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, enjoy the show.
I am single, and find myself in a bit of a Catch-22. I fancy people all the time, and genuinely place a lot of hope in them. But there’s one problem: I know, always very early on, that these people are widely perceived as, well, being awful. Unreliable, selfish, too-cool, not kind enough, the list goes on. Why do I always go for people that seem like bad news? How can I be aware of that, yet incapable of gravitating towards anyone “better”? Is it my own fault, then, for being single, because I’m only attracted to the wrong people?
–
The first few words of your letter brought a vivid, haunting image to my mind. A young man, ostensibly the frontman, has taken to the stage for a gig with his band. His hair is bleached and he’s lean, frowning, hungry. He would be menacing if he was a bit older, a bit bigger – but there’s something magnetic about him. And he so, so obviously knows it. He took his shirt off before he even entered the room. Someone has been hired, for reasons never explained, to oil his chest. This process is repeated every three songs.
I am not going to tell you who this person is (although it’s probably not hard to find), but I can tell you I find him impossibly attractive. For this, I quietly hate myself. Why can’t he put a shirt on? Or at least say thank you to the man in the flat cap slathering sticky gold liquid over him from the waist up? He’s the kind of man that makes your parents shudder and your best friend sigh, because they know two things: one, it’s happened again, and two, there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it.
I sent my best friend a photo of him, then a link to that virtual gig along with my condolences about the way I felt. “Not sure how clean he looks,” was her first observation, followed by the confident warning: “Looks like he’d be bad at sex.” I could read those comments a million times, coming from the person I trust the most in the world, yet still spend the evening combing through his Instagram account, trying to decode the impressionist painting he made of his girlfriend. “He’s so dumb,” I mutter to no one, as I waste my time finding reasons to convince everyone but myself of the opposite.
This happens often, and I don’t know who is to blame – if anyone. I think we’re dealing with two potential scenarios with your question: the first is akin to the one I have just described, a minor and harmless obsession with someone so out of reach because of their job, their location, their relationship status, whatever it is. A crush. An awful, stupid, silly little crush. I’d like to think in this situation that there is no one to “blame”, which would imply a sense of responsibility. Who can be – or should be – considered responsible for finding someone attractive from a distance, making this an entirely one-sided relationship (a contradictory, yet unfortunately very real thing)? I think “responsibility” should only come into the picture when tangible action takes place – emotional or physical, with the potential to alter a person’s balanced state of being.
The second situation is more complex – the one in which you pursue these “bad” people in real-world, intimate, two-sided relationships. (Here’s where I should add that I mean “bad” very much in brackets – a reminder here that we’re dealing with small problems that feel big. There are bad people without the brackets, and I would never dream of trying to justify this, or give advice on someone sincerely dangerous. With that in mind, let’s continue.) I’ve done this, merrily launching head-first into a situation most people knew would only upset me – and I don’t expect that to surprise you as I know few women who have not done this. He’s exciting, but not overwhelming. Intimidating, but not terrifying. Charming, but not cloying. He gets your heart racing and then leaves it exhausted.
Most of the people I have dated in the last few years, I’ve met on dating apps (More on this in my last column). Such a platform gives you more time (arguably, too much) and criteria (definitely, too much) to judge a person before deciding to give them a chance – specifically, to ignore them if they seem a bit too nice. It’s because dating apps better outline the disparities between the ways people flirt. On the one hand you’ve got people who use dating apps in a very straightforward way – perhaps the way dating websites always were, laced with sincerity and vulnerability before we stopped whispering about Tinder like it was a dirty word, exclusively designed for desperate teenagers. People who use dating apps in a straightforward way, to be blunt, make my skin crawl. Those looking for “someone to go on adventures with” and a person “who doesn’t take themselves too seriously” and “is really passionate about what they do”. In real life those are obviously all nice things, but for some reason seeing them written down gives me a tiny panic attack.
I think it’s also because in real life, nobody would be earnestly adoring or so plain about what they want upon first meeting you. Would the guy you met at a party compliment you on your smile in the first 15 minutes of your conversation (maybe he would, but if it was me I would walk away). Anyone who is too nice too soon feels like a trap to me. A person who is enigmatic is more attractive – there’s a challenge, it’s something to figure out, to convince. I’m nothing if not earnest in every single area in my life, which might be why I think romantic partners must earn this over a much longer period of time. So, those who are not feel like a more unusual situation to figure out.
