The best writing comes from not writing

Or at least this is what I kept telling myself to feel better about being everywhere but the damn studio desk. Drinks, pub quizzes, runs, raves, boat races, salsa classes, reorganising my bookshelf, purging my closet. I embarked on every available side quest under the guise of gathering material. I wasn’t procrastinating, I was looking for inspiration. My friends are all too familiar with me pausing mid-sentence to jot down a potential title on a pocket-sized red Moleskine. I’m trying to be better about the graveyard of ideas that is my notes app. I went through every item on the list, scoured my emails for rejected pitches, but nothing stuck out. Then, as the universe always delivers, my friend Zee had a day off, and we went back to our favourite bar for a coworking day. I was overcaffeinated and practically crawling up the walls from listening to my voice whilst trying to clean up a transcription of an interview for a profile I should be working on instead of writing this very piece. I’d downed three coffees and an order of fries, and my favourite bartenders were all busy. When her phone died, I took it as divine intervention and was already halfway out the door when she suggested we hang out at her place down the road instead. As I caught her up on my busy weekend, she pointed out that I’d been spending a lot of time with a new boy I’m seeing. I dropped my voice, though we were alone in her flat, and confessed, I feel so guilty, I was at my friend’s housewarming and kept checking the time to see when it would be appropriate to call my Uber back to his place. I had witnessed countless friends’ sparkle dimmed by loser boyfriends. I was a closing this place down and securing an afters kind of girl. I was devoted to my girlfriends and to the night out. What was happening to me?!

My Dating Style – An Interlude

For you to understand why this was such a departure from tradition, I will illustrate my approach to dating. I think it’s meant to be fun, I’m at a net positive, good dates are thrilling and bad dates at least make for good stories. I enjoy a girl’s night that wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test, but these men were never central characters, they were plot devices. My great love stories were always about my friends. I kissed strangers at parties and went on weeknight dates, saving my weekend primetime for the people who mattered the most.

RIP The Bolter

I never spend the night. When The Tortured Poets Department first came out, my friend quickly declared that The Bolter was my personal anthem. I didn’t want a man breathing down my neck. I run hot, I have a multi-step skincare routine and a specific brand of toothpaste I order online. The collection of labelled toothbrushes stored in the drawer underneath my sink are not evidence of a hearty roster but instead of being the designated crash site for my friends after a night out. Bought in a multipack and likely to make your gums bleed, after all, drunk beggars can’t be choosers, these generic toothbrushes offer them a shred of dignity after being sick in a club bathroom (and maybe on the tube home). When the same friend texted me in the morning to ask how my date had gone, I summarised my feelings in a way that someone who knew me intimately would immediately understand:

I asked him to stay the night. And I gave him a toothbrush. A soft bristle one, not a shitty one from the multipack. And I didn’t make him take it home with him.

Oh you’re down bad lol.

To another friend I explained, confused, I don’t want to fuck this up. What is going on?! I have never worried about fumbling a boy! It wasn’t that I was cold and callous. I’m a capital R Romantic, I’m inherently curious and enthusiastic. I want to know people intimately, I memorise details, I like doing things just because. If I meet someone and we click, I make a point of texting them, let’s hang out!! I bring my friends coffee in bed when they stay the night, I make them dinner, I plan days out when they’re down. I tell them how much our friendship means to me, not only after two bottles of wine, but also whilst we run errands together in the middle of the day.

When it came to dating, I often told myself it wasn’t too different from making new friends. My litmus test for gauging acceptable interactions with someone I was recently dating was always what would I do if I just wanted to be their friend? This strategy quickly fell apart when my friends pointed out that I was going to end up doing the most for a guy who thought getting me a glass of water after we had sex was the pinnacle of chivalry.

Is this Bad for the Brand?

I am so good at being single. I’m really good at not really caring. I’ve gotten the maximisation of fun down to an exact science. When my recently single friends would tell me how excited they were for their newfound freedom, they often spoke of drunken dancefloor make outs. Not wanting to dull their excitement, especially for the ones who had been in the same relationship since middle school, I tactfully told them that wasn’t even the best part of it. I’ve been single for 23 years, that’s way more than the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert. I’ve dated, but never seriously. I get to be selfish, I have so much time for my friends, for my hobbies, for myself. I have free reign to do stupid shit “for the plot.” My wifed-up friends live vicariously through me, I keep the girls entertained at brunch and litter their inboxes with my escapades. When I guiltily told Zee that I was starting to like this guy, she laughed at my panic. I didn’t mean for this to happen!! It’s still very new. I’m mortified at the fact that he will probably read this, because even though I’m not particularly good at playing it cool, it’s one thing to gush about a crush to your friends, and another thing entirely to write about them on the internet (even if it is the cure to your writer’s block).

I don’t usually write about things as they are happening. There’s something comforting and slightly sanitising about having some distance. Writing about my personal life doesn’t come without consequences. What goes without saying for my friends in the biz has to be spelled out to the people who dissect my writing as if they were sneaking a look into my journal. To quote , personal essays are not diary entries. There is a narrative arc. I’m telling a story. I found myself revisiting ’s “The perilous act of writing about someone who’s going to read it” after making a booking under my first and last name and realising that the guy I was seeing was one Google search away from knowing too much, too soon. People sometimes roll their eyes when I say that I’m a private person, you write about your personal life for a living! I understand where they are coming from, but I’ve always been in control of how much I share. When writing about other people, it’s still never about them, but about my experience with them. All you really know about this boy is that he exists and has a toothbrush at my place.

P.S. to the boy who pulled me out of a month-long writer’s block: if you’re reading this, I hope you’re not offended. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a plot device. Also I reposted ’s I Admit It: I Love Situationships piece on my stories because I think it’s so cool that she’s writing for Vogue, and not as a weak attempt at subliminal messaging.

My first kiss…

or at least my first real one. Not the playground pecks, but the real deal. I remember the anxious anticipation of having your first kiss. The neuroticism, wondering if you would know what to do when the moment came. The silent disbelief when people told you instinct would take over. Staying up late at camp, helping my friend sneak away in the dark and hanging on to every word once she was back and giving us a play-by-play. My first kiss happened when I was visiting a friend in Vienna, I guess Klimt’s work made an impression. It wasn’t premeditated, which would surprise anyone who knew my fourteen-year-old self because that girl was a planner. He was a friend of hers, I remember thinking he was one of the nicest boys I’d ever met. We both tasted like Peach Schnapps, syrupy-sweet liquid courage.

On kissing strangers

I’ve had my fair share of kissing strangers. I might even be an expert. If the dance floor make-out is an Olympic sport, call me Alysa Liu. I give gold-medal-worthy performances with a smile on my face. You’ve been making eyes from across the room. You smile, look down, they’re still looking when you check again. An exchange of words is not always necessary; you’re dancing to the same music. You thrive in the liminal space between strangers and something else. It doesn’t always happen in the dark and after midnight. Sometimes it’s under the scorching sun, there’s sweat and glitter and beer involved. It’s almost choreographed, you move in sync, high on life, and as you run to catch up with your friends, you declare that this is your favourite holiday.

On kissing friends

It’s late and you’ve had a few drinks, someone spins a bottle. It’s New Year’s eve and you make eye contact during the countdown, and figure what the hell, it’s meant to be good luck. You’ve been flirting and toeing the line for years, and your friends are sick of hearing you talk about this, about him, and you’ve exhausted yourself on the subject. You’ve been left alone with him so many times, and nothing ever happened, so you let it go. You convince yourself that you imagined the tension, you go back to just being friendly. You tell yourself it was a lapse in judgment, a trick of the light. Months pass, and you toe the line again, flirting over fries because you don’t want to go to the airport alone. You ride the train together, hug goodbye, you’re getting on a plane in an hour, fuck it.

On kissing lovers

The moment before the kiss that defies the laws of physics. The forehead kiss in the morning is infinitely more intimate than sex the night before. Kisses on the wrist, a palm, the crook of a neck, never just the means to an end. A barely audible whisper. A body memorised. An oscillating intensity, a familiar hello, goodbye.

On future kisses

If I keep randomly running into you, I think the universe wants us to kiss. I don’t make the rules. If we used to kiss on a regular basis, and I have a drink and you flirt a little, I will probably kiss you again. If it’s Carnaval and we make eye contact and you smile, I’m kissing you too. If it’s raining and I’m feeling cold and a little dramatic, I’ll look at your lips and hope you get the hint because I’ve made the first move too much lately. A kiss just for fun, or because I've missed you. A kiss to get them out of your system. A kiss that makes you realise you are so screwed.

