Relationships

Confessions Of A F*ckboy: Why I Get Out When Women Want More

by Adam Shadows

My girl wants more. Of course I know what she means by this, and of course I don't know how to give it to her. “More” is the most confusing and crippling four-letter word to men since the dawn of time. Even worse than "soft." Or "fine."

Still, she wants more.

Women always want more around this time, or probably earlier, but it's around this time they usually say something about it. She and I have been doing this for a few months, this routine in late-night rendezvousing. We f*ck and then won't talk for five days, and I know her hands are glued to her phone for most of those 120 hours.

I should just man up and let her go. But I haven't dumped a girl in years. I haven't even dated any. I'm around girls constantly, but nothing we ever do can be called dating with any kind of righteousness. There are plenty of other words to illustrate it.

A few that come to mind: lying, pounding, munching, drinking, sipping, chugging, bumping and eye f*cking, laughing, yelling, fighting, slumping, real f*cking, fake naming and numbering, smoking, holding, smiling, tugging, light choking, HBO GO-watching and lying around and binging (on both TV and bodily fluids), leaving and boyfriend-averting, slurring, tip-toeing, fire-escape escaping, number-grabbing, number-giving, texting, Tweeting, Tindering and Bumbling, trying without trying and trying again, over and over and over again.

Those are the things I do for, with, around, to avoid and to attract women.

At this point, they're almost oddly second nature. But none of that leads to KEEPING these women. They're all fascinating, so I keep carousel-ing them around, hopping on one girl and then another like subway cars, trying to convince myself to consider each stop somewhat sacred as the whole journey remains less noble than the sum of its parts.

In the popular parlance of my generation, I guess you could call me your average f*ckboy.

Anyway, my girl wants more.

She can be combative. Irrational, even. Immature. In the beginning, we started fighting about every little thing almost right away. How I shouldn't smoke cigarettes. How she shouldn't flirt with frat boys in front of me. How far away the pizza place was. You know, healthy sh*t.

After every fight, I wanted space. She wanted … the opposite.

We're a few minutes removed from a 69 session that could have fit into a network sitcom time slot (and in the process, made us miss the entire "New Girl" episode we had queued up on her tablet). I can tell she wants to tell me something.

Both of us naked in her bed, this is where we do most of our talking. The really stupid and really sweet both occur here, almost in unison. Once I said, “I think I'm falling in love with you.” Another time I said, “Do you actually have a screw loose or is this just an act?” (She countered with, “Do I really scare you?” to which I replied, “Only occasionally.”)

“What is it?” I ask her now. She says nothing. She looks down at my beer gut while I twirl her hair, so light it could be colorless, around my finger.

Then I give her one of those looks that made her fall for me in the first place. It's scary how I can turn them on and off.

“Come on,” I say.

She wrestles with the idea before flashing me her deep blue eyes.

“I just think we should see each other more. That's all. It's not a big deal.”

It's startling to me how she thought I didn't know she wanted this and how afraid she was to say it. God, am I really that scary? I decide it isn't good when your girl makes you feel like your father.

“You don't think we see each other enough?” I ask.

“No,” she yelps. “I want to see you more than once a week. I want to talk to you more. I want to know what's going on. I know you don't like labels.”

She just moved here from Iowa. She was all alone in Manhattan. Then she met me, wearing a leather jacket and punching someone in Alphabet City. And she got in the cab when I opened the door.

I knew she'd never been with a man like me before. If she had, maybe she'd understand me, give me some space, make every interaction feel less like a countdown until she takes some desperately emotional public stance that I can't match.

But if I'm in love with this girl – and I very well may be – it's in the way that I sometimes shudder at the thought of seeing her and then low-key miss her when I don't.

“I hear you, sweetie.” I've moved my hand from her hair to her cheek. “I just don't think it's tenable. I wish it were. We live two hours away. Three trains. You may as well live in Philadelphia.”

“I know…”

“If you did, and we saw one another once a week, that would be pretty amazing, right?”

Her cheeks swelled up into this goofy, overwhelming smile that she does when she's trying to convince you that she's been convinced. It's enormous and doesn't show any teeth, like a child's who doesn't know any better. And it's so f*cking phony. Ugh.

“I know I'm not around enough. It's only natural to want more. But you should f*ck other people when you're not f*cking me,” I say.

“When you say that, it makes me think that you already are.”

“Not actively,” I assure her. She drops her head again and leaves the room.

I'm expecting fury at her return. I half want her to kick me out. She should kick me out. But she lets me stay, climbing back onto the bed and drawing up another phony smile. Then she arches her back as she collapses on top of me and rolls us both until she's propped upright on my crotch.

She's silent as she guides my dick slowly; it slides easily inside. She knows I might just be simple enough to be f*cked halfway into somebody's heart.

What follows isn't so much sex as it is a frantic retraction: her clinging arms around my neck and chest pressed on mine, a session of manic sex I imagine she's using to take back our last conversation, to thrust it out of existence. Of course I can't forget it, which is probably why I can't come, so I hold her in place until she rides herself to satisfied fruition.

Do I deserve to be f*cked after telling a girl to f*ck other people?

I want to ask her why she so intensely wants to be with someone who so clearly doesn't want to be with her. Why someone who was totally unknown to her such a short time ago could now dictate all this disappointment, self-loathing, discouragement. All this blind loyalty.

I want to ask her, who am I? What are you wasting your time for? How could you let someone treat you this way?

And that's why she's not my girl anymore. I guess I just need less.