Great Egg-spectations

What happens when you ask – "what are we?"

“So… are you still seeing other people?”

When I rehearsed this line 50,000 times in my head last night (post multiple rounds of the most objectively mind-blowing sex), it was supposed to land casually. Cool. Light. Breezy. But instead it drops out of my mouth like something spoiled – a question that’s been fermenting in my throat for days, smacking him clean in the face. I absently stir my half-finished iced latte with a straw, as if that might somehow provide ample distraction from the airless silence that follows. I think he might choke on his sourdough toast.

“Am I seeing other people?” he repeats slowly, as though trying the words on for size. “No. But… if someone asked me to go for a drink?” he says, “I mean, yeah. I would.”

Across the street, a single warning bell sounds as the train barriers slam shut with an obnoxious mechanical clatter. Traffic forms an obedient queue on both sides of the road and pedestrians are caught off guard, trapped waiting in silence. The world stalls with the kind of merciless timing that feels cruel. We’re tucked into one of those impossibly small metal café tables just wide enough for two elbows and a sugar pot, wedged between the brick wall and a chalkboard sign advertising house-baked banana bread. Normally I enjoy having a front-row seat to the everyday theatre of the street. But today, it feels like we have an audience. Like every car and stranger within earshot has gone quiet, just long enough to hear me humiliate myself.

Three weeks ago, I flew to Austria for 24 hours to go on a date with the man sitting across from me — let’s call him James. I romanticised the hell out of it. Wrote about it. [Read here.] And now here we are. Back in London. Back to real life. Back to a table for two and an answer that says everything and nothing at the same time.

It’s the kind of answer no one wants to hear.
When you finally ask that question — what you want is clarity. Reassurance. At the very least, a definitive yes or no.

But this? This is worse.

It’s the grey area. The half-open door.
It’s saying: I’m not seeing anyone else right now, but I’m also not seeing you enough to stop looking.
It’s a polite rejection.

And just when I think the conversation has flatlined, he smiles.

“I’m not taking everyone for eggs though. You’re the only one I take for eggs.”

Oh. Well. Thank you.

Is this a hierarchy? A pyramid scheme of affection where I’m supposed to feel flattered that with me, he at least sticks around for breakfast.

Sure, I might sleep with other people… but you’re the special one. You’re the one who gets eggs.

You haven’t found what you’re looking for here, have you? You’re just keeping me around for the company. For the comfort. For the illusion of closeness without the commitment of it.

I don’t say anything. We walk home. And have sex that means nothing.

---

Two months pass and the scene is familiar in a way that feels promising. I know the layout of his kitchen drawers. The way the third step creaks on the way down. I know the quiet hum of the dishwasher when it kicks in, and the soft, rhythmic beep of the security system which breaks the silence of the house at night. He kisses me on the forehead. Pulls me closer in his sleep. And all of this means… well – nothing.

“So… are you still seeing other people?”

The lack of outright rejection has me questioning my own sanity. I start to suspect that he’s giving me just enough to keep me tethered. Enough affection, enough familiarity, enough softness, but never enough certainty to feel secure. And now I’m paralysed by my own awareness. I don’t want to become the “what are we?” girl. I’ve already asked once. Asking again feels humiliating. Desperate. Like I’m begging for something he should want to give freely.

I’m trapped.

I’m trapped because I imagine us being happy. Partly because things do feel like they’re progressing — slowly, subtly. We have deeper conversations. He opens up in fragments. I learn more about him and the way he moves through the world. Sometimes I’ll say something that catches him off guard. A perspective on a topic or an experience of something he didn’t realise we shared. I revel in the flicker of recognition that lights up in his eyes. It’s a reaction I start intentionally trying to bring out in him. More than I care to admit.

He indirectly paints a picture which seems to say that he is someone who takes time. Someone who doesn’t trust easily. Reading between the lines, I decide that it’s patience he’s asking me to practice. In any case, the uncertainty doesn’t push me away. It only makes me want him more.

Three months, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t that long. But what scares me isn’t the time that’s already passed, but how much longer I might stay — convincing myself that the finish line is closer this time. Another three months? Six? A year? Only for the answer to still be a no.

I’m self aware enough to know that it’s not fair to project my timeline onto someone else. Not everyone moves at the same pace. I’m not perpetuating the narrative that men are trash or women are delusional. But what we are all operating inside of, is the same broken framework. A dating culture that rewards avoidance, withholding and vague half-connections disguised as freedom. Ultimately, it’s not always about personal failure. We’re living in a pandemic of half-interest. Sort of seeing each other. Sort of talking. Sort of seeing where things go. And yet, we’re all still craving the same type of intimacy that we’re afraid to commit to.

Of course, I’m complicit too. I spread around this virus of unmet expectations by communicating my needs, and then betraying them the moment I feel unwanted. Because some intimacy feels better than none. Because walking away feels like losing. Because hope is addictive.

And because it’s easier than admitting the truth – that maybe, he’s just not that into you.

---

If your attachment was secure, you’d have already left.

A secure person doesn’t stay in confusion this long. Not because they don’t care, but because they know what they’re worth. They don’t beg for basic communication. They don’t tolerate emotional breadcrumbing or story-watching-but-not-texting energy. They clock it. And they leave.

– chatGPT (my therapist).

---

You’re dickmatized.

Eliza has been popping over for tea in between meetings. We live in the same building — which is either dangerous or divine, depending on how much gossip we’ve been storing up. She delivers the verdict like she’s diagnosing a victim of deadly deficiency.