Bodies Bodies Bodies

I’ve been forced to confront ageing this month. Not because I once again met a twenty-one-year-old at a party that filled me with jealousy, this time it was more intimate, familial. I could trace a straight line across generations: me, my mother, my grandmother. All under the same roof. My grandma’s back in the shape of a question mark. The pale skin that sags and easily bruises. The sun spots and veins like lightning on her calves. My mom’s sprinkle of grey hairs, she now tires more easily. I need to remind myself she’s almost sixty, though you probably couldn’t tell, her posture still impeccable, inherited from a previous life as a dancer, her unwillingness to stay still, I don’t have to wonder where I got that from. My mom has been living with my grandma for the past six months. I’ve seen it weigh on her, how my grandma’s complaints, her slower pace, her pains and aches contrast with the woman she once was. The grandma I remember growing up, running around the house, keeping tabs on the grandkids, making lunch and baking cakes and telling stories seems miles away. She used to stay with us for months at a time. We lived in a different state, then across an ocean, growing up. For three months of the year, I’d take up residence in the guest bedroom, tell me a story, I’d say every night before bed. I’d taken it upon myself to become the next keeper of the family lore.

Growing up is hard, but growing older is a privilege. To become wiser, to see the fruits of your labour, the kids turning into teenagers, then adults, then parents. To get more time. My mom and I had a fight over Christmas, not over me leaving my clothes strewn around the house or borrowing her hairbrush and not putting it back. This time, she said she’d be fine to live until eighty, and that was enough. I lost it. I had seen enough close friends lose their mothers, first when we were thirteen, then seventeen, then twenty-two. They didn’t get enough time, though I don’t know if you can ever get enough time. Every time I’d come back from a funeral, I’d crawl into my mother’s lap, allowing myself to come undone as I mourned what my friends had lost. I couldn’t bear to imagine their pain, I couldn’t think of my life without my mother in it. I’ve spoken to her about it. My grandma is ninety, and my mom also struggles to think of her life without her. It’s hard to lose someone you love, full stop. It’s hard when it happens slowly, to see them fading. You get glimpses of who they were, but after a lifetime together, I find myself becoming reacquainted. Some traits remain, stronger than ever. The stubbornness, the pathological need not to bother anyone or get in the way. Some things change, always incredibly polite, I now laugh at my grandma, who could out-cuss a sailor. She has trouble hearing, though that is momentarily suspended when a particularly juicy bit of gossip about the neighbours enters the conversation. A few years ago, I had to be driven away from her house sobbing. I had a bad feeling, for the first time, I thought that this was the last time I’d be seeing her. I come back once a year; a lot can change in that time. I’ve come back again and again, and I no longer get the growing anxiety and desperation as I count down the days until I have to leave.

Dealing with someone at that age comes with a different set of rules. Some things can’t be fixed, some things don’t matter anymore. It’s no longer about optimising, but about easing discomfort, maximising pleasure, holding on. My grandma never smoked, though if she asked now, I’d be the first to volunteer to run down to the gas station and fetch her a pack. How I spend my time with her has also changed. She doesn’t have as much energy anymore. It forces me to slow down; I fight physics and logic and time itself and try to hold on to moments for as long as possible. A few years ago, I was home alone with her, and throughout the night, I kept going to her room, watching her closely and holding my hand next to her nose and mouth, making sure she was breathing. I’ve never slept so poorly. I’ve become emotionally detached almost in a healthy way. I hold her hand often. I flip through photo albums. I massage her back and legs and swollen feet and offer an arm for stability. I go to doctor’s appointments and drag her out into the sun. I try to be present. I tell myself to remember. I’ve come to look at ageing with kinder eyes. My fear had been misplaced. I’m still scared, but it looks different now. I dread the day my parents will have to hold on to me for support, when I have to take them to doctors’ appointments, when they complain about pain or when their memory fails. But I also want all of those things. My parents say they don’t want to trouble me, but I want the trouble. I want to have enough time with them to need to deal with all the messy and ugly parts of getting older. There are aspects of growing older that excite me. I think of all the people who will mean so much to me whom I still haven’t met, the milestones I dream about, and the confidence that comes with experience. I’m still a little scared. Growing up is terrifying, growing old as well, but it’s better than the alternative.

I would be the first to know. I’m one of those people who rarely forget a face or a fun fact. I collect details about people without ever noticing it1. I’ll remember your favourite book if you pointed it out once when we were browsing a bookstore. I might text you about it four years later when I finally get around to reading it, even though we haven’t spoken since graduation. I have to jot down birthdays, but I know my friend’s allergies and coffee orders and the bands they obsess over and how they’ve fully processed their most recent breakup, but never got over the situationship that never quite happened. I’ll keep running into the same people at bars and parties and ask how their dissertation is coming along, or how their cool girlfriend who smokes skinny cigarettes is doing (might result in an awkward beat or two if they’ve broken up), or if they went to the restaurants I eagerly wrote down on a napkin when they told me they were going to Florence for the weekend2. Some things I know not to bring up, secrets and stories whispered late at night, drunk on wine or spirits or not enough sleep, never to be spoken of once the moment passes.

I was recently reminded (and slightly embarrassed) of my supernatural abilities whilst hanging out with some people from my High School over the winter break. Apparently, not everyone remembers random bits of information shared in a moment of boredom at the back of a math classroom. In my defence, I don’t know many people whose parents owned a zoo, so that was a highly memorable detail.

I was placed in the spectrum at the function

Someone wondered out loud if my uncanny ability to remember things was an undiagnosed symptom. For context, the function was my introverted friends’ personal hell. Those who have been keeping up with me since last year might remember my absolute delight in making rounds during my five-year High School reunion in May. I didn’t exactly consider myself particularly extroverted3. I was always friendly and chatty in school, but I’d rarely go out of my way to befriend people outside of my comfortable circle. In the past years, however, things have changed, and I found myself once again surrounded by former classmates. This time, I’d texted and DMd and performed calendar Tetris to make sure I’d be able to properly catch up with them before the holiday bubble burst, and everyone went back to their real lives. I’m not sure if there was a single turning point or if it was something that accumulated over time, if the positive reinforcement every time I reached out rewired my brain. When someone says they’re a people person, I assume they’re outgoing and work well with others. There’s more to it, though. There are people with a genuine curiosity about everyone around them, the ones who ask not to be polite but because they care. I see it in my friend Zee, who we joke has become the mayor of our favourite bar, because she can recite the life story of everyone who works there. When my friend Clara was visiting me last summer, I was enamoured by how she would strike up a conversation with anyone around us, befriending the tipsy girls in line for the bathroom at a dingy club or middle-aged women queuing for Wimbledon under a (surprisingly) scorching English sun. My friends often tease me for saying someone new is the love of my life on a semi-regular basis (remember the time I was convinced the universe was pulling strings because I kept running into the same guy in a city of nine million people? And then proceeded to tell his best friend that I thought he was the love of my life?) but I can’t help it. I tend to see the best in people, sometimes to a fault, and few things light me up like a budding friendship. When I drunkenly tell people in a sing-song voice, I think we’re gonna be really good friends, I always mean it and have been known to almost always follow up the next morning once the alcohol has left my body. As someone who values reciprocity, I’m always thrilled when people reach out, and delighted when they remember details; however, I have also told myself to shut up after having someone exclaim how do you remember that?! for the millionth time, even when no trace of malice was present.

Things that keep me up at night

I’m a naturally anxious person, and a dash of insomnia comes with the territory. I love remembering everything when people seem genuinely pleased when I bring up something they said in passing the last time we caught up. I love it a little less when I’m still awake, and the sun is about to rise, and I keep replaying social interactions, wondering if I was too much. It doesn’t happen that often, I don’t have a natural tendency to spiral. I know when I’m being ridiculous and rarely entertain it, but an uncanny ability to remember comes back to haunt you when you can perfectly reenact every mortifying and embarrassing thing you’ve ever said and done.

I promise to (probably) never forget you

I’ll listen and pay attention to the details. I’ll get the chocolate you like “just because” and the brand of oat milk you buy when I know you’re coming over for coffee. Even after you’re gone, for good or just for a while, I’ll remember. If we fought or you left or we just grew up and apart. I still think of you when I go to the spot that was ours, or I make a joke I know would make you laugh, or I listen to the band you showed me. I’ll text my theatre kid (derogatory) friends whenever I watch a really good show and will get comforting bouts of deja vu whilst getting fries or coffee at the places where I spent all of my middle school allowance. I’ll remember your birthday even if it’s impossible to reach out. If you’re still around, I’ll suggest coffee or drinks. I might text you out of the blue or ask if anyone has heard from you lately. Maybe I see you once a year, if that, whenever we’re on the same continent, but I’ll surprise you with a postcard from the other side of the Atlantic. People will do something a certain way, go to certain places, love certain things, and wonder where they got it from. Remembering everything and everyone means you never have to wonder.

