
Ten years after meeting him and seven after we said “I do,” I look at my husband – sometimes when he’s knee-deep into a heated rant about bad science, sometimes when he’s giggling uncontrollably over fart noises, sometimes when he’s playfully taunting our four-year-old with funny faces – and I think, “This is not the man I wanted”.
At 22, I sure didn’t want a super sweet goofball who wasn’t an emotionally broken, tortured soul that I could fix with my dog-like devotion and blind adoration. I did not want a guy with little romantic experience, which would make his choosing me feel like a default and not a victory. I wanted to come in like a motherf**king wrecking ball, but what fun is that with a man who has no walls?
My dance of seduction was one of infiltration. It is a technique that many a fat girl who has accepted her socially assigned role as that of a leper has found handy.
WATCH: Dating: translated… it ain’t easy being single. Post continues after video.
The first tenet is absolutely no flirting. You don’t scare away a guy by showing him that a fat girl dares to think she has a chance with him. This gives you the opportunity to close in and aggressively display your inner strengths – some of which are actual cool things about you, most of which are just behaviours to make him feel like the most interesting dude in the world, which he absolutely isn’t, but whatever.
If you had asked me back then if this is how I really wanted to navigate dating, I would say, “Of course not!” I didn’t really get a high out of chasing these kinds of people. Sure, the highs came in fleeting moments when they would let themselves be caught up in my covert romancing, but then I paid for it with crippling lows once they remembered my real role in their lives – that of a doormat. Still, I chose this type over and over again. Something inside me had to like this special brand of torture.
Chasing arseholes quickly became addicting. As it at one point felt like the only way for a socially devalued woman to go, it eventually revealed itself to be more about my conditioning to conquest. I never thought I could get anywhere just by being. I thought I had to get there by doing and earning. It’s a great work ethic, but it leaves your self-esteem in shambles.