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What do i do after i get here?

My friends keep telling me to "just get laid" but it feels gross - what should I do?

  • Should I suck it up and get into a relationship with/sleep with someone I'm not really attracted to, to gain some relationship momentum (ie break the streak) and get over someone I can't have? So as a precurser to this post, you should know: 1. I am an attractive and confident woman who is 28. 2. I have had a career since I was 18 (classical musician), am a workaholic, and haven't had many relationships, mostly because I don't find people I'm attracted to physically and intellectually that often. 3. I'm hung up on a guy who has a girlfriend. It was a case of weird timing: They had been dating for 6 weeks and she found out she was getting transferred 3 hours away and after the first three dates that didn't go so well (his words were "we both thought 'yuck' for three dates but then on the fourth date 'something just clicked'"). We met the day he agreed to move with her (in a professional way - he and I have mutual friends), started talking at 10:30pm and got kicked out at last call (2am on a Monday), had an instant connection that just grew and grew. Fastforward a few months, I tell him I have "romantic feelings" for him, he says he has "strong romantic feelings" for me too, but I say that I would never trust him if he left his current girlfriend for me and being a homewrecker is not something I can live with... he suggested we "put a pin in it" route and agreed to be friends (just to be clear, he's very reserved but never said word one about leaving her - but I preempted any of that with the "I won't be able to trust to you if you dump her for me"). We talk on the phone/email once in a while (he's been gone 2 months, we've talked maybe 4 or 5 times) about life, music etc, etc and he looks at me with big lovey doe eyes but the fact of the matter is, he moved with her and he's sleeping with her so I'm trying to get over my feelings for him and be happy that he seems to be happy in his new city and in his relationship (I guess he's happy, he never mentions his gf to me - he describes her to others as "nice", and she has a habit of buying him things. She spent over a 1000 dollars on one of his Christmas gifts - again super evil/completely stupid of me to have hope that his relationship is not based on pure, undying love but rather lust with a little convenience thrown in). My current city is his hometown, and he has said many times that he intends to move back permanently since his family is here. We didn't cheat or anything, but there was a tilt and lean almost kiss that I put the brakes on, and we had a lingering embrace/hug that again, I wiggled out of when he was trying to extend it. This is his first serious girlfriend, according to our mutual friends who have known him for most of his life. He was going through some crap when he met her, and is finishing a few classes for his degree, and is getting his "sh*t straight" according to him. 4. I'm trying to be a good person and not love somebody I can't have, and not be selfish and hope it doesn't work out (that seems like bad karma)... he's a good friend now and I truly do want him to be happy, however he find happiness. For me to imagine I might help make him happy someday is just selfishness, I know. He knows how I feel, he feels the same way but he must feel more for her since he left with her (they've been going out for about 8 or 9 months at this posting). 5. I haven't slept with anyone in 8 years. 6. I can't get a thrill from any physical stuff with another guy unless I imagine it's this guy who left. (I also can't uh hum, arrive by myself unless I'm fantasizing about him... fml) 7. I defriended him on FB, I deleted his number from my phone, I ignore him on IM. I took up yoga and belly dancing to get my mind right, I got a sort-of promotion at work, have been doing meetup.com stuff, asked all my friends for blind date recommendations, and started some grad school work in the past three or four months to try and move on. The problem is, I'm kind of shy and composed in the guy department. I almost never find a guy I am into enough to open my heart to. But I did with this guy and I'm just torn to pieces. It's not getting better. Unfortunately, I have hope in my chest that just will not die, no matter how many different ways I try to kill it. Because I'm trying so hard to get my heart/brain on track/off of this other guy, I've been dating a lot. Most of the guys really like me and text a lot, email, request more dates, but they're all just a dead battery in the physical attraction department. The latest guy, we'll call the Prof, has a good job, he's kind of funny, but there's a few red flags (he's a little immature given his age of 35, and not in the good way - lots of drunk FB pictures, he's a little stuck up, talks a lot about his ex's, lewd talk, I wiped my mouth off after his first kiss - he couldn't see me do it, but my initial reaction was NOT good), the first time I saw him I literally had a frowny face :( appear in my head - I am NOT attracted to him. But he's chasing me, and will NOT give up. Because the last 8 years have been a series of false starts and straight up not dating, I think I'm need a new strategy. Part of me wants to trust my heart and initial reaction and say "no way Jose" and take on a Jane Austen-like bravery to wait and "bonk only for true love" or something... the other part is full of my friends saying "Just get laid!" and my guy friend's experience of "something clicking" (though to be honest, I think that clicking might've involved his member getting serviced somehow but that's rude of me to speculate because I guess love can grow from "yuck"...? I can believe that love can grow from "meh" but "yuck"? I think lust can grow from "yuck" or "meh" but AGAIN rude and out of bounds of me to speculate because that just fuels the stupid hope machine that is my heart)... Should I trust my initial "yucks" to all these guys, or just suck it up and start sleeping with someone I'm not into to get over this other guy? I really want to be a good person and not use anyone. But I'm just not built to be slutty. I've never had a one night stand. I don't know how to sleep with someone I'm not that into. It's like asking me to fly a plane. I wouldn't know where to start. Press the big red button? Who knows? :) I think that's a good thing but I'm getting lots of advice from girlfriends who have more relationship experience than me - they say if I sleep with these guys they'll start to grow on me and other men will be more attracted to me (when it rains it pours) and then I can dump this guy for someone I actually like. They also say it's been so long I'm putting the "penis on a pedestal" ala 40 Year Old Virgin but I don't know... Leading someone on like that seems evil. Also, giving myself away physically like that makes me queasy. But maybe that's my problem!? Maybe I'm too old fashioned and the dating world has left me behind? My heart is broken, ya know. But I don't want to hurt/lead someone trying to fix myself, and I don't know if that's going to make it worse or what. I mean, I didn't want to fall in love with this other guy (tried SO HARD to distract myself, went on 30 dates in 4 months to try and find someone else), and feel so guilty for not being able to get over him when he's with someone he's living with, like I'm sending evil vibes their way or something... Ug, I'm a mess but I'm really trying! Should I change my non-working ways and try to sex my way out of this box of sad and lonely, mefi? Advice please.