Schrödinger’s Flirt [noun] – Every single person out there needs to master the art of Schrödinger’s flirt in order to survive the dating world. Whilst I am in no position to explain the intricacies of quantum mechanics, I am an expert in employing this protective technique. Perfect for when you can’t quite get a read on someone, meeting people in the wild1 or when you’re toeing the line between friendship and something else. As someone who is often having friendliness misread and flirting, I have a built-in, believable cop-out. Good flirting always toes the line and comes with a reasonable dose of plausible deniability, but Schrödinger’s flirt thrives in the grey area.

PBF (Post Breakup Ferality) [noun] – A canonical event for every girl getting out of their first serious long-term relationship. Especially true if you’ve been with them since high school. You suddenly discover there are other fish in the pond and end up diving headfirst into the Thames, not a care in the world and with a high chance of contracting e. coli, or something worse. A rite of passage that can last weeks, months or years. It’s not a [hoe] phase, it’s a lifestyle.

Slutty Hoop [noun] – Applicable for men who date women and slutty only when a singular hoop is present. A man with a slutty hoop will ruin your life (additional warning signs include a moustache, mullet, chain and tote bag), but they are also so much fun. Proceed with caution2.

Mirrorballing/Chameleoning [verb] – Having a boyfriend is only embarrassing if he’s a loser or if you lose yourself in them3. There’s a normal amount of adapting to your environment, becoming a little snooty at a gallery opening, letting your guard down on a night out with your girlfriends, and being your most professional and politically correct self at a job interview4. And then there are the people who become someone else entirely, depending on who they are interested in at the moment. We’ve all fallen victim to it at some time or another. There’s something to be said about making the most of a situation: my rolodex of finance bros have patiently explained what kind of ISA I should get, and I discovered some of my favourite films when I was crushing on the president of the Film Society at university.

Gatsbying [verb] – RIP Jay Gatsby, you would have loved posting highly-targeted Instagram stories. If you’re the kind of person who realises they’re in serious trouble once you catch yourself obsessively checking who’s viewed your story, welcome to the club. In this economy, no one can afford to throw several parties in the hopes of your crush dropping by5, so the next best thing is posting a bit of side boob when you’re ovulating and keeping your fingers crossed.

Soft Ghosting [verb] – I am (unfortunately, and I’m not proud to admit this) a bit of a pro at this. The avoidant types might engage in soft ghosting without even realising. If you are someone who tries to avoid confrontation whenever possible, soft ghosting might just be for you. Instead of disappearing out of the blue (which is almost always unacceptable and always immature), you slowly start to take longer to reply, send short and dry responses, with the general goal of having the other person take the hint and do the dirty deed of disappearing themselves. Unlike breadcrumbing, there is no desire to string someone else along, but if, for whatever reason, you’re not ready for a proper conversation or text where you cordially explain that you are no longer interested, this might be the way to go.

Forehead Kiss [noun] – Inconspicuous and seemingly sweet, it’s actually a sign that things are about to go terribly wrong. You fall for the forehead kiss once and never again6. If he is not your capital B Boyfriend and comes in with the forehead kiss, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a sign things might be getting serious, but I regret to inform you that you actually could not be more mistaken. Dazed has even run a piece on the forehead kiss of despair. You can look it up; it’s a real thing.

Bonus: pulling a Mike (iykyk) - this was the boy who traumatised me at eighteen and became a verb within my friend group

I’m guessing you already know all the basics of single lingo7, but now that I’ve covered some of the more niche (and mostly made-up) terms, you are ready to go forth and conquer the dating trenches. Good luck!

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things I’m No Longer Accepting Drinks

Submitted by Jen*, Age 21

J: This was last year when I was single and on the apps a lot. I met up with this guy for drinks, we’d been talking for a while, he seemed pretty normal. We met up and it was fine but we didn’t really click. We didn’t have much chemistry and he was a little short, but a nice guy anyways, nothing happened that night. A few days later he texted me to make plans to see each other again and I told him that he was very nice but I wasn’t really feeling it. He sent me a Venmo request for the drinks he had bought me on our date.

JN: Did you pay him?!

J: Nope. I only had a couple of beers, and he insisted on paying! Blocked him and never spoke to him again. It was pretty rude.

Does Your Boyfriend Hate You? — Take This Quiz to Find Out

Submitted by Libby*, Age 21

L: This was a couple of years ago, my ex and I were already a little rocky. He was going through a phase where he got really obsessed with AI and machine learning and that was pretty much all he would talk about. And he would be really condescending and patronising with me

JN: Yep I know the type. They love a podcast.

L: Exactly. Well he came to visit me in Switzerland and we went on this three hour hike. We were having deep conversations and started talking about what we wanted out of life, and what we were interested in. I moved around a lot growing up and I’m really interested in learning about different cultures. I studied languages at university and I’m really passionate about travelling and seeing the world. He said that didn’t count, but apparently his interest in data science was totally valid. He was really into non-fiction and I didn’t really read a lot of that at the time and he basically accused me of not learning enough because I wasn’t reading enough for him. I explained that I learned through new experiences but he didn’t really get it. We broke up three weeks later. And then a week after the breakup we got back together and stayed together for another year. We’re done for good now.

JN: Wow sounds like my personal hell: being alone in the wilderness with a man who only reads non-fiction and dismisses all my interests.

L: Anyways, I went through the texts when we were rehashing all of it months later. When I brought it up to him and said remember that time you said I had no hobbies? He replied I never said that, I said you had no interests as if it’s any less horrible.

JN: He sounds diabolical. Glad he’s out of the picture. Hope things are shitty on his end.

He Was on a First-Name Basis With Every Nurse at the Sexual Health Clinic — But at Least He Was Honest?

Submitted by Gemma*, Age 211

G: This was a couple of years ago. I was working at a nightclub at the time, and I started casually dating/sleeping with one of my coworkers, Chad2. I knew we were casual and that he was seeing other people, but Chad would pull his phone out when we were in bed and start texting the other girls he was seeing right in front of me3. He’d talk to me like I was one of his buddies, locker room talk about all these other girls. I don’t know what I was thinking because I kept seeing him.

JN: I mean we all agreed he was terrible, but you said he was amazing in bed.

G: Oh yeah, that. Well anyways, he was getting a full STD screening once a week, he’d show me his results every time I saw him before we slept together.

JN: All things considered, I think that’s actually pretty responsible considering he was sleeping with half of London, I’m surprised he never caught anything. I remember at one point we started joking he’d cracked the code to getting around the exorbitant rent prices in the city, he’d just sleep around from house to house.

Wannabe Bonnie and Clyde — The Summer I Became an Accessory to [Multiple?] Crimes

Submitted by Cordelia*, Age 17

I feel the need to preface that this friend was obsessed with the Bad Boy genre on Wattpad4 and once told me she wished she could date the heir to a criminal empire when we were fourteen. This story is still wild (and I’ve had to exclude 80% of the illicit details), but if it were to happen to anyone I know, it makes sense that it would be her.

C: This all happened the summer after I finished High School. I met this guy at a dinner with some family friends. My parents were friends with his parents and we started hanging out. For context, this was a time when I was really losing my shit5. All I did was drink, I was super depressed. I meet Pietro* and I think we’re becoming friends, he asks me to come to the beach and meet his friends. He didn’t have a car at the time, so I picked him and his friends up. They were chill, a little sketchy but I was into that. The plan was to drink at the beach, we were meeting more people there and I assumed they had already secured the drinks (we were all underage at the time). He tells me to stop at Walgreens and Pietro and his friends head inside as I wait in the car. They rush back into the car and tell me to drive. As I’m leaving the parking lot, they start pulling cans out of their backpacks. I look at Pietro flabbergasted, did you guys… steal? I asked already half knowing the answer, You made me an accessory to a crime?! He starts to explain himself, well yeah that’s why I didn’t want to tell you. At this point we just head to the beach and I got pretty trashed. Anyways, this becomes a regular occurrence, whenever we hang out, he tells me to stop somewhere and wait in the car, and at this point I already knew what he was doing. This was a weird time in my life, I didn’t really care about anything. Oh my god I totally forgot, you know what else we did Julia?! We used to go to my favourite gas station, and he would buy vapes in bulk, and I was like whatever, stock up. But then we would drive into these residential neighbourhoods and little middle schoolers come out, like eleven and twelve years old, and he starts selling these vapes to these kids at exorbitant prices, like twenty bucks for a vape. At this point I’m thinking what the fuck am I doing here. Anyways I guess he had some entrepreneurial spirit, I think he made a lot of money like that over the summer. I also found out that one of his friends who I used to hang out with was arrested for Grand Theft Auto. Like who are these people?! That was the last relationship I ever had actually, he lied a lot, it kind of did it for me. I clearly can’t pick them so I guess it’s better to stay away.

