I’ve been in my head about my past relationships lately. Once, as I complained about one of my usual hookups I was texting with, a friend asked me, “Have you ever thought about this? What if you are the fuckboy?” He may have been half-joking, but we both knew he was right. Somewhere along the way I became the fuckboy.
Here, fuckboy means not showing vulnerability or revealing true emotions, keeping feelings at bay so relations with a person (or persons) remain unofficial, barely even a ‘situation,’ and playing petty games, like being hard to reach, arousing jealousy by posting other good-looking people in your Stories, and feigning a facade of playing it cool, no fucks given. Way cool, bro.
I see now that acting like that was a necessary safeguard I needed to create to protect myself which was needed for a period of time in my life. Now I’ve moved beyond that but haven’t dated (in so many words) for many years now. I need to readjust and shake off this fuckboy mentality (p hard for a g like me!). Still, my default mode when potential love feels too close is to run the other way, hide, go quiet for weeks. Peace! Deuces! I’m out.
How do I convince myself it’s okay to let my guard down? How do I find a new way of talking to myself internally that does not still sound like peak fuckboy-era me? It’s somewhat disturbing, somewhat funny, my internal voice remains this guarded and defensive. My f-boy status is much deeper than anyone knows.
Sometimes I feel embarrassed for my beginner-level, adolescent “relationships,” like I’m missing out on continued human learning experience. Other times, I’m really not tryna go there (see, I can’t even remain vulnerable for one paragraph). For one thing, this age is weird. What is dating at an age when many potential matches are somewhere between marriage and divorce? I feel like it should involve signing an NDA with clear renewal periods, and we sign on or we don’t, no talking about it. Secondly, I’m used to riding dolo. For now I’m fine with considering partnering up at all.