  • Answer:

    *Terrible* idea. You wouldn't enjoy sex with a 'yuk' man. It might even be traumatic, given that you're far from casual about your body, it's been years since your last physical encounter, and you have a strongly romantic sensibility. Worse, you might find yourself confused, developing an attachment to an unsuitable guy through some kind of post-coital rationalization. Because right now, you don't have the emotional habits of someone who can do casual sex. (I speak as someone who's lived as one such creature, in the past.) Time will do most of the work. Help it with distraction. You need to starve your longing. You've already decided this guy is not allowed. Literally snap yourself out of extended ruminations about him - go to another room, make a physical gesture, or sound, when your mind goes there. Anchor yourself in the present moment. Continue to fill your days with busyness unrelated to sex or its preludes. Maybe even leave your city for a while - take a few gigs out of town. These are crude techniques, I admit, and they rarely work at night, but you can't let this fixation continue (however plausible it might have been if you had a different moral character). Not trying to be offensive - again, I've been in a similar position - but it might be true that you're a little bit 'behind' others your age, who've prioritized relationships, felt easier or more open about starting them, or had more relaxed standards. Your peers have had a few loves and losses, learned what it's like to negotiate intimacy, to be with and leave another person. No shame in not having had those experiences - you were doing different things - and with luck the next guy you meet and like will be cool and supportive and happy to be a teacher in these ways. But it's possible that a kind of, forgive me, immaturity, might be fuelling the intensity of this attachment. Maybe exploring that idea will help give you enough distance to navigate this situation more clearly.

vilolagrl at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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I really want to be a good person and not use anyone. But I'm just not built to be slutty. I've never had a one night stand. I don't know how to sleep with someone I'm not that into. I don't know if I'm allowed to speak for "slutty" people (I don't know that they'd consider me one of the pack, certainly not now that I'm married), but everyone I know who sleeps around does it because they enjoy it. If you don't want to sleep with someone, you shouldn't. If you're grossed out by a guy, you shouldn't date him just because he will not quit. I think you're doing everything right at this point, it's just going to take time. Sooner or later, chances are you will meet someone new and this will all fade into the background. Although let me just say one thing about your "dream guy"- only in a fuckin' Taylor Swift song is every great man saddled with some burden of a woman (I'm beginning to suspect Taylor's a misogynist). He is choosing to be with her, not you, and that's a reflection of who he is. He's the guy that doesn't want to be with you. Stop making excuses for him as though you're star-crossed lovers. You are not.

ThePinkSuperhero

I'm going to ask - do you want me or her? and live with the answer. Five bucks says he continues to waffle even if you do this. The kinds of guys who do this live on female attention and need some emotional psychodrama to keep their ego going. Bonus points if he is engaged or already married. It's semi-normal to do this once in your twenties while you're still figuring out relationship boundaries, but guys who do this repeatedly are pure evil. I was just talking to a friend who moved to Europe to be with a waffler who ended up being secretly married. Emotional affairs can be just as damaging and brutal as physical affairs. Also, ask yourself, what would you do if this guy finally went out with you and then dumped you after a week? There are a lot of red flags in your post that imply you have structured your life so as to make intimacy difficult or impossible. Why is that? You might want to look into therapy to address this. Prof sounds like a predator who smells inexperience. Stay away.

benzenedream

Fastforward a few months, I tell him I have "romantic feelings" for him, he says he has "strong romantic feelings" for me too, but I say that I would never trust him if he left his current girlfriend for me and being a homewrecker is not something I can live with... he suggested we "put a pin in it" route and agreed to be friends (just to be clear, he's very reserved but never said word one about leaving her - but I preempted any of that with the "I won't be able to trust to you if you dump her for me") I really am having trouble grokking why the idea of his breaking up with this girl is so terrible, but the idea of you having a prolonged romantic interchange with him behind her back, complete with admissions of feelings and near-kisses, is not. Emotional infidelity is just as bad, if not worse. Are you sure you want a relationship, and not a dramatic, pseudoromantic, star-crossed sort of thing?

PhoBWanKenobi

I just thought that part of an adult was being able to get over romantic feelings and be friends with people. Part of being an adult is realizing that you can't be good friends with people you have unrequited romantic feelings for.

Ironmouth

"I won't be able to trust to you if you dump her for me" I had to stop reading 2/3rds in because I was getting an anxiety reaction from your overthinking. You've created a Catch-22 scenario for every pivot point in your life and you've done the opposite of your gut in every example. Don't sleep with the Prof. Do call up Guy #1, ask him how his relationship is going. "Are you happy?" "Are there sparks?" Yeah, it's a shitty thing to do to his SO on the face of it, but morallythis whole put a pin on it thing is exactly the same deal except everyone involved gets to feel insanely miserable but you get to continue that oh-so-sweet avoidance of doing anything about your life. I quoted the above line because it demonstrates the impossible scenario you created. If he wanted to be with you, he was damned if you do, damned if you don't. The real world is not a novel with clean plot lines and convenient timing. It is messy and you never get anything without risk.

Skwirl

No! No sex with people you aren't attracted to! No! No! If you're going to have meaningless sex, it should be with someone you're attracted to! (Or any sex, for that matter.) Also, there's nothing wrong with the other guy dumping the other girl to be with you. It happens all the time. Millions of relationships start that way. Sometimes, you're with the wrong person and you meet the right person. What is wrong, in my book, is what you're doing now: carrying on an intense romantic friendship with him in a way that's essentially an emotional affair. That's not fair to anyone involved.

yarly

No. Meaningless sex will not help you in any way get over an unhealthy preoccupation you have with a guy living in another city. What was a good first step was cutting this 'friend' out of your life because you are obviously not able to just be his friend. You clearly have ulterior motives to the 'friendship' and those motives were / still are causing you suffering. Forget about him. Keep dating, keep meeting people, keep living your life. "...and haven't had many relationships, mostly because I don't find people I'm attracted to physically and intellectually that often." More likely your relationship problems have less to do with other people than they do with you. If you went on 30 dates in 4 months and found no one who was remotely interesting and attractive...the problem is you. Period. You may need to lower your expectations and stop comparing real people to some fantasy in your head. No other guy you meet stacks up to your 'dream guy' simply because you have built this guy up in your head for months and months and months in isolation. You never lived with him, you never dated him...you shared a few conversations and coffees. You didn't have to deal with the totality of who he is and so instead you filled in the blanks and made him your White Knight. He is everything you think you want because, for the most part, he lives in your head. You might also explore the idea that maybe you are more attracted to him because he is taken. Its hard, but keep doing what you are doing. Keep dating, keep meeting people - and when you do, work hard to focus on their redeeming qualities...not some checklist in your head. But most of all don't stress so hard about it. You don't need to 'find a replacement.' Stop grasping at this.

jnnla

"Should I suck it up and get into a relationship with/sleep with someone I'm not really attracted to?" No.

delicate_dahlias

Getting into a relationship with someone you are not attracted to and using him to get over someone else seems to me to be really selfish and not at all fair to the other person. As for just sleeping with someone...wait until you find someone you are attracted to and sleep with him instead. If you aren't enjoying yourself it won't work.

naoko

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