JN: This was five years ago. I wonder what he’s up to now?

C: He got into a motorcycle accident last I heard, I’m not sure if they’re going to have to amputate this leg. He was a good guy deep down, though. I hope his friends are doing well, I really liked them.

*All names have been changed

If you’re single, keep these stories in mind whilst you’re scrolling past all the pictures of couples in matching costumes, and if you’re in a relationship, remember to be grateful your significant other isn’t swindling middle schoolers. I’m always conducting serious research for Substack pieces (aka putting up polls on my Instagram stories, if you want to contribute to the next one, follow me here). And if you have any dating horror stories of your own, please share in the comments or send them my way! Happy (early) Halloween!

I took one research methods class, and now I’m applying my skills for the greater good

My new favourite thing is crowdsourcing information via Instagram polls (follow me here if you want to contribute your hot takes for future pieces). I recently reached out to friends who are either single or in a relationship (sorry to the situationship crowd, I’ll work on something just for you next time) to try and figure out if the patterns I was noticing whilst chatting with friends (and strangers at the bar) were a sign of a bigger phenomenon. For my single friends, I was curious about how many people were still on the apps. For the ones in a relationship, I asked my all-time favourite question: How did you meet? I’m a romantic at heart, but I’m also nosy, so I left a box where people could drop their relationship hot takes. As the responses started rolling in, I finally started reaping the benefits of sharing my personal life at length on the internet. Semi-strangers were eager to share relationship horror stories and conspiracy theories, and my friends covered my podcast quota for the week via several five-minute-long voice notes.

Of my limited sampling of the singles, I was somewhat surprised to find out that only 30% of respondents were on the apps. With reasons ranging from the adverse mental health effects of having the most offensive-looking men on the planet swiping on you (opening Hinge is always a humbling experience), frustration with the lack of responses, to becoming the worst, most superficial versions of ourselves whilst swiping, I could understand the shift to offline dating. I’ve come across two separate guys I was down bad for on dating apps whilst I was still within the danger zone of slipping and hitting them up, and both times I caught myself thinking god I would have never swiped right on them as I screenshotted their profile to be dissected at a later date in the group chat (coincidentally, both of them are now readers of this very newsletter, hi boys!). The people who charm us in person are rarely the ones who have us nodding in approval as we mindlessly scroll past profiles.

On the relationship front, 77% of respondents met their partners in the wild. My reaction? The same one I have whilst befriending girls in the bathroom as we fix our smudged mascara and reapply our lip-gloss: where did you get that?! Thanks to my skewed demographic (most of my friends graduated university within the past five years), I had a lot of people letting me know they met their significant others at school or university (not very helpful for me as I have yet to reach the levels of desperation and despair post grad that leads people to pursue a PhD). Beyond the limited but faith-instilling dating app success stories, most of which are the remnants of a bygone Covid era, I collected responses as a future to-do list, including run clubs, pub crawls and a vampire party (I have follow-up questions). However, the overwhelming majority of couples in my DMs had met through mutual friends, which takes me to my next point.

Asking for a friend — It’s me, I’m the friend

It has recently come to my attention that asking your friends if their friends (who you might have found cute or charming or remotely interesting after a ten-minute conversation) are single is not a universal move. At the same time, I keep hearing success stories of people getting set up with friends of friends. There are obvious benefits: friends of friends are pre-vetted. If you trust your friends’ judgement or hold them in high regard, the fact that someone is friends with them is already a positive point. Hanging out as a group is a low-stakes way to get to know new people. I have made it my personal mission to bring back asking if people are single. I’m not sure I’ll ever have the balls guts to ask this to their faces, at least not without some liquid courage, but if you’re interested in a friend of a friend, I will forever defend that this is the best move. It gets you what I consider to be the most vital pieces of information before pursuing anything (aka: are they available? are there any glaring red flags even their friends might be aware of?) and simultaneously communicates a level of interest. If they are in a relationship, they can be flattered, and you can move on. For the serial daters who are used to the convenience and control (or at least the semblance of those) afforded by the apps, some growing pains might be associated with a shift from quantity to (possible) quality that comes along with moving things offline.

You might be noticing a lack of an Exhibit C: success story, but I’m working on it

Dating friends of friends 101 — The Basic Etiquette of Cross Friend Group Pollination

I feel like this interlude is necessary, as dating friends of friends (or having your friends date) can be catastrophic. Everyone seems to be aware of the risks that come along with dating within the friend group; the vibes might be off, you risk decimating the group if you guys break up — there’s a reason most people will sneak around at the start (if your friend group is lacking drama, start probing after a few drinks to find out how many of your friends have hooked up). There’s no need to worry everyone for something that might not even stick. What is less talked about, however, is dating across friend groups, also known as dating friends of friends. As my [expertly conducted] research has shown, this has proven to have a high probability of success. Nonetheless, the middlemanfriend should be considered. My first hot take is that both sides cannot be extremely close with the friend. One close friend going out with an acquaintance is fine, as are two acquaintances hitting it off. As you become closer to both parties, the probability of messiness increases exponentially. Before entering into any kind of relationship with a friend of a friend, all parties involved must agree to maintain the sanctity of the existing friendship. As someone who has some experience with friends of friends, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the middle friend should not be dragged into your relationship antics [any more than they would want to. I do have friends who live for the drama]. It also comes with the knowledge that should things go to shit, you will still have to occasionally see your ex, a risk that is not in place when you outsource to the apps and date someone who has no ties whatsoever to anyone else in your life.

The New York Times ran a piece on heterofatalism and other thoughts on modern dating

I have now learned that the dating pool and modern dating experiences are dire regardless of age. As I’m still in my early twenties, I find it easy to excuse certain behaviours away. I try to give myself some grace as I’m still figuring things out and am therefore more understanding when their behaviour is less than ideal (I’m not perfect, but maybe there’s a reason why Sabrina Carpenter’s Please, Please, Please and Manchild became the national anthems of single girls (caveat: dating straight men) everywhere). Talking to friends in their late twenties and early-to-mid-thirties about the guys they’re seeing who aren’t sure they’re ready for something serious, I’m quickly convinced that age alone is not the issue. Looking at my friends who are in relationships, the glaring differences between the male and female dating pools become increasingly obvious. At a friend’s birthday this past weekend, I commented that I adored all my guy friends’ new girlfriends, whilst historically my girlfriends’ boyfriends have been hit or miss. One of the other party guests made an offhand comment: Well duh, dating is so much easier for straight guys; women are just objectively better at relationships. This validated something that had been a massive chip on my shoulder growing up. For most of my life, almost all my close friendships have been with women. I had always attributed that to my inability to be not like the other girls. I liked girly things, sure, but more than that, I always put a lot of effort and care into my relationships. I wanted to know my friends deeply, and I wanted to be understood. When it came to my friendships with men, this effort was almost always misread as romantic interest. When my guy friends couldn’t fathom the possibility of me remembering things they told me or checking in from time to time, asking how they were, really, as basic acts of friendship, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry. I’ve had multiple friends tell me that they were worried about breaking up with their boyfriends because they were their only source of emotional support (I’ll spare you any additional comments on the male loneliness epidemic).

I’m nothing if not stubbornly committed to the bit: the quest continues (via crowdsourcing once again)

As I resist the urge to hop back on the apps (if anyone wants to set me up with a friend, let me know), I decided to turn to the experts in my life. In an effort to get more up-to-date advice, I have started to reach out to my Gen Z friends who are in a relationship (or at least the ones who have engaged with my Instagram polls). I’m aiming to both reinstate my faith in relationships via stories of how they met their partners and figure out what kind of relationship advice the chronically online generation is dishing out (I’ll be reporting back once I’ve put their tips to the test). If anyone wants to give out solicited advice, I’m asking for a friend!

Additional reading/ general PSA: anyone entering into any relationship (via app or friend of friend) should first and foremost go through ’s terms and conditions to mitigate the risk of future heartbreak or miscommunication (but seriously, I scoured central London for this piece in print via , so I can casually leave it open on my coffee table whenever I have a guy over, anyone who wants to adopt the same litmus test can secure a copy here).

My credentials and confessions of a professional yearner

The first thing you should know about me is that I love love. I also love having a crush. These, however, are distinct. For me, crushes are synonymous with excitement; they bring on a certain giddiness usually reserved for teenagers. It’s about the prospect of someone you don’t know yet, the possibility. Growing up, I always had a crush on someone at any given moment. It was never that deep, usually just something to keep things interesting, someone to sneak glances at during class and gush about with friends over lunch. I tell my friends about the love of my life on a monthly basis. As someone who’s a bit of a control freak usually pretty rational, I can appreciate the feeling of things being [a little] out of my control, of the scary moment when you realise just how hard you can fall. I’ve recently been reminded of my love for a silly little crush, and how we can all act a little crazy when we like (or convince ourselves we like) someone.

