How To Find And Lose A Guy In One Month

Screw “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” After my forth failed one-month relationship with a guy (yes, that is four different separate incidences), I decided that by this point, I’ve become a veritable mistress on the subtleties and nuances of how to find, and lose, a guy in one month.

The first one-month stint ended mutually because Catholic Boy loved God and his Mommy too much to be flexible with a pagan princess. The second time, I was dumped via text message after the foreshadowing “fade-away” tactical maneuvers the Flaky Artist put me through. The third time around, still not any wiser, Legs graduated and deserted my life, sans calls, sans text, sans messaging in a move that would have made Witness Protection proud. This last time, coming to you hot off the emotional presses as of an 8:30 PM phone call last night, was by far the most healthy and normal “monther”, if you can get over the irony of that statement.

And so, without further ado, I give to you, dear reader, my pearls of wisdom in how to find and lose a guy in one month, four weeks, or 28-31 days, which ever seems most appealing to you. (For the record, Perfect and I somehow made it to one month, one day, and a three minute and 34 phone call. Achievement.)

Step One: Have a friend, preferably living with you, decide to introduce you to their best guy friend that they’ve known for years. Listen to them sing their praises, look at the pictures they show you, (you must see the goods, after all,) and then, (this is VERY IMPORTANT!) decide that this friend-of-a-friend is “no big deal” and you will “maybe meet them for a few minutes if you’re home when they come to visit.”

(Step One, Side Note: It is imperative that this guy friend of your friend/roommate lives 45 minutes or more away, took a year off between graduating high school and college, and is starting college in the fall, three and a half hours away. We’ll get back to this. Bonus points if he loves dancing and salsa dances, traveling, sings and plays and instrument, used to ride horses, spends two hours a day at the gym, and is as frankly sexual and explicit as you are.)

Step Two: Actually be home when the male friend comes to visit. Actually, be the one that opens the door for your friend/roommate and their visiting friend. Watch this person who you previously deemed not really worth your interest walk across a dark and dreary parking garage and think only one thing: “Wow.”

Step Three: While you are getting acquainted with this impossibly attractive, funny, hulking manbeast with your two other female roommates, be sure to send them both a furtive text message as soon as humanly possible after deciding that you like this dude’s groove. It need only be one word: “Mine!” and it will also serve as a time-stamp as to when you first laid dibs and made moves on this guy. Slink away to make a note that you have found the World’ Perfect Guy on Twitter, and then realize that That Perfect Guy is actually standing in your doorway, watching you Tweet away. Pretend nothing ever happened. Also, make sure, via your friend/roommate, after her guest leaves, that you two both mutually dig each other. (Addendum clause: Just a hint, alcohol should be involved somewhere in this first meeting with each other, as it will lubricate your tongue and unhinge your brain from your mouth and cause you to actually have the Jose Cuervo balls to say something like, “Are you a player?” to this person you may be interested in seeing again when his cell phone won’t stop vibrating with other girl’s texts. Bonus points if all these girl’s names begin with the letter J. But hold off on the spilling things and falling down until after he leaves.)

(Step Three, Side Note: If at all possible, have your friend/roommate’s birthday be within the next four days, and try not to be too excited when, less than twenty minutes after he leaves, your friend/roommate’s guy friend texts you to tell you how nice it was to meet you, and that he’ll be seeing you again soon for that birthday.)

Step Four: Four days later, when the friend/roommate’s friend comes back for the birthday, get both of you drunk. When it looks like he’ll have to sleep on the living room floor, in your intoxicated state(both by the liquor and by the lust), invite him to share your bed, saying you don’t take up much room with a liquidly coquettish look. After hours of playing, piggy-back rides, talking, and in the dark of your room, both of you laying in your bed, him on his back, you on your stomach, sometimes both of you curling in on your sides to face each other like a set of parenthesis, him using his cell phone to play you the music he wrote, sang, and played—sleep with him. Yes, you heard it right. The second time you meet this person, have sex with them. Really.

Step Five: Make sure the next morning is really awkward-- that you have to leave for a road trip at 9 AM; that your mother calls you while the guy is still laying in your bed naked and you are three feet away; you discover that you’ve left scratch marks all over his arms and back like he was mauled by a wildcat while trekking through the Amazon; that you will feel really bad for the girl who spent the night on your couch and probably had to listen to both your friend/roommate and her boyfriend get it on, not to mention you and the guy you slept with, who, oh, did we mention? is also a friend of the girl-on-the-couch’s…go through your morning routine in a flurried state because you’re trying to pack, and leave, putting your deodorant and acne stuff and make-up on in front of this guy who’s just lounging in your bed and watching you in fascination, and somehow try to figure out if he is ok with what happened, and is happening, or just as appalled as you are…sit and talk with everyone around breakfast for ten minutes, then wave an awkward good-bye to your friend/roommate, the girl-on-the-couch, and the guy while running out the door.

Step Six: Do not stress about this for the next six hours. Who am I kidding? Be massively, wretchedly, not-butterflies-but-rabbits-gnawing-on-your-stomach-lining worried about this. Continue feeling this way on-and-off throughout the next month because he is PERFECT, perfectperfectperfect, and you are a recovering alcoholic with a cigarette problem who previously has only dated losers and didn’t perform so well last night because of your extreme state of intoxication and nervousness because HE’S SO PERFECT and OH! you can barely even remember most of what happened other than the sight of his long, dark eyelashes and bulging biceps in the yellow glow of your lamp, set to its dimmest and most ‘moody’ setting.

