queer advice #75: "damaged" by the lack of straightforwardness
"how do you tell someone when you're not feeling it, and cut things off?"
Hello, it’s Sunday! You’re reading TV Dinner, a newsletter about queer relationships, books, and TV by Maddy Court. queer advice is a reoccurring feature where I answer questions from anonymous gay people. Last week’s column was all about ghosting from the perspective of the ghostee. Today’s column is from someone who wrote in after reading that column and realizing that they may, in fact, be a ghostER.
Thank you so much for reading and being here. Send me a question any time of the day or night. Also, has anyone seen this dog on the internet? He keeps showing up every time I open Pinterest and Instagram and I am honestly a little bewitched—once I start looking at him, I cannot stop. What is he trying to tell me? What does it mean? xo, Maddy
I have a question for you from sort of the opposite side of your last letter. Out here in the beautiful terrible wilds of queer dating, how do you tell someone when you're not feeling it, and cut things off?
I recently returned to my hometown for the holidays, and a girl I dated almost four years ago reached out. She asked to meet and get "closure" because she "hasn't moved on" since we dated that summer. It had been a very casual relationship: we met on Hinge, had several sleepovers, and neither of us ever really vocalized any sort of direction/feelings, or labeled the vibe in any way. We both knew I was moving abroad at the end of the summer. And we just utterly failed if we tried to talk about our feelings. The more we hung out, the more I realized my "ambivalence" and "confusion" was just that I wasn't really into her. But I used my impending move as my excuse for things coming to an end. I avoided actually telling her that I didn't like her enough to continue the connection, and insinuated that I was sorry to lose each other and that we should be friends. Now, nearly four years later, she told me that she feels "damaged" by the lack of straightforwardness on both of our parts. She had never told me her truth (that she really liked me and wanted to try a relationship, even long distance) and I never told her my truth (that I didn't have feelings for her and didn't really want to keep spending time together). When I said we could be friends, I never followed up on it, and she was left confused and "heartbroken."
Finally hashing this out with her was the first time anyone has ever held me accountable for my indirectness, for my avoidance of telling people explicitly that I'm not into them. And now I'm realizing that this isn't the first or last time that I've kind of passively led someone on, leaving the window partially open, lacking the courage/tact/respect to just firmly shut it.
I struggled a lot when I was younger with feeling undesired, with being the friend that never attracted any romantic attention. I got really used to seeing myself as the yearner, the one with the unrequited feelings. Now that I'm the liberated, confident, best queer version of myself, I'm realizing that I actually have no idea what to do when someone is into me and I don't like them back. I feel confused, worried about hurting them, doubting myself and my feelings, unsure of how to communicate honestly. Yet now I can see that just beating around the bush and evading the whole truth could have harmful impacts in the long run.
So... how do you do it? When you start to realize you might not actually be into someone, what do you say?! How do you let someone down kindly and respectfully? Especially if you've been casually dating for several weeks or a few months, and there is no reason to stop except that you just don't like them that much?! As a non-monogamous queer person, there is so much fluidity between platonic/intimate/romantic connections within my communities and social worlds, that I find it exponentially more treacherous to navigate separating/ending/renouncing. What are the right ways to de-escalate something back to just-friendship or, more likely, into not-being-connected-at-all?
bad at breaking things off, 26
I really sympathize with your date from four years ago. Her feelings for you are obviously very intense and painful, but communication is a double-ended dildo (my girlfriend/editor HATED this metaphor and told me to get rid of it, but I think it’s illustrative so it STAYS)—in order for you to truly share a feeling with someone else, the other person has to willingly make space for you and actually listen and vice versa. It sounds like you were mincing your words and trying everything possible to avoid conflict, while she was hearing what she wanted to hear and took your half-hearted “we can be friends” escape strategy at face value. To be fair to you, it also sounds like she put you in charge of her feelings by expecting you to provide “closure“ when really, you were communicating that you weren’t interested in every possible way except telling her outright. All this to say, wouldn’t it have been so much easier to just break up with her four years ago?