If you don’t think you get a bit crazy, you’re probably lying to yourself, and if you’re thinking no experience is unique as you read through, let me assure you that you are not alone in your delusions. I recently convinced myself (and every friend that would listen for the past week) that someone was the love of my life because I kept running into them in the most unlikely of places, and so, the only reasonable conclusion was that the universe was putting us together. (I also drunkenly told his best friend that I had recently told my best friend I thought he was the love of my life, so maybe some experiences are unique after all).

The art of the Spotify Stalk and other unhinged behaviours

Few things are hotter (to me) than a man who is chronically offline. Less than 300 followers, and their most recent post is a sunset pic from 2019? Hot. The confused look they give me when I quote a viral TikTok or other brainrot reference? Hot and endearing. The problem with the chronically offline type, though, is that there is very little to go on. I think part of the charm of a crush is the lack of information. The less you know, the more you can project, the more delulu you can be. You have to get creative. You might lurk on LinkedIn (pro-tip: make sure to set your account to private), have a look through their parents’ Facebook profiles (a popular option according to my extensive research, I have however been locked out of my account for ages and need to sort it out ASAP), or my personal favourite — the Spotify stalk.

I’ve recently discovered some other friends who are familiar with this art (game recognises game), however, for the overwhelming majority who is uninitiated, let me break it down for you. First and foremost, I think you can learn a lot about someone from their general music taste. If they’re not on Spotify, that also speaks volumes (pardon the pun). I’m always curious about the motivations behind the people paying for Apple Music (shout out to my best friend who’s still on her family plan, I hate not having collaborative playlists). If you’re voluntarily not on Spotify, I’m curious to hear why, please sound off in the comments. For the people with taste, I’ve broken down the Spotify stalk into 2 simple steps below:

1. Identify the account — this can be easy enough, a simple first and last name search and looking through profile pictures. If you can’t narrow it down, have a look through their playlists and cross reference with artists you know they like. However, if you’re not successful in this, you might have to take a slightly more unhinged approach. Formerly successful methods include going through friends’ profiles to see if anything pops up.

2. The desktop experience — from here, the world is your oyster. The basics, like figuring out their favourite genre and artists, are obvious enough. If you want to get really unhinged though, have a look through their profile through the desktop app. Here you get some critical information such as the date songs were added to their playlists. I’ve found out about breakups weeks before the hard launch (e.g. scrubbing their ex from their feed, posting not-so-cryptic messages or thirst traps on their stories) this way.

You’re not crazy, and the comfort of recognition

A friend and I recently agreed that one of the nicest things you can say, and hear from someone, is you’re not crazy. It’s comforting and reassuring, and often accompanied by their own similar stories. Recognition is at the heart of connection. With that in mind (and also because I’m nosey), I decided to conduct some extensive exploratory research (read: I put up a question box on my Instagram story). The overwhelming feeling I had when reading through people’s responses was: either you’re not crazy or all of us are crazy. Of the people who sent in their responses (thanks guys, I love you), the most popular genre was snooping through family details (22%), followed by lurking on LinkedIn and orchestrating some kind of physical run-in (19%). I was left with some questions, especially as someone who’s regularly randomly running into people (how are you guys finding this information?! How much time is being dedicated to this quest? I ask not from a place of judgement but one of anthropological curiosity and admiration). People were looking though their crush’s Instagram following for a variety of reasons, including trying to figure out their type, checking to see if their ex was still blocked, and making sure they didn’t follow any rogue accounts (exclusively following models and former Love Island contestants or men-with-podcasts are deal breakers for many). On a key indicator that I might have started liking someone new, I felt seen by everyone else who mentioned obsessively checking whether they had viewed your Instagram stories. I felt for my fellow lovers of the chronically offline and commend their creativity when searching for crumbs of information. I had a couple of people confessing to looking through the Instagram profiles of university Societies (been there, done that, ended up attending a couple of Film Society events as a result), or frequenting their crush’s favourite spots on a regular basis (I discovered one of my favourite cafés/bar because my friend had a thing for someone who worked there).

Dating apps are ruining everything (a very new and hot take, I know)

My crush renaissance has once again reminded me of the woes of the apps. I know I’m not the first person to bravely state that Hinge is ruining everything. I’m not a dating app hater; in fact, I have done my fair share of swiping. If we’re looking at dating strictly as a numbers game, apps are an easy way to maximise. What most people [who possess at least one single self-reflecting bone in their body] will admit is that other people on the apps are not the only problem. We also become the most superficial versions of ourselves when we swipe. If I meet someone I like at a bar, I’m seldom performing mental gymnastics trying to figure out their height, but if I’m scrolling through a menu my date options, anyone under 5’10 is an immediate discard (I’m 5’7 and own lots of heels). I’ve seen multiple people I’ve liked in real life on the apps, and I would have never gone for them based on their profiles. There’s simultaneously too much and not enough information. Crushes thrive on mystery, on slowly unravelling their personality. The anachronistic details that only come out after a few drinks are often the most interesting things about someone, and will rarely be expressed through their curated responses to generic prompts. Everyone is too available, there’s no excitement, no mystery, no risky texts. There’s also very little room for letting things develop organically. Before your first conversation, you already know their job, hobbies, political leanings, alma mater and neighbourhood. There’s a pre-defined level of interest, but also a pre-defined course of events. You’re going off facts, not possibility.

Summertime serendipity and leaning into nostalgia

As the temperatures start to rise (for everyone in the northern hemisphere — shout out to my London readers who bravely faced a heat wave last week, I am pressing publish from an equally sweltering Bologna), I invite you to lean into the magic of Summer. Everyone gets a little stupid in the heat, inhibitions evaporate, and the symptoms of low-grade sunstroke might make you feel a little drunk (though it might also be that second Aperol spritz). I was recently told by a friend that I was too outgoing and whimsical (I’m not sure if this was a compliment, but I’ll take it as one) to meet the love of my life on a dating app. I’m not sure he’s being dotted around the city in a series of increasingly unlikely run-ins, but at least for this season, I’m inviting everyone to join me in putting down their phones, stepping outside and opening themselves up to Summer serendipity. If you need a nudge to look around and talk to strangers, let this be it. If you need advanced absolution for any unhinged behaviour, rest easy knowing we’re all acting a little inane in the heat. Go forth and conquer, I’m manifesting a Summer romance for you!

P.S. If you still need some courage or inspiration, I highly recommend having a look at ’s reports straight from the front lines through her great offline dating experiment! And now that I’ve bared it all, I’m curious, what is the most unhinged thing you’ve done for a crush?

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I once told my friend Giorgia that spending time with her had the same effect on my nervous system as taking a Xanax. It might have been one of the nicest, most honest things I’ve ever said. Whenever I am having the worst day or week of my life, she’s the first person I want to see. I know that momentarily being in her presence makes every other worry go away. I will forever defend that without her, I would have never made it through my first year at uni. Everyone should have a Giorgia in their life.

The moment I knew (which sometimes predates consciousness)

A lot has been said about love at first sight, but what about friendship? Can you recall the moment you met someone, thinking, we’re gonna be friends? The friend crushes when you’re anxious to hang out with them, telling everyone about this great person you’ve just met. Was there a moment you knew, or was it more of a gradual thing, and then one day, they’re the first person you call on both a best and worst case scenario? Have you known them for longer than you can remember, characters in your life that predate the pilot episode? When catching up with a friend on what she had missed since we last saw each other, she pointed out that I have a knack for making new friends. I love meeting new people as a general rule, but every once in a while you meet someone you instantly click with, where the conversation flows easily. You can cover celebrity gossip, politics and family trauma over the span of thirty minutes (I’ve had more luck with this in friendships than in romantic relationships, but I’m not complaining. My friends give me love, safety and stability whilst my dating life can provide salacious content). There are times when outsiders will say there’s no way you just met, and you’ll quietly agree, for a minute believing in all the witchy juju and superstition because the only explanation here is that your souls had met in another life.

Meet the gang — alternative title: my favourite people

Cath might be my oldest friend. We went to preschool together, and I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t in my life. We can go months without talking, we’ve gone years without seeing each other, but every time we pick up right where we left off. I have the perfect mental image of the first time I saw Vittoria and Valentina. For a split second, I thought I was seeing double, two heads of jet-black hair, two pairs of wide brown eyes watching me carefully. I lifted my five-year-old hand and waved. I remember Tiffany’s first week at school, we’d weave Portuguese and English together, keeping the new kid entertained. I remember being seven years old when she came back from summer break, almost a foot taller than everyone else in our class, and when she let me in on her secret. If you pulled your legs really hard, you’d grow a couple of inches overnight. There was a lot of literal leg pulling that week.

