Screw the one that got away — let's talk about the one that traumatised your entire friend group

Because I'm tired of walking away unscathed from every romantic entanglement of late — let me reminisce on the boy that became a cautionary tale and a verb for me and my friends

The idea for this piece came about after a couple of drinks with my girlfriends. I’ve recently gotten back into dating, or maybe the best way to put that is that I have recently gone back to the trenches Hinge. I’m not coming off a long-term relationship or a long period of celibacy, but instead from a dating rut where I’d let things fall on my lap, but I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about meeting new people. After a situationship that fizzled out last year right around the time I was finishing my Master’s dissertation, followed by a long stretch of not spending more than a week in London (I don’t want to do the math of how much I spent on renting an empty apartment), the timing didn’t feel right and I just didn’t have it in me to date.

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.

safe to say I did not reach out to him for a comment…

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.

1. Name has been changed