When I Want It, But I Know It’ll Hurt After
I almost had sex on Friday.
He was hot — like the kind of hot that makes you feel lucky just to be in the conversation. Tall, confident, flirty. An OnlyFans creator with a steady stream of women calling him daddy on FetLife. And somehow, I had his attention. For a while, that was enough to override everything else. I thought, maybe this time I can handle it. Maybe I won’t fall apart after.
But I’ve been here before. With men like this.
Guys who give you just enough eye contact to feel chosen. Who praise your body in a way that feels addictive until you realize they say the same thing to ten other people — and mean it just as little. Guys who make you feel wanted in the moment, then evaporate. Or worse, linger just enough to leave you craving more.
So yeah — I wanted him. I wanted to be touched, devoured, validated. To feel the high of being seen as desirable by someone who could have anyone. But I also knew the crash was coming.
Because I’ve been trading short-term closeness for long-term insecurity like it’s worth it. Like I’m built to withstand the emotional fallout if it means I get to feel something for a night. But I’m not sure I am anymore. I’m tired of trying to feel chosen and ending up feeling less than.
Seeing all his FetLife interactions — the comments, the scenes, the women fawning over him — it flipped something in me. I felt myself shrink. I started rehearsing how I’d be more, do more, make myself memorable. I started planning how to be enough for a man who never asked me to be anything at all. That’s when I knew: I was already bleeding out before anything even happened.
So I canceled.
Not because I didn’t want him. But because I finally want myself more. Because I’m not in the mood to abandon myself for attention I won’t even recognize the next morning. Because I deserve sex that doesn’t echo the exact same wounds I’ve spent years trying to stitch up.
I’ll probably still ache a little. I’ll probably still wonder if I missed something good. But I know this ache. It passes. And more importantly — it doesn’t destroy me.