For some more recent friendships, I can give you a perfect play-by-play. My approach with Donato was surprisingly forward and upfront for a twelve-year-old. It was the first week of eighth grade, and we were in the same Social Studies class. She was new, and I wanted to make her feel welcome, so I went up to her, told her she was pretty, and asked if she wanted to be friends. We had lunch together that day, and the rest is history. Old habits die hard, it seems, as I took a pretty similar approach ten years later with Min (one of the parties responsible for convincing me that Charlotte York was onto something and maybe our friends really are our soulmates). I was away for orientation week, so when the first week of classes rolled around, I didn’t know a soul. Sitting outside my Consumer Behaviour classroom, waiting for the previous class to vacate, I overheard this peppy blonde gush about the Taylor Swift themed Soul Cycle class she had just come from. In that moment, I knew. She was the one. Coming back from our mid-lecture break, I held the door open for her and tried (and probably failed) to sound cool and casual as I mentioned that I couldn’t help but overhear what she had said earlier, and that I was also in the cult of indoor cycling and Taylor Swift. Sharing secrets, confessions, sweet treats, brainrot references, and TikToks alike has cemented our relationship.

If they’re insulting you, it means they like you, and other lies that are sometimes true

That class yielded another friendship, and a story that pretty much epitomises my relationship with Giulia. Pretty early into the semester, we had both agreed that our Teaching Assistant was very attractive. It was a fun, harmless crush, in part the product of a cohort of 150 with only eight men. Joel the TA would pass out printouts of the slides before class, and on the second or third week, we had some leftover on our table. As we were leaving the room, I handed the stack back to Joel, batting my eyelashes and exhibiting my environmental consciousness as I pointed out maybe you can use these for the next class? Giulia didn’t miss a beat, as soon as he was out of earshot, she whispered Whore. I looked at her, shocked, and she mirrored my expression. That had come from her gut, the word shooting out of her diaphragm and slipping out of her lips before she had a second to protest. In that split second, she later told me, she’d thought shit, I’ve really fucked this. There was a girl I’d barely known a week, calling me a whore for my failed attempt to flirt with her man. I started cackling, the awkward politeness had cracked and fallen away, giving way to something more intimate.

What lingers once the convenience goes away

Convenience plays a pretty significant role in friendship. It might be obvious when looking at your best friends from childhood, the closest friends who just happened to live down the street, the friendships formed in after-school activities or a shared homeroom. Different phases of life will bring you closer to different people, be it because there’s little effort involved in actually spending time together, or because of shared circumstances. I’ve recentlty gotten close to Giulia’s flatmate Zee, in part because they live a walking distance from me, in part because she’s available during the day and we’ve spent countless hours working from the same café, but mostly because she’s made me feel seen, because I admire her genuine interest in the people around her and because she’s one of the few people who will match my freak levels of extroversion and enthusiasm for talking to strangers.

At dinner last night, I finally got to catch up with my friends from my master’s. This time last year, they were the people I spent almost every waking hour with. There was no catching up, I knew what they had for lunch, who they saw for dinner the night before, which shoes they were considering buying, and chimed in whenever they were texting back the boys they were seeing. A year has gone by, and we’re in very different places, but as we settled into our booth, it felt like coming home. I’ve missed this, I’ve missed us, guess who liked my story?! I ended things with him. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss having lunch together every day, mourning the intimacies that come with close, continuous contact, but this, the lack of convenience, the logistics and planning and still choosing to be in each other’s lives, the feeling of comfort and familiarity and talking like no time has passed, its the kind of love that sustains me.

Putting my 10,000 hours in

They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert on something, and though I’m yet to hit quadruple digits, I’ve definitely put my time in for both job and relationship applications. I’ve pored over every detail on my resume and gotten feedback from friends and industry professionals. In a similar vein, once deciding to hop back on the apps, what was meant to be a chill night in with my girlfriends turned into a group project as we curated the perfect profile over (several) bottles of wine (the risks of being the designated experimental single friend). I have since become an expert at cover letters and opening lines alike. I’ve had multiple first dates and interviews in the past six months, and have quickly realised that both require a degree of curation, a level of editing and a commitment to selling yourself. You have to find the balance of being interested enough without looking desperate, I have said of both texting back your most recent match on Hinge and getting back to a recruiter. It’s gotten to the point where I’m worried that being single and unemployed has become my personal brand, and I need to branch out before I get a job and a man and have nothing else to write about.

Growing up online — image curation 101 and the ghost of your internet past

Being part of a generation that grew up on social media has definitely done a number on me. From a young age, I remember being warned that “The internet is forever,” and if Sabrina Carpenter’s [never disappointing and ever entertaining] digital footprint is anything to go by, the grown-ups in my life were right. I would say I grew up with a pretty cool mom, and when I started drinking, her main concern was that I made sure I was getting home safe, being relatively responsible and not posting anything I would come to regret. Being a very talented stalker researcher (give me a first name and a general occupation and I can get you their entire academic, professional and dating history) I was always paranoid that a future employer would find skeletons in my closet (even though the most scandalous thing I’ve ever done was get into internet beef on F1 Twitter). Even now, I need to remind myself that I’m not doing anything wrong by writing about a night out or posting a picture holding a cocktail. All of this is to say that I grew up hyperaware of how I portrayed myself. Social media has trained us to A/B test our images, the instant feedback allowing us to optimise for the best versions of ourselves.

An interlude — The obligatory about me section and a quick overview of my CV and Hinge profile, respectively

My CV covers the basics, where and what I studied, dissertation titles, relevant modules, work and volunteering experience, language skills (which I’ve been told to highlight as one of my most valuable assets), and general attributes. A brief blurb at the top is a quick pitch and should give you a general picture:

‭A Brazilian living in London having recently completed my MSc International Marketing at King’s College.‬ Having lived in Brazil, Belgium and the United Kingdom has helped me develop a global outlook.‬

What I’m really trying to get across is I’m both creative and analytical, I’m very organised and collaborative and like to be challenged. Please hire me! My Hinge profile hasn’t been updated all that recently, but hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The idea is to give a general idea of my personality, emanate hotness, and curate the user experience once we start chatting. We start with a picture of a very tanned Julia in Greece. It’s a great picture that never got to see the light of my Instagram feed, and is therefore being put to use here. It’s a little sexy, there’s a taste of sideboob, it gets people scrolling. We then get a picture of me at a house party with a friend, sipping through a straw from a beer wedged into my pocket. It says I’m innovative and know how to have a good time! My most chat-provoking prompt? I’m weirdly attracted to… Fictional characters in white wigs. You’d be surprised at how many people have pulled out their founding father fits before I can even give more context (childhood crush on Legolas from lotr followed by an adult crush on Geralt in The Witcher, if you’re wondering).

On the perils of being perceived and turning yourself into a digestible and marketable candidate

Growing up on the internet can mean a lot of things, but for me it came with a crippling awareness of how others perceive you. A masters in Marketing might have been the nail in the coffin in that regard, allowing me to turn all the self-awareness I’ve developed over years in therapy into something more commercially palatable. Yes, I had spent years working on knowing myself, but what I had really become an expert in was crafting my ideal version and selling her to potential employers and partners. It wasn’t lying, it was editing. Making sure the attributes I felt were most relevant would stand out. In the same way you might offer examples of collaboration or leadership in a cover letter for a project management role, I would also do my research when talking to my most recent match. I was taught the importance of knowing your audience, the effectiveness of curated advertising.

Let’s take Matt*, a Dalston resident with a mullet and moustache (I’ll fall for it every time). His profile featured artful film shots of him walking through Broadway market, tote bag in tow, or sitting on the grass at London Fields, sipping a craft beer. He went to Harrow but would cosplay as a struggling artist/intellectual, and you’d only find out three months in when you met his schoolmates. With him, I’d rack my brain for everything I remembered from reading Proust in first year (spoiler alert: not much has stuck). Whilst my opinions on existentialism were lacklustre, he’d watch me with awe and delight as I dove into Lejeune’s autobiographical pact when dissecting his latest venture into Annie Ernaux. With him, I’d ignore every basic aspect of my personality, stashing away the Eras Tour shirt I wore to bed until further notice, and hoping things would fizzle out before autumn, lest I have to dim my excitement for pumpkin spice season.

Charlie* was an investment banker I met on a night out at Maggie’s (the spawning ground for men in gilets, if anyone is wondering, redeeming qualities include Abba blasting all night long). I’d seen him a few times before at The Drayton Arms, and was pretty excited about meeting someone in the real world. As I asked about his work, nodding along as he explained the difference between Venture Capital and Private Equity, he got me another drink. When I mentioned how much I loved The Big Short, misquoting Ryan Reynolds’ character enthusiastically, he’s my quant! my quantitative! He won a national maths competition…. IN CHINA! I saw his eyes sparkle as he finally saw my vision, the Finance Bro & Marketing Girlie power couple.

