Borderline Successful: Starter Soulmate

Sun sign: Cancer

Moon sign: Virgo

Sky: STILL Fire and Brimstone!

Meds: Taken. That's right, diva, I'm about to be what? Coherent.

Mini playlist for the spiral

Learn From Me

Recently, I asked someone I’d been seeing since the end of May if we could be more intentional and exclusive. For over six weeks, we’d been dating, not in the serious, official sense, but in the very real sense of spending time one-on-one, out in public, and being at least a little romantic.

I wasn’t asking for anything permanent. I just wanted us to stop pretending nothing had shifted, especially when their choices and actions weren’t as casual as “casual” is supposed to be. From my vantage point, they acted like we were dating. To me, dating can still be casual, but we use words a little differently.

So I asked to be exclusive, and that freaked them out.

This is the same person from “Letting People Love Me,” by the way, the one with the steady hands, the soft moments, and the early tenderness I was trying to let myself trust.

I’m not angry with them, genuinely. That’s part of why this feels confusing instead of clean. I’m trying to learn from the moment, the entanglement, and the places where both of us might have been telling the truth from different angles.

I can admit I misread things. I can also admit some things were very easy to misread.

To them, dating means something more serious, which is fine. Language is fake, and everyone is allowed to bring their own dictionary to the group project.

Still, that’s how we got to them making it clear they didn’t ever see us as dating. They didn’t exactly give a reason either, which might be worse. It landed like common knowledge: a marathon is 26.2 miles, February is short, and I would never date you.

They didn’t say I was an intense, vivid, bloody red flag. They didn’t say I wasn’t girlfriend material. They didn’t say I was better kept at arm’s length.

Obviously.

What they did say was that they’d rather not date, by their definition, but that they were excited about what they could learn from me.

I was trying my best to act like that isn’t a harsh thing to tell the person you want to teach you how to eat pussy.

But what the fuck do I know?

Practice

A meaner explanation on their part might have been easier to understand. Maybe I need someone to say no in sharper terms, just to stop the wheels turning. To me, everything they said sounded like “you’re a psycho,” muffled by a silencer of incompatibility, and I’m trying not to put words in their mouth.

“I want to learn from you,” or something close to that, is a strange thing to say to someone who’s asking to be wanted. It sounds like admiration, until you remember admiration can still leave you alone. It sounds complimentary, if you don’t sit with it too long.

It made me feel like practice.

One day they’ll do the thing with their tongue that I taught them to make her scream, and I’ll be halfway around the world in my little apartment, making tea for one, and forgetting my laundry in the washer too long.

Maybe I’m the person they knew once and got a little braver around, the person they puffed their chest up for, which is the opposite of nothing. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

In the end, I’m someone to remember, then shudder briefly when you pass a Jamaican restaurant.

I’ve been around the block several times, and they could absolutely pick up a few things, and la-di-da, isn’t that flattering? Maybe I’m channeling Jennifer Coolidge in American Pie. Maybe I’m just some cougar in the lesbian bar, being too sensitive.

Keep It Casual

I know FWBs are supposed to be friends, but we probably shouldn’t go on cute dates, meet each other’s friends, sit close like a couple at social gatherings, and kiss sweetly over glasses of wine. I can’t be held entirely at fault for misreading that. In my defense, a lot of other people were misreading it, too.

Did I get smitten over six weeks of consistent flirting, asking about each other’s days, and checking in? Did I get punch-drunk over them pausing at the bar on the way out to say, “Give me a real kiss,” then planting one on me so long and hard people basically clapped when they were done?

Yeah. My mistake. Totally still FWBs.

I think the issue is partly that FWBs, even if they’re friends, aren’t supposed to mimic the intimacy of a capital “R” relationship. I got confused and overwhelmed because my other FWBs don’t hold my leg under the table or kiss my temple in front of my friends. They don’t have me lean back on them on the couch in front of their friends, either. Some FWBs don’t even remember my birthday most of the time.

It’s April 23, for the record. Mark your calendars.

What Are We?

The night we had the “what are we” conversation, I made a cheeseboard, and they brought two bottles of wine. I was direct. I didn’t mince words. I was trying to be clear because that’s what people say they want, until clarity actually shows up.

They kept pouring wine. I don’t think it was malicious. I think it was politeness, nerves, or bad judgment. But I’m a lightweight and about two-thirds of their size, and I ended up finishing a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc by myself while trying to explain my feelings to someone who seemed to need me to be clearer.

Later, my friend said that part didn’t sit right with him. I understood why he felt protective, but I still don’t think it’s fair to call it malicious. I don’t know what I believe about the intent. I do know the effect, though: I was trying to stay grounded, and I could feel my words getting away from me. I could feel myself getting uncertain, fumbling, easier to talk around, easier to misread, easier to contradict.

That is its own kind of blur.

Had I been stone sober, would I have made more sense? Would I have been more or less direct? Would I have finished the brie after they left?

Not gonna lie, I still don’t have a solid idea of what the difference is between dating and what we were doing. I don’t know why the word “dating” made them recoil like I was offering my severed finger on a chain. Like, sorry I like you, I guess.

Nightmare Girl

After we talked, they left, and we didn’t kiss goodnight. I didn’t immediately become wise and detached. I was wounded, I deflected with humor, and (as I’m prone to do) I became publicly embarrassing.

I started posting through it, which isn’t the same as processing, but it’s close enough to count as modern self-reflection. I vented, “Nightmare Girl, it’s like a Dream Girl, but I cry on my IG story sometimes,” because I had done that. I’d taken shroom tea and cried on IG to Taylor Swift, like the ideal long-term romantic partner that I am.

A few weeks before this conversation, and even more after it, I started noticing that they never messaged me first. If I went a week without talking to them, they probably wouldn’t notice. Should I test that, just for my own satisfaction? Should I care?