Anyway, back to the dating apps, and the unsavoury choice you are immediately drawn to who we will plainly call the Dirtbag. The Dirtbag has great taste in music – niche but not awful, occasionally uncool but ironically so – and has wittier comebacks than anyone you’ve ever met. He’s quick-thinking and smooth-talking, but only when he deems it absolutely necessary. That one compliment he gives you in six weeks of dating will stay with you for so much longer than all the ones the nice guys gave you in the first six hours. Is there something in the thrill of the pursuit of the Dirtbag? The fact that it’s a battle to be won, in a way, rather than being handed the trophy for simply being alive? Is my interest in the Dirtbag a manifestation of my need to feel “better” than something, than someone? Does that give me a head start in terms of seeming more loveable? He’s selfish and lazy and blinkered, but I am generous and ambitious and open-minded! I will help him, I will fix him, and the world will see once again how wonderful I am!
Except, of course, you never fix them. They do what everyone told you they’d do and you shake your head and wipe your tears and promise yourself it won’t happen again. It can’t. But it can, and it does, and here’s why I think it does: we place so much hope in our self-awareness to trump our affection – but those are two divorced feelings, awareness and attraction, and it’s just foolish to expect one to be able to curb the other. I do not know the science behind it, but I’d easily believe that one emotion uses one part of the brain, the other another. You can be aware of your lactose intolerance but still order pizza on a hangover. You can be aware that sugar will give you breakouts but still need a drink after a long week. You can be aware that these boys seem like the most difficult situation to put yourself in, yet still crave the adrenaline.
It makes me think of 10 Things I Hate About You, a totemic romcom that endures for so many reasons, which I find comfort in every single time I do something I knew in the first place I would regret doing. I think of Kat Stratford’s eponymous speech towards the end of the film, as she’s trying to make sense of her feelings – as a feminist, an anticonformist – for Heath Ledger’s “bad boy” Patrick Verona. She runs through this list she’s written about everything she hates about him (I’ve tried this, it doesn’t work), but it is, of course, the total 180, the paradox and the fury and the romance and the resignation of it all, that reverberates over 20 years later. She hates “the big dumb combat boots” and “the bad haircut”, which makes me think of the boy I was desperately in love with and thought I could convince to use more conditioner (I couldn’t, and judging by photos, he still doesn’t use enough) and the other one who insisted on garish trainers I thought I could talk him out of (I couldn’t, I think he started a podcast about it). I thought because I loved them for other things they would love me enough to, well, at least pretend to listen. But I suppose they didn’t.
Anyway, the most searing line in Kat’s poem: “But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.” She knows she could, she should, but she can’t. And ultimately, that story wouldn’t be what it is today if Kat had found a way to fully hate Patrick. I don’t want to live in a world where that would have happened, anyway.
In this world, it is just so hard to find the “right” person. It’s hard to find any person! You fall for these people, the ones who seem like bad news, because you see something good in them. You see a spark, you feel some kind of joy, however fleeting it is. Looking back on the various relationships riddled with bad news I’ve had, I still wouldn’t rewrite history as to not have them. Because there was good news, in short bursts, too. By my lights, that’ll always be worth it.
Looping back to the first edition of this here column, I am reminded of a boy waving so many red flags, who slept on a sheetless bed and wouldn’t text a girl back. And I’ll repeat what I said then: these warning signs can, and sometimes do, turn into loveable quirks. They can become the things you find endearing, that you love your partner in spite of. It is only circumstance, and hindsight, that lets us decide who was fully bad news; who, over time, became better; where a pattern was; what really went wrong. I don’t think when you’re starting a new relationship, however casual, you should have to worry about what history tells you might be about to happen.
One day you’ll be the person telling everyone else that, all of a sudden, when the right person comes along, it’s easy. It’s not perfect, and there will certainly be bad things – if there was no imperfection, where would our humanity lie? – but the overwhelming loyalty and trust will obliterate the rest. It always does. And if it doesn’t, just remember what Ronny in Moonstruck says: “We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts, and love the wrong people and die.” Proceed with caution and be gentle with yourself, but ultimately I hope you can trust that you are doing it right. There is no “better” person than the one you love. And if there is, it simply means you haven’t met them yet.
You’re on the free list for If That Makes Sense. This means that you won’t receive my next column going out in two weeks, only the one after that in a month’s time. If you don’t want to miss out, you can becoming a paying subscriber now. Thank you!
Next time, we’ll be talking about platonic breakups, and the singular kind of sadness that comes from losing your best friends. 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.