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By Claire Speredelozzi
*Names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.
There’s no such thing as a “fuckgirl” like there is a “fuckboy.” They’re called “hoes” and when I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, *Max, of more than three years, I decided to get back into my “fuckgirl/hoe” ways. I am a bisexual woman and after many tears and a little convincing, my friend, *Bonnie, swayed me to use the dating app. The day after the painful breakup I hopped straight on lesbian/queer tinder. I immediately got matches and “superlikes,” but there was a falling down in my heart over my ex. I was talking to around five girls while still texting Max at the same time. This did not settle well with me.
Max and I decided we were going to talk everything out at his house, even though I was weary as talking often resulted in us having sex and getting back together, as it had three times before. He was confident it was not going to happen this time, though, and because I still love him, I trusted him. The catch is that the night before I was talking very deeply with *Haden, a non-binary person. We ended up getting burritos, went back to their dorm, and cuddled for most of the night while watching Disney movies. I kissed them at the end.
When Max picked me up from my house, we hardly talked during the thirty minute ride. Between small elevator conversation, we listened and quietly sang along to Lil Peep’s music playing in the background of his silver sports car. Upon entering the house, I immediately ran up the stairs in order to not see his mother. Max’s family adores me, which is why this break-up was harder than I envisioned. I will no longer see his cousins or go to family barbeques or even see his dog. They were planning a big family outing to the Nutcracker on Christmas Eve—I’ve been the past two years. I won’t be at his family Christmas party this year.
When he joined me upstairs, I gave him his stuff back, as well as his Christmas present I bought on Black Friday. I got my bralettes, thighhighs and nightgown, and we sat down on the mattress padding on the floor. The amount of nights spent in his arms there couldn’t be counted. We talked for a good hour, never quite yelling, never quite whispering, but never quite the right volume. We both cried. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was in another person’s bed the night before, crying in their arms about Max.
He ended up kissing me suddenly, and both of us quietly exclaimed, “Oh!” I had spent the day before repeating to myself that we weren’t going to have sex, but right after that moment we both gave in. Covered in hickeys in the aftermath, we both agreed forbidden sex is the best sex. Because I am an open person and he has an effect on me that I can never not tell him anything, I told him I was on queer/lesbian tinder, but I didn’t have memorable memories from it yet. He said he didn’t either; I saw on his little Android that he had downloaded Tinder and Bumble. I decided to hop on Bumble too.
I am officially a hoe. Max knows I’m not really into men besides him, but he knows he can’t stop me in what I want to do. Freedom has never been more bittersweet. I still love the man—and I feel as though I always will—but I did not like the control he exerted over me during the course of our relationship. This breakup wasn’t quite a surprise—there had been an increasing amount of cracks and tears in the fabric of us leading up to the breaking point on Dec.13, 2019, a Friday the thirteenth of all days.
This isn’t quite a millennial “problem,” but with the interface of dating apps and social media, it turns it very quickly into a generational divide. Back before the Internet and texting was readily available, people couldn’t dissect what the other person meant by emojis or what it meant when someone typed in all lowercase compared to not. This a new phenomena. The first text was sent on Dec. 2, 1992, yet it wasn’t totally on the market until 2007 when more text messages were sent in a month than phone calls (1). Then whether you post a lot or not comes into play—Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook—people look very hard into what other people are doing. Some people value pictures of each other on your page while others couldn’t care less. Max and I were very low-key about posting about each other. I don’t have any pictures of us past July on my Snapchat. It hardly ever happened on both of our sides. In the beginning, he always commented on my Instagram photos but stopped later on. It was a little disheartening, but only because now it's so ingrained that everything needs to be “said” instead of realized by actions. The first time we went on a break, I was so upset I archived almost all of our photos together—he still has mine up.
The whole “in a relationship with ___” on Facebook is crazy to me. Who cares? I have a friend in high school who has a joint Instagram account with his partner and I find that very silly. They are also logged into each other’s Instagrams and I just don’t get it. I think it breeds jealousy. If you don’t trust your partner and if they don’t trust you, why are you with each other? The millennial landscape for a relationship is very different than the past.
I can’t go into what led to the breakup, it’s too fresh, especially since we decided to be “friends with benefits.” My biggest fear, though, is that I’ll get myself into another messy relationship. My friend, who is now married, met her husband on Tinder, but I met Max in church, and entered my own turbulent relationship. Then Bonnie, the friend who convinced me to get on Tinder, has her own horror stories. We have our locations on for each other and I always check on her when she’s out with a man. I’ve called her a few times begging her to come back with the excuse of, “Bonnie, I think I’m pregnant. You need to come here right now.” She promptly calls an Uber to my house and she fills me in on the juice. Now, with my newly downloaded dating apps, and fresh out of a break up, it’s my turn to do so.
1. Erickson, Christine. “A Brief History of Text Messaging.” Mashable. Mashable. 21 Sept. 2012. <mashable.com/2012/09/21/text-messaging-history/>