(Step Six, Side Note: Over the next month, gradually remember more bits and pieces from that night in the most random times and in the most random places, like during your first meeting with your internship boss in her office. Try to make sure she doesn’t notice you’ve broken out in a light sweat and are trembling.)

Step Seven: Feel 16, 891,212 times better about this when the guy texts you that afternoon to check in, see how your road trip was, and acts completely normal. Continue to exchange texts, phone calls, and Facebook messages almost daily for the next not-quite-a-month now. Make plans for him to come and visit which will inevitable fall through because he gets sick. Sext with him while interviewing bikers at a local pizza places’ Bike Night. Then, be over-the-moon when he comes to visit a friend in the same town and makes plans to see you—this will happen twice—, and you end up seeing each other three days in a row, or four days in one week, culminating in him coming to your birthday bash and meeting all of your friends who will all adore him, even the guys—one (straight) guy going so far as to call him “studly”—, and going to his old high school’s graduation with your friend/roommate who also went there, where you will meet a few of his friends, see, but not meet, his father, and have two hometown girls try to roast you alive where you stand on the track with the ferocity of their gazes when you walk up and start to talk to him.

(Step Seven, Side Note: Buy a new very summery, cute and demure dress for this graduation experience as you will have nothing parent, child, or parent-and-child-attending-event friendly in your closest.)

Step Eight: Toward the end of the month, while sexting (per usual—you will have to become very adept at this quickly, as well as not to succumbing to demands for photos of you, or the lingerie you just bought, or you in the lingerie you just bought, no matter how much you really want to, because really, as the friend/roommate says, he is a hound and it’s better to keep the suspense going), when he tells you in response to your “I’m so horny they need to invent a new word for it because I destroyed the meaning of the previous one,” text to “fix it,” pretend to ignore this text and don’t respond in your livid rage. Actually, this is a good move. For real.

Step Nine: Get woken up at quarter to eight the next morning when he texts you asking, “Did you get my text last night? You never said anything back!” Be elated he actually realized your uncharacteristic silence meant something. To applaud this good behavior, go out and spend over $200 in Victoria’s Secret on assorted bras, underwear, and garters. Also, totally ignore your tried-and-true buying-men-clothing-never-turns-out-well curse (case in point: that purple men’s large hoodie draped over the back of your chair that now doubles as your second bathrobe instead of actually ever going to the person it was bought for), and buy the boy two brightly colored t-shirts that will look striking as all hell on him because you remember the “I only wear muted colors but want to start wearing brighter shirts” conversation you had with him.

(Step Nine, Side Note: Now, look back on this later and realize that although ridiculously inexpensive, it STILL is not a good idea to buy men who you are seeing clothing, because this is also the fourth time you have bought clothing and been left with it and a potentially awkward, “Um, so I know this is kind of weird now, but I bought you these shirts before, so here, have them,” conversation.)

Step Ten: After a couple days of feeling weird and waking up from cryptic dreams to find yourself clinging desperately and apologetically to the body pillow as a stand-in for him, totally freak out (to yourself, your roommate, and your friend/now ex-roommate, but not to him), when he sends you a text saying he went skinny-dipping with friends late last night—a guy and about six other girls. Oh, and it was “fun but cold.” Rant and rage to everyone but him, to whom you say it does sound like it was “fun but cold.” Get up on your Jealous Horse (not a far climb), get it to calm down and get somewhat under control (for the most part), and spend an hour drafting the perfect “I have something to tell you, and what it is is that I have no clue what’s going on between us” text that hits all the right hints of self-depreciating, caring, and chill. A text that basically says, “Hey, so it may be No Big Deal, but I got a little jealous and realized I need to figure out where I stand.” Wait an hour for him to text you back. When your cell rings with his custom ringtone, know it is not good instantly and retreat into a room more suited for talking to him than on the couch with the friend/ex-roommate holding a hookah pipe. Take a few seconds to make “oh, shit, I’m in trouble but let’s pretend I’m not and SO CHILL” small-talk with him starting with “what’s up?” like you have no idea what’s going on and then going on to ask him about the movie he just saw, before he cuts to the chase and asks YOU where you stand on things. Come clean and tell him jealousy is a “less-admirable trait” of yours. Tell him you “really like him and enjoy spending time with him and seeing him.” When he tells you that he also enjoys you and those things but is heading to college in the fall and so not looking to start a relationship back at home that he doesn’t know will survive the transfer(refer to Step One’s Side Note!), decide you’re ok with still just having sex as a last-ditch effort. He comes back with “I’ve been thinking the past few weeks and I think that I’m past that.” Realize that you are both on the same page, in the same book, in the same place—hooking up is not enough, a relationship is too much, but somewhere in the middle (AKA: business as usual) would be great but neither can see it progressing without actually turning into a relationship—but it’s the wrong time. Decide to stay in touch as usual, still visit, and “just be friends” for now, even as your libido, bank account, and daydreams cry. End relationSHIT. Hang up phone. Proceed to smoke through three cigarettes and drink yourself so drunk you try mistakenly watering your just-blossomed marigold plant with the Smirnoff.

Voila! You have successfully found, met, bedded, casually saw, and lost a man in under a month! I would say “Congratulations,” but that hollow feeling in your chest and the sense of whiplash at how fast it all started and ended kind of cancels that out, doesn’t it?

(Author’s Note: No real people were used in the creation of this column. Any personality traits, characteristics, places, or events mentioned therein are all merely coincidental if they are you or happened to you. Except for if you’re the authoress and then, yes, they all happened to you and they are all real people mentioned.)

XOXO