping.

One of the writers whose style has influenced me the most is Bukowski. My essay on my bullied-at-school, unfuckable hate-nerd days has heavy echoes of Ham on Rye. He was celebrated for being a horny, ugly, alcoholic old man obsessed with women.

I cannot speak for all female writers, but I love loving men. They are my muses.

One day, you boys will make me rich, and not because I’ll marry you.

1. I did not do any, I am flexible but not ‘touch my nose to my ass cheek’ flexible