Honestly? She’s right.

Because as much as I like to intellectualise it, a significant part of why I can’t let James go is that I’m wildly, unreasonably attracted to him. Not just in the way he looks (though, god, that doesn’t help), but in the way my body responds to him. Like it knows something I don’t.

Even when I sleep next to him, I sleep like a child. Deep, undisturbed, safe. I always wait for his breathing to change before I let go. As if his contentment is the permission I need to rest. And that is not like me. I never do this. I hate sharing a bed. I get hot. I need space. The idea of being cuddled all night usually makes me want to vomit and then punch someone in the face. I’m usually the avoidant one.

So why is it different with him?

Maybe because I know he feels something too. I see it in the margins of his life. He’s always busy, always juggling, always in motion, as if stillness is a disease. Chaos suits him. It’s part of what I’m attracted to. And part of why I believe that on paper, we make sense. My organised, measured, quiet obsession softens his noise.

Because when we’re together, he settles. The frantic energy disappears. He sleeps deeply. He sleeps in. Misses alarms. Multiple alarms.

Can you fake that kind of surrender?

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’m too comfortable. A disruption to whatever divine mission he thinks he’s marching on. Maybe getting closer to me means losing momentum, losing progress, losing the version of himself he’s worked so hard to become.

Or maybe I’m just addicted to the version of myself that wants him. Because fixation is an escape. Because it gives me something to solve. Because it delays the work of turning inward.

Textbook attachment theory. A trauma reenactment. It’s cortisol and dopamine and nervous system chaos. My brain doesn’t know how to release reward chemicals in response to stability. It fires more in the presence of unpredictability — of hope interrupted, then temporarily rewarded. A loop of anxiety and relief that mimics passion.

✨DADDY ISSUES ✨

It’s all too familiar. Inconsistent male presence, emotional hot-and-cold, conditional love. I’m mentally hardwired to seek out what my nervous system recognises. The brain doesn’t crave what is safe. It craves what is familiar. The opportunity to earn affection. To finally be good enough. To re-stage the scene, just to prove that it can end differently.

Yeah – I wish I never studied psychology.

Because I have no excuse as to why I know all of this, but still choose to do nothing about it. Maybe I don’t want to change yet. Maybe I like the chaos. Maybe the chaos gives me something to write about. Maybe it keeps me feeling alive.

It’s fucked up.
I’m aware.

But what about him?

If we’re going to talk about attachment theory — if I’m going to pick apart my emotional logic — it’s only fair to hold up a mirror.

So why me? Why this?

Is it just about sex? Maybe. But it doesn’t track. If that’s all he wanted, there are far easier ways to get it. He knows I’d stay, even if he told me it wasn’t going anywhere. We could’ve made it transactional. No emotional weather system. No eggs for breakfast.

But it’s not just the sex. It’s the talking. The lying in bed. The forehead kisses. The borrowed intimacy that feels so much like the real thing, I sometimes forget that it isn’t.

Maybe this is his pattern too. Maybe he needs to be chased. Maybe closeness feels threatening and withholding is how he keeps control.

Maybe he was taught that real connection ends in abandonment, so he avoids it altogether. Maybe he breadcrumbs me because he’s scared of being fully seen. Because if he lets someone in, really in, and they leave? It confirms the thing he fears most — that if someone knew the whole truth, they’d walk away.

So instead, he leaves first. Quietly. Through omission.

Maybe we are just two people repeating the patterns of our parents. Playing out the same old script, hoping for a different ending.

Maybe.
But what do I know?

---

Three days
for a one word reply.
That is the natural order of things now.

He only sees me at night –
An afterthought.

I know he’s busy.
But he never suggests a workday.
Or a workout.
Or anything that feels like momentum.
Then again, neither do I.

I fear I am just a body he rests in.
His solace.
A portable charger.
I pour my energy gladly.
But once he’s charged? My use expires.

When we’re together, he feels like home.
But when we’re apart, it’s like I imagined the whole thing.

— situationship

---

Maybe it’s petty that I block him and call things off over text.

The boiling point doesn’t arrive all at once. It builds like condensation in a room with no airflow. I’ve been trying to be the good girl. Quiet. Patient. Giving him time. Space.

But his distance is growing.

Simple things — like planning, communicating, knowing when I’ll see him next — feels like requesting a kidney.

It sends me into a frenzy. An anxious spiral of overthinking. He pulls away and I lean in. He takes space and I fill it.

Until I tip.

He re-shares a quote on his story — the kind of vague, emotional nonsense that feels indirectly aimed at me. I confront him. He insists it’s not about me at all. And the fact that I think it is? That’s the real problem.

I’m immature.

---

My flat feels like a psychiatric ward. White walls, white desk, white sheets. Sterile. Quiet. That rented city aesthetic that screams: “This could be anyone’s life.” Or worse: “Don’t get too comfortable.” Every modern flat comes like this now — white walls, white doors, white kitchen. A blank IKEA showroom. Clinical. Like depression is a design scheme.

I’m sitting in my off-white spinning armchair with one foot tucked underneath me and a blanket draped across my lap. It’s not cold but the weight is comforting. Like I need something to hold me down. My desk faces the balcony which looms over the train station just below. Every few minutes, the sharp screech of trains pulling in gives way to the metallic exhale of doors opening – a grounding reminder that there is still life outside. That the world is moving. That beyond the glass, people are catching trains. