Hi! Hello! Welcome to your monthly free column. I hope you enjoy it – if you do, here’s where to click to receive another one in two weeks. Anyway, here’s Wonderwall.
I was 24, just out of a long-term relationship with a guy who turned out to be a bit of a shit, actually. I jumped to the dating apps after an acceptable time of, according to my friends, "being by myself". I found a couple losers, a few hundred fans of The (US) Office, and a nice boy named Will. Long story short, we went on a few dates, had a couple (bad) snogs, and I even slept over in his sheetless bed without even so much as a clumsy fondle. (Too kind a boy? Maybe he was gay? Was I giving "no thanks" vibes? Was I not assertive enough in my desire to be clumsily fondled? Who knows?).
Anyway, on my birthday (about date five), we went for a meal and he handed me a poem. And asked me to read it aloud. Which I did, because I'm nothing if not polite. In addition to the poem was a memory stick attached to my birthday card which, to my absolute horror, I discovered held a copy of his own rendition of 'Wonderwall'.
Cut to three days later, I text him back after he says he's off to St. Andrews with some pals for the weekend. I wish him a lovely time and end the text on a relatively (as far as I can remember) vague platitude about drives with pals. I don't hear from him ever again. I'm not sad about this.
My questions for you: Why did he not even clumsily fondle me in bed? Why did I sleep in his sheetless bed without even the promise of a hard-won orgasm? Why did he write me a poem? Why did I agree to read it aloud? Why did he write me a poem and THEN not text me back? What is it about men who are kind that makes women (me) decide that despite the obvious red flags, they are good options to date?
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Before we dive in, has anyone ever told you what a wonderful way with words you have? Are you aware of how much you have brightened my days, plural, that I have greedily re-read your letter, and how much I am sure everyone reading this will feel the same? I just wanted you to know that before we go any further. Never doubt how unbelievably cool you are.
This man, however, is entertaining, but not surprising. I don’t know what it is about a certain type of man that I have encountered that makes them believe that they are, in their inherent selves, such a gift that a woman’s basic instinct to expect things like bed linen and a text back should melt away – because they have done what they think was asked of them: They have snogged you, they have housed you, they have sung for you. What a treat.
I do not know why he opted for the one-two punch of a poem and an Oasis cover, but I do know that, in my experience, a certain type of man who uses dating apps can see his time spent with a woman he fancies and wants to impress as something to be completed in several steps, before moving onto the next person. We date, we snog, we sleep – and then I guess some of us sing ‘Wonderwall’ and run away to St. Andrews.
Your former not-quite-lover sounds like a unique specimen, but I think I have encountered men like him before. There is a suggestion in the act of giving you something material that indicates that he thinks he wants to impress you – and my guess would be that he’s building up his idea of what you might like or think or want on his own, rather than picking up cues or asking you directly. Because, really, might he only want to bolster his own impression of himself? Then, when you are gifted with such art, this sets him free, right? He’s done his duty, he has shown you how brilliant and sensitive and wonderful he is, and you have been lucky enough to receive it. And so, off he goes on a drive with his pals, glowing with the knowledge he has changed a woman’s life with his talent.
I mean, we know this isn’t the case, but considering he chose to ignore your text and never speak to you again, we unfortunately have to let him think that and he is not here to tell us otherwise.
In terms of your questions about the lack of a clumsy fondle and the nights on his sheetless and orgasm-less bed and the why of it all, this comes back to something I fear we will encounter often. Maybe this man is frozen in his insecurity? I wonder if he is incapable of attempting a fondle because he will be mortified if it’s anything even close to clumsy. Maybe he’s never given a woman an orgasm and doesn’t know how to ask? And if so – sure! It must be terrifying and very embarrassing!
From this moment onwards, it sounds to me like his fears took over, he knew the end was near, and decided to show his kindness in a way he knew he had control over. Because that’s what it all comes down to – what you can edit, what you can perform, how you can show yourself in the best light to the other person while being able to see them being impressed by your genius, regardless of how they actually feel about it. Finding a way to give you sexual pleasure would require something of a selfless act from him, whereas making you read words that he wrote and listen to music that he arranged in a very 2010-acoustic-YouTube-cover-with-five-versions-of-yourself-playing-different-instruments-type-way? That’s all him! Look how clever and mourn the idea of him forever.
The reason you return to these men who perform kindness like they were getting paid £8/hour in a charity shop is the same reason I do, which is to say: why wouldn’t we? It is the best feeling in the world when someone who doesn’t know you well enough to have to be kind to you just chooses to do so because they feel like it. Everyone I know who has been happily married to their partner for years tells me that love is about knowing someone’s flaws inside out and loving them anyway.
How are you to know that a sheetless bed is a red flag and not just the manifestation of a loveable flaw? It still amazes me how quickly, when someone has upset me, I can shift from “He’s vegan which is nice because it makes me cook more!” To “Well he was vegan anyway so that was obviously going to be insufferable.” (There is nothing wrong with being vegan, I should clarify, only with unkind boys who just so turn out to also be vegan).
Kind men are good options to date, but I’m not sure that’s what this guy was. He was nice to go to the trouble of writing and playing something for you, which, however much we might be unsure of the quality, took some effort – but kind men won’t ghost you.
He was nice, and he could have, one day, become kind – these red flags would be looked upon as endearing silly memories. I would like to think, from the way you write, that this man didn’t upset you when he chose to leave ‘Wonderwall’ as a parting gift. We could call it a red flag with hindsight now, for sure, but what about if he had gone on to reply, eventually put a sheet on his bed and give you an orgasm? Wouldn’t ‘Wonderwall’ become something you’d tell your friends about, which would immediately make them soften to this man who, for whatever strange reason, did what he did?
I love this story, and I am so grateful you’ve told it for me. I’m so sorry this insecure and very clearly anxious man did not know how to actually impress and care for you – because I don’t think he was sure enough of himself to understand the difference between a selfish act that makes him seem a certain way, to boost his own sense of kindness and sex appeal and confidence, and a generous one actually meant to make you feel that way. But I don’t think you were wrong to date him – isn’t a nice but hopeless man ultimately the kind of man you would hope to spend a lifetime working out, rather than suffering the consequences of how dangerous and intimidating and degrading he is?
In another lifetime, I would have hoped you could have eventually politely told this man about the mysteries of the female orgasm, of why his cover should have stayed in 2012, of the things that actually made you happy. Instead, you dodged a bullet, you have more time and energy to find someone who actually might know that you can just listen to Oasis in your own time.
I don’t feel like you need my advice for this particular experience, because I can feel in your writing that you have grown far beyond its oddities. You sound confident and mature and sharp, about all of it. If I were speaking to you at the time, after date five and before St Andrews, I would have advised you to carefully try and tell him about why, actually, you feel a sheet on a bed does matter. Perhaps he would have told you what his fear is – a lack of time? Of knowledge? Of understanding of comfort? – either way, you would have known. And in my opinion, he lost his right to fair and impartial judgement when he decided to not let you know anything anymore.
Communication could have brought you both closer together, and could have also given you closure post St Andrews to tell him why, actually, none of what he did was acceptable. I wish I could say in my experience that sending such a text has brought me complete relief and satisfaction – too often I’ve been met with an underwhelming reply confirming everything I hoped wasn’t true about why this person was disappointing – but I know it has made me feel better than not sending it at all.
Please do keep dating kind men, however odd and clumsy and impenetrable they might seem – but trust that what you want and what you deserve matters enough to shatter the niceties of boys who sing ‘Wonderwall’ and vanish into thin air afterwards. Tell them, like Bill (that’s Paul Rudd circa 2012 to you and I) in The Perks of Being a Wallflower says, that we accept the love we think we deserve. I feel like you know this already, and I know you have learned from this story and will now approach Oasis with caution. But if Will knew any of this? I really think he would have just put a sheet on the bed.
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Next time, we’ll be talking about love again, specifically the confusing and terrifying and very often unrequited type. If you’d like to write in to respond to this week’s letter, or to ask questions of your own, you can email me here.