Content warning: secret relationships
TL;DR guys want to do me, but only in secret. They have not gotten better with age.
Back in the days when I was a virgin, I promised myself that I’d never sleep with someone who was ashamed of me, even better I’d only sleep with guys that would be seen in public with me. Shows you how naive I was, because now that I have been dating and sleeping around for a while, I have realized EVERY SINGLE GUY I have been with/wanted was/is ashamed of me on some level. Allow me to provide you some examples…
At 14, I was crazy about a boy. We would talk every night all night on Myspace (for you younger readers think Facebook) and the next day he wouldn’t look at me, which had to take a lot of effort on his part since we shared most of our classes. This went on for most of the school year. I often picked fights with him because I didn’t understand why he did this. I wouldn’t understand until sometime after high school.
At 19, I started online dating. Younger men can be quite crude and cruel. This was when the first guy told me he would, “fuck [me] because [I was] hot, but [he] wouldn’t be seen with [me] because [I wasn’t] conventionally hot enough to be seen with.” Ironically enough, I’d go on to sleep with him years later, but he’s going to get several blog posts dedicated to him. Anyway, he was the first of many—so fucking many—guys that has said they would do me but not be seen with me. I have spent countless hours crying about it and now I’m pretty numb to it. Also, now that I talk to older guys, they don’t blatantly say that. But the undertones are still usually there.
At 24, the first guy I dated and slept with—a.k.a the Drug Lord—wasn’t necessarily ashamed to be seen with me. We had met in public and later in our “relationship“ had gone out a couple times. We were together for six months and he often complained about the 30-minute drive to my apartment. My suggestion was that I could have a caregiver drop me off at his house occasionally. But that was a no-go because Drug Lord couldn’t bear the idea of me possibly running into his father with whom he lived. At 6 weeks it was understandable. But not so much at 6 months. The crazy part is Drug Lord would have kept dating in secret for years if I hadn’t ended it.
At the end of 24, I fell in love with a different guy. He will get is own posts, eventually. He had no issues being seen with me. However, the beginning of the end for us was when we ran into someone he knew on a date. I think it was that moment that made him realize that regardless of how crazy he was for me, how often we had sex (constantly), how we had laughed and cried together, he was never going to introduce me to his friend group. He was never going to tell a soul about me. He ended it with me about two weeks later.
This for me has been the hardest part of dating because no one ever warned me about it. Sure, I knew it could be possible that guys wouldn’t want me sexually or that I’d have to wait years for them to want me. It was always supposed get better when I got older. In a way, it has gotten better but I have also broken all my promises to myself in that I have been with guys that are ashamed of me.
Maybe I didn’t know they were ashamed of me initially, but I always figured it out sooner or later and I kept seeing/sleeping with them, anyway. I say this a lot, we all just do what we must do to get through life. I have been feel-it-in-my-chest-lonely since I was about ten. I have had my fair share of painfully horny nights and days. So, if love in fractions is what gets me through it’s what gets me through.
It doesn’t mean I don’t spend a lot of nights counting the things about me that guys would be ashamed of. There’s my body, my voice, my body, my face, my fucking body, and then there is what everyone would think of the guy if they knew he liked me. However, I have also spent significant time telling myself reasons a guy should be proud to date me. I clean up better than average, I’m funny, smart, I know the difference between a touchdown and a free throw, I’m the epitome of “lady in the streets, freak in the sheets,” and 90% of people that know me like me. I have had more guys than I care to count tell me I am everything they have ever wanted, yet that wretched “but” is always lingering in the air. I didn’t know what that but was exactly at the beginning; I do now.
That but is: “But what would everyone think of me, if they knew I was with you?”
As far as I know not one guy has ever told another person about me. If any guy I have ever been intimate with died tomorrow no one would even know I existed to tell me. Considering most of my “romantic” relationship last for years in some capacity, my secrecy is a hard truth to live with. Perhaps that is what hurts me more than any rejection or heartbreak ever could…the shame that guys have around liking me. And I want to say it will get better, but I don’t know if it will. If 14, 26, and 36-year-old men are ashamed of me I honestly don’t know if there will ever be a point when they stop being ashamed of me.
Sorry I can’t end this on a happier note. I wish I could lie and say that I am the only person this has happened to; I’ve talked to enough friends in wheelchairs to know that I’m not, though. That said, there are people who are like me that have partners who are proud of them. I simply haven’t experienced that…yet. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.
Regardless though, I can warn you what to expect or at the very least keep in the back of your head.