There are only so many FWBs I can juggle at once, and I should’ve noticed that before I picked the one who never reaches for me.

It’s probably because I’m…

Well. I don’t need to say it again.

Maybe I was too much. Maybe I should only look for people who romanticize vortexes and black holes. That might be the key: now that I’m attracted to people who know better than to linger with me too long, maybe I’m setting myself up for failure.

But, admittedly, once someone establishes they’d never date me, I do get pretty unfiltered. If I’m not a romantic prospect, if I’m not a future, if I’m not someone to be careful with, then what am I auditioning for? And yeah, we’re friends-before-benefits, but I don’t know. I wouldn’t tell a friend I’d never date them. I’d at least lead with appreciating the friendship. Like, come on. Am I wrong for that?

Maybe that’s the real confusion here. I wasn’t asking to be cast in someone’s future. I was asking what the intentions were for the present. I bet that would have come out better before a whole bottle of wine, but we live, and we learn.

Drown

After that bittersweet conversation about keeping things casual, lessons and all, I started thinking about mermaids. Don’t ask me why, but old stories about distraught girls who lose themselves for love start to make sense when rejection turns the ground to mush under me. Yes, I have always been this dramatic.

Ariel doesn’t end up happy in the original. She doesn’t regain her voice or marry the prince. In fact, he uses and discards her, then marries another woman. Ariel, who suffers every day after her deal with the sea witch, whose every step on land is like stepping on jagged glass, dies of heartbreak and drowns herself in the sea. As a last act of mercy, she’s turned to sea foam and carried by the waves to her rest.

Maybe the correlation only makes sense if you’re profoundly unwell, but I feel it sometimes: a fish out of water trying so hard to become the shape of a bride they were never going to be. Ariel and I get it. And I have to hand it to her, if my situationship married someone immediately after seeing me bleed to near death, I’d finish the job too, tossing myself into the sea and staying there. Explain that to the police, you wicked bitch.

As I processed the subtle, curious half-rejection, blinking in the dim light of my bisexual apartment, I got overwhelmed by the confusion. What I had clocked as not casual, not just friends, and very much shaped like courtship had turned slippery in my hands. So I sent the group chat a ten-minute voice note of me crying.

But how are you? What are you up to, diva?

That was where my head went. Not “I’m sad because my crush doesn’t like me.” More like: I did it again, I feel silly again, I misread and mistook and misunderstood again, and I’m sorry you have to hear me say it again, but I was way too much again.

Starter Soulmate

Maybe I should accept that I’m a starter soulmate: an introductory connection, the situationship that defines a brief era but not a long-term commitment, the last infatuation before you meet the one, the last fuck before you finally get to make love.

A starter soulmate isn’t the person who gets the ending. It’s the person who makes you ready for your happy ending with another person entirely.

Useful. Memorable. Transformative. A little embarrassing to admit you were drawn in by. Not permanent. If I’m the summer fling, you’ll find your autumn romance soon enough.

I’m the little archway before the next leg of the journey. I hope the road is free of obstacles. I wish you everything.

I hate that I mean it. I love that I mean it, too.

I’ll be happy for you. I’m not even being sarcastic. I think it’s nice when people love each other, find each other, and are soft, sweet, and kind together. I want it so badly for myself. You could be in my bed telling me you love her, and I’d clap and smile and say, go to her. That’s wonderful. Call her now.

I want the people who can’t love me to find someone they can, because that’s what life is about: watching other people kiss on the bridge at sunset and thinking, wow, love is real.

Seeing a proposal down by the water, hearing her squeal and giggle and laugh, and thinking, wow, what a perfect start to something.

Seeing a couple walk up the sidewalk hand in hand, one tipsy and one not, joking about dessert and more at home, and thinking, wow, how nice it is to find someone who lights your fire and doesn’t snuff it out.

Isn’t it Platonic? Don’t ya think?

They: want to be friends? Capital “F”: no complications, no sex, no flirting, no kissing.

I don’t know what that even means, based on how I understand their version of “seeing each other.” If everyone who saw us together assumed we were capital “D” dating, am I reading into it, or are they just used to being in a relationship and actually aren’t that good at casual?

I’m good at casual. I just hung out with an FWB this week, and we didn’t even have sex. I played on my iPad at his house while they took a Zoom call for work, and then we went out with mutual friends for hot dogs, because that’s what you do with friends. You act friendly.

That FWB doesn’t take me on dates or confuse anyone around us about our status. I don’t get confused because they don’t confuse me. We say “bye, love you,” and no one dies, because I do love them. That’s my bro. That’s my homie. That’s someone I can cry to when I’m confused about people I like, which happens once a quarter. They can also fuck my brains out and give me exactly what I ask for, in the moment, when we’re feeling that vibe.

FWBs are friends first, but I think this person made it murky because everything started to look less like friendship with each day. And yeah, maybe I’m an intense tornado of a person, but what does it mean when their arm is around your shoulders and all your friends are paying attention to this new person hanging off you? What does it mean when they hold your waist as they introduce you to a coworker friend?

I couldn’t have misread so badly that I’m completely wrong. The words were in my language, and I read them out loud, and they still pumped the brakes and said timeout.

I wish they had been my bro. I wish they hadn’t sprinkled in romance practice. I wish casual had stayed casual enough that I could believe them when they called it that.

A lot of people don’t even know me and my other FWBs fuck. It’s that chill.

Everyone in this zip code assumed me and this person were capital “L” lovers.

But if everyone else saw it too, maybe I’m not crazy.

Maybe I was just standing too close to something that looked like affection from a distance.

Atila Martin

Blog: atilacore.pckt.blog

Bluesky: atilacore.bsky.social

Contact: [email protected]