You want to know why it turns my stomach to watch a woman recycle her soul every 6 to 12 months.
I have this friend, Lara. A serial offender. She looks at me, with all my chaos and my rotation, and she sneers. “I don’t date like you, James,” she says, all high and mighty. “I don’t do that hookup shit. I only do relationships.”
And I look at her, and I have to ask the question that’s sitting there like a dead elephant in the room.
“Honey,” I say, “how many ‘relationships’ have you had? Twenty? Thirty?”
She thinks she’s virtuous because she locks them down. But I’ve watched her. I’ve watched the pattern. She meets a guy. Within two weeks, they are “exclusive.” Within a month, they are planning a trip to a cabin. Within three months, she is looking him in the eye—the same way she looked at the guy before him, and the guy before that—and saying those three, heavy, dangerous words: “I Love You.”
And that is what drives me absolutely, fucking nuts.
It’s not the sex. Go ahead. Hop in the woods. Do the positions. Swing from the chandeliers. We are all animals. I don’t care if you’ve slept with the entire 1985 Chicago Bears defensive line.
It’s the script.
How do you do it? How do you look a man in the soul, pour your heart out, tell him he is your “special person,” share your body, your secrets, your fears… and then, three to six months after it implodes because you’re bat-shit crazy, you’re looking into another man’s eyes—some poor bastard standing right behind me in the line—and saying the exact same goddamn thing?
It’s a rerun. It’s a bad cover song.
“I love you.” “You’re the one.” “Let’s go to the coast.” “Let’s play house.”
It’s the same pitch. The same rhythmic tone. The same performance. The only thing that changes is the audience. And the new guy? He thinks he won the lottery. He doesn’t realize he’s just the next host organism for a parasite that feeds on validation. He doesn’t realize that the “intimacy” she’s giving him is a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.
It devalues the currency. If you can fall in “love” four times a year, your love isn’t a diamond. It’s glass. It’s cheap, industrial-grade filler.
I look at my own life. I’m the “bad guy,” right? The player. The commitment-phobe.
But look at the stats.
I have had very, very few relationships. My first girlfriend was my wife. In 57 years, I have had no more than three or four women I would call “Girlfriend.” Maybe five.
When I say “I love you,” it costs me something. It takes a piece of me. I don’t throw it around like confetti at a parade.
But these women? They treat their hearts like a rental car. They drive it hard, crash it into a wall, and then just go to the counter and get a new one. “Oh, that wasn’t real love. This is real love.”
They play “married.” They do the domestic cosplay. They rush to the Ikea, they rush to the meet-the-parents, they rush to the “we” stage, because if they stop moving, they might have to look in the mirror and realize they have no idea who the hell they are without a man telling them they’re pretty.
And they judge me?
They look at me dating the “low-hanging fruit,” the broken birds, and they say, “Oh, James is damaged. James is shallow.”
No. James is honest.
I don’t promise forever. I don’t tell a woman I love her just to get her pants off or to fill a silence. I give them my time, my body, a hell of a good night, and the truth.
So tell me, who is the villain?
The man who says, “I’m leaving for Vietnam in two months, let’s enjoy the sunset,” and leaves you with a smile?
Or the woman who says, “I love you, you’re my soulmate,” uses you up, discards you, and then repeats the exact same script to the next guy in line before your side of the bed is even cold?
Or the woman who says, “I love you, you’re my soulmate,” and then replaces you like a dead battery the second the spark fades?
I’d rather be the honest asshole than the romantic fraud.
Because when I say something, I mean it. And when I leave, I leave clean. I don’t leave a trail of counterfeit “I love yous” littered across the state of Arizona like cigarette butts.
So yeah. Fly away, butterfly. Go land on the next flower.
Just don’t expect me to believe the bullshit when you try to claim you loved me.
