I Had a Nice Time And Other Lies...: How to find love & sh*t like that (25 page)

It may hurt at the time, but a breakup earlier rather than later is lucky, because the later on the breakup happens, the more damage it causes and people it hurts. Wouldn’t you rather your boyfriend tell you that he doesn’t think he can do this forever before you have three kids and a mortgage to deal with? Wouldn’t you want the person to whom you devoted years of your life to find happiness if you just don’t think he’s the one for you? Answering the question about where you see this going is the best thing you can do for yourself and your boyfriend.

If you’ve asked yourself the hard questions and you
do
come to the conclusion that while you love your guy and he’s great, you just think you can find someone better, don’t be devastated. This wasn’t a waste of time. Every relationship you have will help you grow into a better partner and person. You learn something about yourself from every breakup, no matter when it comes, and if you’re honest with yourself at the end of it, you’ll never make the mistake of dating someone with the qualities you didn’t like in him again.

Signs You’re Ready to Commit to Him for as Long as You Both Shall Not Be Super Annoying vs. Signs You Should Break Up

Relationships are outlets for self-reflection, not shares in a rapidly plummeting IPO that you suddenly had to sell and suffered a complete loss from. Life is a journey and not a rush to cash out your stocks immediately. Don’t settle for someone because, according to Instagram, everyone and their mother is getting engaged. Don’t settle because you think you’ll die alone. Don’t settle. Because you’re a betch and you deserve the best.

If you constantly mentally ask yourself if you’re settling then you’re most probably settling. So go out there and find the perfect bro for you who also thinks you’re the perfect betch for him. It’s not supposed to be easy. If it were easy it wouldn’t be called a “life partner.” It’d be called an “I-enjoy-chilling-with-while-watching-Netflix-and-smoking-weed-for-the-next-few-months partner.” If it’s hard, then when you finally find the bro you want to put up with for the rest of your life, you’ll know you did your due diligence. Advances in medicine will probably enable you to live to be well over one hundred. Do you want to spend 75 percent of that time with a guy you think is just okay because you got bored and anxious about settling down at twenty-five?

The beginning of any relationship is a sexual marathon. You guys can’t take your hands off each other. You’re drunk in love and you want to surfboard him constantly. You have sex like it’s a Piperlime going-out-of-business sale. What girl and her boyfriend don’t remember the legendary “day of eight times”? You can expect the magic to last for about four months.

After that, the two of you are still into each other but you’ve really explored each other’s bodies more intensely than Donald reviewed Barack’s birth certificate. You know what each other likes, what each other doesn’t like, what will make you scream, what will make you freak the fuck out because
No! You did not just try to put your finger in there!
You start having sex less and less because you feel secure that when you wake up that person will be there, peeing with the bathroom door open. The mystery fades, and so does the curiosity.

Suddenly, your boyfriend’s idea of foreplay is sticking his hand down your pants without taking his eyes off
The Walking Dead
. But if he thinks he’s going to get a betch to put out without any real effort he is seriously mistaken. Your sex life should be more exciting than a Bon Iver concert attended without serious drugs.

In general, it’s less about the
amount
of sex you have, and more about the
way
that it happens. It’s not a huge issue if you only have sex twice a week, but if he’s putting no effort into making it somewhat romantic, it’s time for your betchier, more manipulative side to come out. You’re not a fucking
blow-up doll. He needs to work for it, even if that means faking the enjoyment of foreplay.

There is no time when it’s more important to keep the mystery alive than at the point in the relationship when the sex has started to fade. No guy wants surpriseless boning for the rest of his life. It may be tempting to let yourself go or to treat sex like it’s as routine as brushing your teeth or yelling at your mom, but control yourself. Resist the urge to wear your granny panties and an oversized Yeezus concert tee to bed. Don’t stop waxing or shaving your legs. Definitely never fart in front of him.

Sometimes men, simple as they are, get in a routine and forget that you’re a fucking princess and should be wooed into bed, and sometimes they get distracted because the Internet is for porn. If he’s looking at porn when you’re not around, that’s fine. It’s natural that, if he needs to get off, he should be able to do that if you’re away. However, if you live together, and he’s jerking off alone—and the same goes for you, if you’re sneaking off to masturbate—something is wrong. That’s what the other person is there for—to save each other the effort.

You need to work on your sex life as you would any other aspect of your life. It requires time, commitment, money, and a little bit of manipulation. For instance, reminding him of the steamy sex life you had when you were blowing him in the back of a taxi or getting banged against the public bathroom wall.

