Moving On (Quickly)

Most people would probably say that twenty-four hours is too soon to be getting back into the dating world after breaking up with your boyfriend. To be honest, I’m too young to care. Twenty-two is far too young to be hung up on a first love… especially when he has the gall to say he doesn’t love me but doesn’t have the balls to break up with me.

So, twenty-four hours after pulling the trigger on my longest relationship, I was on every dating app I could think of. Within two days, I had two dates set up for the following week. After spending so much time with one guy, I was looking to rebound, hard. I wanted so badly to prove to myself not only that I was desirable to the opposite sex but that they were desirable to me. I had only ever been sexually attracted to one guy in my life, the only guy up until this point that I had ever had sex with, and he just broke my heart.

Now, I don’t regret moving on from my ex-boyfriend as quickly as I did. What I regret is trying to move on and into another relationship and oh boy did I pick some winners to try and move on to.

We'll start with the Aussie, who I so affectionately referred to as Gutter Boy, due to his mind often being in the gutter. He was a virgin. Nothing against virgins, considering last year I was one, but he was fighting a losing battle. I really didn’t want that responsibility of being his first or teaching him sex. Hell, my ex was so vanilla I barely knew anything beyond missionary. Maybe we could have learned together, do whatever it was our little dirty hearts (and respective genitalia) desired but there was that looming knowledge that I would have to take his virginity. Besides, after having sex with a guy who knew my body, very well, from having sex with each other for so long… I really didn’t want bad sex and that was all I saw coming. That and a clingy casual bed partner that wasn’t even that great. The boy barely knew how to kiss. I swear this boy was like kissing a fish, just lips and moisture. The kind of guy you had to pull away from while making out to prevent yourself from drowning. My ex had liked to bring his teeth into our make out sessions, biting on my lower lip every time our lips touched, which in retrospect is almost as annoying, but the lack of anything beyond flesh was off putting.

The poor boy just wanted sex so bad that he insisted he would be fine with a casual relationship but after spending the night at his house (and thankfully nothing more than making out happening), I knew that he was lying through his teeth. One, he was 100% in love with another girl, the reason he moved from Australia in the first place, and was looking for a distraction in the form of a sham relationship and someplace warm to put his dick. Two, I wasn’t going to go from being madly in love to being in like with a guy I didn’t even like who also happened to be infatuated with someone else. The next morning he requested a kiss goodbye on my way out… I obliged… and then sent a text breaking things off the next day.

He was the first guy I had gone on a date with after my ex and I broke up (less than a week prior). I wasn’t even entirely sure what I wanted at that time. I just quickly realized that it wasn’t him. I also noticed how picky I had gotten. Little things were pissing me off: how high he wore his pants, making his torso look disproportionately small when he got dressed up all fancy for work the next day, or how he kept cutting me off, not letting me finish a single story and guys… I’m a storyteller.

It had been so easy with my ex. He was the first guy I talked to on our dating app of choice. The first guy I gave my number to. The first guy I met in person. The first guy I had sex with. I wasn’t picky with him… and I think that’s why I’m picky now.

So there is that.

O