James* was another Hinge match with a mullet and a moustache. He was also 6’3 and Australian, and so I was all too happy to cross the Thames and head south for our first date. He picked a wine bar in Balham, and conversation flowed easily over a bottle of orange wine. He’d just gotten back from finding himself in Southeast Asia and was planning on spending the better part of the summer in a camper van. He’d seem genuinely excited about the prospect of swiping through the shared albums of all my latest trips, and was the best person to hit up for cheap eats recommendations in any city he’d set foot on.

It’s the journey, not the destination and other unfortunately true clichés

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t necessarily think something has failed just because it didn’t last forever. Sure, the obvious successful outcome of job hunting or dating might be a job offer and a serious relationship, respectively, but there’s still so much to be gained from the process. I’ve honed new skills (I’m an Excel fiend now), gotten advice from people with the most interesting and diverse backgrounds, explored different interests and developed a newfound confidence through the process of networking and interviewing for jobs. I’ve also become very resilient (against my will, might I add, graduating during a recession is rough). In a similar vein, I’ve discovered new parts of myself, of the city, and found new interests through the people I’ve dated. I’ve also been able to entertain my friends at length. With all that being said, I’m still on the lookout for both, and will buy you a drink of your choice in exchange for career advice or an introduction to a friend.

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* Names have been changed

The question that has plagued every friend group since the dawn of time: can things ever be casual? My credentials? I have rehashed this with friends, have scrolled through multiple essays on Substack (i.e. "Casual" isn't real by ; the myth of 'casual' love by and What the f*** is a situationship? by ) and have had Casual by Chapel Roan on repeat whilst I clean my house since the new year. I’ve started to notice that the questions almost always seem to come from the person fighting the emotional investment, trying their hardest to play it cool, yes it’s fine to keep it casual, yeah I’m cool with seeing other people and could you text me back in a timely manner? No worries if not!!! I’m not one to judge (ever), I’ve been there too, settling for less because I’d rather have a little than nothing at all. Justifying it, thinking, well if I’m going to get hurt anyways, I might as well get something out of this.

Recently though, I drank the Kool-Aid and became a self-proclaimed sales rep for Casual. He was the hottest man I’d ever been with, nice and considerate and respectful, called his grandparents every weekend, but also insanely athletic, let’s call him Joel1. We had great physical chemistry, but after date number three I realised that was the only thing I was banking on. The conversation wasn’t bad (but then again, anyone who has met me will know I can chat to a brick wall), but it wasn’t what kept me coming back for more. Around the same time, a friend was also seeing someone new, and while she was convinced he was seeing some other bitch and that’s why he wasn’t texting her back (plot twist: his grandma had died), I was happy to only text Joel once a week, and only to sort out plans. I didn’t care about how his day was going, or whether he was seeing other people. Glancing over my shoulder to read my replies to him, my best friend commented wow you really don’t like him huh. Which is not the point. I didn’t dislike him obviously. But I also wasn’t eagerly awaiting his replies or thinking of him throughout the week when I spotted a book we talked about or a song from his favourite artist came on at the club (the tell-tale signs that you are well and truly screwed).

For the first time, I felt like a woman in a male field. I didn’t need to ask him what are we because we hadn’t been out in the real world for the past three months. I quickly started singing the praises of something casual to anyone who would listen. A friend would comment on how I was glowing, and I’d tell her all about this great new guy I felt no attachment towards. I thought I had cracked the code to dating in your twenties. And then, as quickly as it had started, the excitement started to fade. It was like someone had flipped a switch. The chasm between our (intense) physical intimacy and (practically non-existent) emotional one made itself known. I realised (and here I remind you that I’m only twenty-two, so bear with me) that even though I could get with people I didn’t really care about (and walk away unscathed), I wasn’t so sure anymore if I wanted to. He was still the same (extremely) hot and attentive guy, so what changed?

The plague of the “great on paper”

I’d like to say that I don’t have a type, but it really depends on who you ask. Some friends might mention a variation of medium ugly, ratboy or Victorian anaemic heroin chic (in my defence, he was a dead ringer for Timothée Chalamet). When looking at my most recent dating history after I decided to change my ways, I’ve had multiple friends audibly gasp whilst commenting wow he’s actually attractive! As someone who loves a project, I can work with rustic. I also had somehow convinced myself that the medium-ugly ones would treat me better (spoiler alert: they don’t, and then when things go to shit you must also deal with the embarrassment). I had a track record of finance bros, and once had a guy I met at a bar slide into my LinkedIn DMs. I’d protest that they weren’t my type, but that just seemed to be the kind of guy I attracted. But the real trend, the pattern if you go through all the archived conversations on my phone (where all situationships go to die), would be that all these guys were great on paper. I always get with people who I think are exactly what I’m looking for. Tall, mature, employed, polite. The kind of guys you’d feel comfortable telling your parents about, who look good in a linen shirt standing next to you at events, occasionally bland but never polarising.

“Safe doesn’t mean boring,” but what if it does?

This was my mantra, I kept saying that I didn’t want to be with someone who made my nervous system go haywire (to the detriment of having an outrageously entertaining dating life, I fear ten years of therapy might have dulled my ability to date obviously problematic men) but that somehow got lost in translation and I ended up with people who made me feel nothing at all. I would end up playing the part of the girl I thought they wanted, a fact that became painfully obvious when a friend pointed out how boring I got around the guys I was involved with. I hid away the bits of my personality that might be anachronistic or disagreeable or too much, and then asked myself why I found myself bored time and time again. I knew (in theory) that I could have a relationship where I felt safe and still had excitement. But I questioned if what I really enjoyed was the chase, the wondering if the emotionally detached and chronically nonchalant guy I texted from time to time ever thought to text me first.

Goldman Analyst vs. East London Creative — Final Boss Battle

As someone who loves meeting new people and never runs out of things to say, I love a first date, the excitement and possibility, I almost always come back from them buzzing (though the occasional awful date does happen, which is also great for a story), but my real struggle was to keep up with the excitement once I got to know them better. Maybe my fault though, maybe I just don’t know how to choose them. Maybe it’s about time I broaden my scope, venture east and dip my toes into the creative pool. Sure, if you’re dating analysts and consultants and it ends badly, there’s a pretty small chance you’ll be reminded by their existence by a massive picture on the side of a bus, a cameo on your daily Spotify playlists or a jump-scare moment whilst binging the newest, hottest, Netflix show, but what’s the fun in that?!

The Throwaway Boyfriend and the laws of breakup dynamics

When I was younger, I used to tell my friends I wanted a Throwaway Boyfriend. My thought process was that I wanted to have a lot of experiences before I met the one. The term sounds bad, and I was advised time and time again never to say that in public (though a very smart and funny woman recently told me to say it to men’s faces). I wanted to have stories to tell. I wanted to experience heartbreak so badly, I romanticised not washing your hair for a week, eating a pint of ice cream and wallowing in self-pity. I thought how low you felt post-breakup was a directly proportional reflection of how much love you experienced. I recently got into a discussion with some friends on how men and women process breakups differently. I’d commented that one of my friends who had recently gone through a breakup seemed to be doing okay, and how I actually thought she was fine. She’d told me that she felt like it had been some time coming, we’d discussed her relationship every time we caught up for the past nine months, she seemed sure of her decision. I said I was generalising, but I did usually find that women would suffer immediately post-breakup, whilst their [male] exes seemed to be doing fine, and then six months down the line, they would crack and spiral. Another [male] friend said that he read somewhere (read: probably watched a TikTok) that women will suffer intensely for a short period of time, whereas for men it was more of a continuous dull ache. Because I never know when to shut up and lose the ability to read the room after a couple of drinks, I asked him if he was still experiencing the dull ache from his most recent breakup (we were past the six-month mark). He nodded and avoided eye contact (a rare thing for him) as I tried to change the subject before the vibes were ruined to a point of no return.