As with all things in life, people want what’s elusive and what they feel they cannot have. If he’s feeling complacent, like he can have you at any moment he wants without so much as going down on you, it’s time to subtly teach him a lesson. Don’t actively withhold sex, just be more conscious of how you act in front of him. Stop changing in front of him matter-of-factly and instead just allow him to see your body in its sexiest, best-groomed state. He should be undressing you slowly each night, not watching you squeeze, hop, and pant yourself into your skinny jeans every morning. If he asks why you’re suddenly not casually getting naked in front of him anymore, kindly inform him that if he wants to see you naked he has to seduce you.

The mysterious part of a relationship is what attracted you in the first place. Mix things up, try some toys and/or role-playing. You can still be classy—you don’t have to be a black leather, whips and chains dominatrix all the time—but some subtle teasing can keep the mystery alive. If he tries to just jam his hand in your underwear while simultaneously unzipping his own pants, let him know that you’re not having sex with him until he kisses you for three minutes. This isn’t demanding, it’s bossy and it’s sexy and that’s hot.

The best analogy is: Think about sex the way you think about all the clothes in your closet. Imagine your favorite tops from two years ago. It’s not as though you don’t like them anymore, it’s just that you and everyone else has seen them a million times, so you convince yourself you need new clothes.

Just like with sex, you don’t NEED to constantly be trying new things, but you WANT to because you fucking refuse to be photographed in those same Rag & Bone jeans one more time. You want new clothes, so you stick those jeans in the back of your closet. But when you find them in two years you’re going to be like,
Oh yay now I remember. These jeans look so fucking hot on me.
Bottom line: You are the jeans and your boyfriend is the betch who gets tired of wearing them unless she mixes shit up. As if we needed another excuse to never stop shopping.

Stop. Don’t send them. Regardless of how much he badgers or begs. If you absolutely must send them, never, we repeat NEVER, put your face in it. Sure revenge porn has become illegal, but that doesn’t mean he won’t send your naked pic to all of his friends and his friends’ friends. Don’t be naive, just because your relationship is all rainbows and rosé now doesn’t mean it will definitely end that way. And if it ends very badly, what do you think he’s going to do with all those pics of your hot bod? If you think he’s going to throw them away then either you’re stupid, you broke up because he’s a homosexual, or he’s like, a good person.

As we’ve said, money is a huge fucking issue in relationships. It can make or break things and can often determine the power dynamic within a relationship. Oftentimes betches are confused about money. Like, you’re a feminist, so you know you should make equal amounts of money for the same work that men do, but also you don’t want to be paying for dinner and shit.

It’s biological that women want to be taken care of. Sure you’re a
grown woman I do whatever I want,
but there is a certain femininity that comes with letting a guy assemble your dresser or buy you a gorgeous bracelet, and be like,
Baby, it’s you, you’re the one I love, you’re the one I need
. In the days of cavemen, the men would bring home the slain tigers
or mammoths or whatever while the women skinned them to make the fur coats. You want a guy with muscles for the same reason you want a guy with money; an innate need for protection for you and your kids. Men are biologically bigger than women and so should feel an intrinsic need to protect their girlfriends physically and financially. It’s human nature, and you should let him take care of it. Teamwork is important but like, it’s always better when men do the heavy lifting.

When a man is trying to get your attention (a.k.a. sleep with you) while you are dating, you should let him impress you. The easiest way for him to do that is to buy you shit. That means he should be paying for all of dinners 1 to 3. Again, you should always offer, no one likes someone who automatically assumes she’s being comped, just like the way you wouldn’t like a guy who automatically assumes he’s getting laid on any occasion.

Once you’re in a real relationship things become more symbiotic. Unfortunately this means you have to pay for more shit, but fortunately you should never be splitting everything down the middle. “But paying for half of everything is what’s fair!” your bra-burning nicegirl cousin will argue. Who gives a shit about fair? We live in an unjust world filled with atrocities and institutional sexism and cold-pressed juice costs $11. Deal with it.

To give you a rule, every eight dates you go on as a couple you should insist on paying for one full meal. Of the remaining seven, the guy should pay for four full dinners and
you two should split the last three. Who said you were never going to need to know how to use math after your SATs? Let’s break this down into simpler terms. You should be paying something for at least half of your excursions and there are some times, albeit rare, where you should be paying for the whole thing. Paying for a nice dinner for your boyfriend is a power move and shows that if you wanted to, you could pay for a lot of things but you don’t, because you deserve to be treated like Kate Middleton. When do you think was the last time that betch pulled out her credit card? On her eighth date with William, that’s when.