Ask Fiona Landers #1
Perhaps I'll Collapse In The Apps Right Before You All
Dear Fiona Landers,
My ex-boyfriend and I broke up in February. We were together for 2 and a half years. It wasn’t a particularly messy breakup but it was tough for me to cut the cord (I broke up with him.) In other words, I don’t hate him. I actually want him to be happy. I just don’t think it would be with me.
I’m slowly getting back into dating. I’ve never had any luck meeting people out in the world (maybe my resting bitch face is hindering me) so dating apps feel like my only option. But something is holding me back from jumping in fully. I think because my ex took the breakup harder than me that if he (or one of his friends) sees me on an app it’ll hurt his feelings and make him think that our relationship meant nothing to me. Which is not true. I know I can’t control his reaction or feelings but for some reason I can’t help but consider them in this decision.
Any advice?
-Highly Sensitive Ex-Girlfriend
Dear Highly Sensitive Ex-Girlfriend,
It makes sense you’re still feeling loyal and protective of his heart, even though you’re the one who left it flailing in the air without a home. Because this is a suspension of time. The purgatorial crawl space between being together and being apart. There’s an adjustment period and people move on at different paces. Some people never move on. They just wander the earth alone, embodying every character in Interview with the Vampire, internally switching roles every seven years. I just started an Antonio Banderas cycle, so get ready for big sleeves and bludgeoned sass.
If your ex needs to curl up in a ball in the grimiest corner of his shower floor–the section you labeled “mildew alley” when you’d take sweet, new love showers together, in the ephemeral shelter of the dopamine serotonin goldilocks zone–he totally can. He can stay in mildew alley as long as he likes. And you, Highly Sensitive Ex, can wriggle through that crawl space like a jewel thief, crash landing yourself into a coffee date. Neither of you would be handling this wrong.
Individualism is dangerous but so is self abandonment. You're sensitive, and Jewel and I would like you to stay that way. But I think you have to turn that sensitivity toward respecting your needs and trusting yourself enough to keep making decisions that feel right for you. I wouldn’t give that same advice to like, Amy Coney Barrett. But you don’t seem like you're one sixth of an extremist medieval death cult who gets off on bodily usurpation and torture. You aren’t a more dedicated Captain Hook in an Ann Taylor Loft suit whose sleep playlist is Gregorian chants and Ted Nugent canticles so I’m gonna say give yourself permission to boldly go after what you want. Even if one of your ex’s friends sees your lovely, surly face on an app and thinks you’re a heartless whore. I assure you, that guy sucks. It’s your body, your heart, and only you know what those things want. And if you’re not sure what they want, you get to try things and change your mind and make mistakes until you figure it out. Again, I’m only saying this to you because you’re not a Cheesecake Factory Margaret Thatcher–who wasn’t even Principal Handmaid in her covenant clique, by the way. She was just Area Handmaid. Guess she didn’t lean in until she could inflict catastrophic harm on the most vulnerable people in America.
On that note, your bodily autonomy is not up for debate. To quote plancpills.org: “Plan A is birth control to prevent pregnancy. Plan B is emergency contraception (also to prevent pregnancy). Plan C is abortion pills.” All of these plans are safe and good and normal. They are literally just healthcare. Six unelected, archaic frat-monks do not get to define healthcare, even if they legally get to, from the highest, dumbest court in the land. They need to take their inhumane liturgical wreaths and big “I rub roasted owl carcasses on my ankles when my gout is acting up” energy out of our goddamn uteruses. Go ruin someone’s birthday at Medieval Times you fucking losers.
Now that I’ve set the mood, are you ready for you to date? Do you just want to dip your toe in? Wear capris, wade in up to your knees? Or do clumsy, almost synchronized swimming routines with a variety of hunks because you think they look cute in their goggles? I know I'm making dating sound like it’s tropical and fun, which it isn’t, but you know that. Sometimes there’s a shark in the pool! A shark pressuring you to buy the protein powder he reps. A shark bragging about his sand art dioramas which look like framed, dried barf. A shark with five untreated personality disorders but holy smokes, River Phoenix hair. Confusing! Good thing you’re the lifeguard at this pool. You have the whistle. You call the shots from your red, rad megaphone. Enjoy the hunks and tranq the sharks from your tower if you need to.
Currently, if I, Fiona Landers, saw a certain person’s face on the apps, it would turn my heart into roadkill. A little, limp Virginia opossum on the side of the highway. All thirteen of her nipples ripped off. The glossy pink of her insides bedazzled with glittery black chunks of asphalt. The opposable thumb on her back foot giving an eternally pathetic thumbs up. Snout agape. Eye whiskers frozen in disbelief. Her lovestruck gumball eyeballs chewed up, spit out, and run over by a 90 Day Fiancé production van.
But you know what, that person is absolutely, 1000% free to be on the apps. Looking for flings or committed partnerships or zingy sexting–it doesn’t matter if seeing them on hinge, bumble, or even toodle-who* lodges an ice pick in my chest. Because that person made it clear they didn’t want to be in a romantic anything with me, even though I very much wanted to be in a romantic something with them. That’s right, Highly Sensitive Ex, that person is allowed to have obviously appalling taste in women, and not want to be romantically entwined with Fiona Landers: Venusian Sex Banshee.
It is perfectly within their right to flirt with and project fantasies onto twitter bots and baristas, and only be able to jerk off to cam girls or their mom or maybe even sometimes still Fiona Landers, but they do not want to be with her. They are not in love with her. They do not want to have real, in person sex with her–not even if she sticks hard, cold grapes in places and it’s really fucking fun–and she’s just going to have to live with that. And so is your heartbroken ex. Me and him and our arms full of devastated, tear-soaked, sour grapes are just gonna have to make some funky grape juice and find more and more ways to go on living without you two. And you and your Grumpy Cat visage–damn I can really see why he was so into you–get to get on your wobbly bicycle with the faded ribbons tied to the handles, and ride off into the mystery. You get to feel the breeze on your hot, mean face and not know where you’re going. You get to take solace in knowing you wanted to go, so you’re going. So go.
xo
Fiona Landers
*toodle-who is on the dark web.
Holy shits this made me LOL and I woke up the baby