Everything is Copy and ethically(?) dating for content

I’ve recently started milking my life for content, and that has led me to reconsider some of my life choices. Much like Kylie Jenner circa 2016, this has also been a year of realising stuff. The first observation came almost immediately after I started writing (publicly) about my life. That one was that we all have a sliver (or more) of narcissism and love to be written about. Everybody wants to be a muse (yes, you! don’t lie). We all have slight voyeuristic tendencies (talking about my love life is a sure-fire way to get more clicks, especially from people I know in real life). I read I feel bad about my neck two years ago and have had Nora Ephron’s voice in the back of my head ever since, my scene partner for imagined conversations, giving me notes on my inner monologue. Everything is copy quickly became a lifestyle, a justification for every risky decision, a guide to living a life worth writing about. Some writers could get me to read their grocery lists, but in my case, I felt like I needed something really juicy to keep people entertained. Was the secret to success lighting my life (dating or otherwise) on fire to get people to notice the smoke? It’s one thing to look back and write about past experiences from a safe distance, and another one entirely to think I’m probably going to write about this whilst it’s happening. I won’t go out with someone just because I think it will be a good story, but it definitely plays a (small) part. The chef, the (aspiring) actor or the music producer might give me more to talk about (in writing and in therapy) than the lawyer or banker, but then again, they’re equally likely to ask me Are you gonna write about me? (immediate ick).

I think dating in your twenties (and beyond) is supposed to be fun and exciting and can be a great exercise in self-reflection. New people make you question what you want and introduce you to new things. I also found that a lot of the time, I would meet new versions of myself through the men I dated. I wasn’t purposefully changing who I was for these boys, but the enthusiasm and dopamine rush of being interested in someone new meant that their interests were [momentarily] my newfound interests. I’ve discovered new favourite films, bands and gotten financial advice (unfortunately, my track record shows a lot of gilets and quarter-zips) this way. Talking to my single friends, I realised that maybe part of my optimism regarding dating is thanks to the fact that I’m yet to have an awful experience. Sure, I’ve had bad dates (a net positive as I’ll milk them for my friends’ entertainment, re-enacting in excruciating detail my date with man-with-a-podcast), but nothing that has made me think never again. Talking to a friend who’s turning thirty at the end of this year and just recently went through a breakup, I told her how I didn’t think something failed just because it wasn’t forever. My ideals of love and relationships might be a little twisted (I once said if I ever get divorced I would want a divorce like my parents’), but I can look back at the people I’ve gotten involved with over the years and be grateful for what they meant at the time, for the lessons learned. However, I think many of us still have stories that (comically) haunt us, some so iconic that a certain boy’s name might be colloquially used as a verb within a friend group, a warning or cautionary tale. We all have reasons we’ll never date a DJ or actor (general PSA) or guys named Chris (or any variation of the name) ever again. I’ll go first.

To make a short (ghost) story long:

The essence of this story isn’t particularly unique or traumatic. Getting ghosted is a rite of passage. I think part of the impact here was the timing (I was eighteen and just coming off a year of lockdowns) and the context (my first (though probably not last) time getting ghosted). Anyhow, it’s still brought up by the friends who witnessed it first-hand, as well as the ones who heard about it later.

I met Mike1 at my first student job. I know he was there on my first day, but I was so nervous I thought I might be sick and don’t remember him making an impression. I remember our first proper conversation, though, drinks with the team on a random weeknight in October. In a job that was 90% public speaking, you’re bound to get a lot of extroverts. Stick thirty-five of them in the back of a pub and even the most outgoing person might need a second to catch their breath. Mike and I ended up in a dark corner a few drinks in. I have no concept of time when I drink, but I remember talking about where we grew up, what we were both studying (I was a second-year literature student at UCL, where he went for his undergrad), our IB subjects (international students can attest that even years after graduating it sometimes still comes up). I can’t tell you what did it for me, I’d like to blame the fact that I had spent my first year of uni locked up at home with minimal social contact, but what I do know is that when I stumbled home a little drunk I proceeded to gush (in French — drunk-Julia is a polyglot) to my flatmate. I felt like I had struck gold, finally someone who I found both attractive and interesting! He was studying medicine, was interested in social justice, cared about the environment and was five years older. I thought he was so noble and mature (it’s okay if you’re rolling your eyes now). Still, I didn’t think much of it.

I love having a crush. It makes life a little more colourful, and it definitely made getting up at 5am for work a bit more bearable. When visiting my best friend in Barcelona for a weekend, she drunkenly texted him a shaky selfie from the club bathroom and something along the lines of “take my friend out.” I woke up still drunk the next morning, but self-aware enough to know to throw my phone across the room and start mentally drafting a resignation letter. I was going to lose my first job one month in because my best friend booty-texted my work-crush (in her defence, that was the last time she ever got drunk — and that was four years ago). I didn’t expect him to respond at all, but he played it cool, laughing off the dangers of drinking and texting. I saw him again a couple of weeks after the drunk text. We were hanging out with everyone from work and I was running late, though this time it worked out in my favour as everyone was already sat at a long table, Mike at one corner. I waved a general hello and made a beeline for the other side. Sure, he’d waved off my concerns, but I was still mortified and didn’t want things to be awkward. I could have avoided him forever. Instead, he swapped seats with someone next to me halfway through the night. We hung back when walking out. I don’t quite remember what we talked about, but by the end of the night, the embarrassment had worn off. As someone who had grown up on romance novels and romcoms and Wattpad, I couldn't help but read into these little things.

In the lead-up to Christmas break, I kept telling my friends that I couldn’t figure out if it was all in my head. I wanted to see him in a chill environment to “suss out the vibes,” but my work’s end-of-term drinks clashed with tickets to the ballet bought months in advance. The Nutcracker has always kicked off the holiday season for me, first as a dancer and now as an audience member. Still, I didn’t let that deter me. Stepping out into Covent Garden after saying goodbye to my family, I power walked towards Tottenham Court Road, checking the group chat, trying to figure out if anyone was still there. Either way, I’d have to walk past the bar on my way home, and I took that as a sign that the universe was on my side. I made it on time, we talked, I chickened out, even though this was my imaginary cut-off date to do something. On my walk home, I phoned my friend Helena to update her on what hadn’t happened that night. In the fifteen minutes it took me to get back to my place, she’d pulled out her notes app as we co-wrote the perfect text over the phone, trying to sound casual enough, suggesting coffee. Once I got home, I handed my phone over to Claire, my flatmate, letting her press send and heading off to bed. When my phone pinged thirty minutes later, I rushed into Claire’s room, tossing the phone at her, too nervous to open the text. A perfect vignette of the giddy and ridiculous antics of our first year living together. His response was sweet, inviting. I lived a stone’s throw away from the UCL campus, and he had an abundance of coffee shop recommendations in the area. Now I must pull you out of this story to remind you it was December of 2021. The Omicron variant showed up in full swing, and two days later, everyone started testing positive for Covid. I changed my ticket home and was on the next available Eurostar, testing positive a couple of days later (on my birthday). Still, we kept texting, and then two days after wishing me a happy nineteenth birthday... nothing, radio silence. I chalked it up to him being busy, home for the holidays. What’s the point of talking if neither one of us is in London anyway? I mentioned the nine-hour time-zone difference to Claire, a fact she brings up to this day, pointing out it took me way more than nine hours to accept that I was never hearing from him again. Now, looking back, I can see that maybe I misread what was meant to be a budding friendship. Still, I resist the urge to cringe, reminding myself that I was an eighteen-year-old who’d spent the previous year locked up at home.

I saw him one more time after that. As someone who’s a fan of soft ghosting (different from breadcrumbing, as there is no desire to keep them on the back-burner, but the conflict-avoidant types might find it easier to space out dry responses and let the other person do the dirty deed of disappearing), Mike’s behaviour gave me whiplash. One of our colleagues was going away to Australia for six months, and I had a flight the morning after his leaving drinks. I knew it would be a smaller group, but I figured I could avoid Mike, we could both pretend nothing happened and give our friend a proper send-off without making things awkward. I ordered a frozen margarita (I’d pay for it on my early-morning flight) and resigned myself to hyperfocusing on the conversation with a friend sitting next to me. Whenever Mike would chime in, I would think spitefully, Oh so now you want to talk? At the end of the night, I hugged him goodbye and he whispered enjoy Lisbon before we parted ways. I called my friends livid, enjoy Lisbon?! I didn’t know why, but I was furious. The anger wore off, I was left confused, handing my phone off to every single friend (and on one night projecting our texts on the TV for a group analysis), trying to figure out what I missed.

I think after him, I course-corrected, maybe a bit too much. I went for the up-front fuckboys. I avoided vegans and people who biked and self-proclaimed feminists like the plague. I wanted to know exactly what I was walking into. I preached low commitment and no expectations. I second-guessed myself and refused to read between the lines, lest I misunderstand. Anything short of a full-blown profession of love was read as a friendly remark. I moved on, but “pulling a Mike” remained. Whenever I tried to reassure my friends that they were not about to get ghosted and that the guys they were talking to seemed super keen, they would say Remember Mike? When I ghosted someone I’d been talking to on Hinge after the dopamine hit wore off (I promise I don’t do that anymore), I’d claim reparations. Still, if Mike is the worst guy that never happened to me, I think my dating optimism can be explained.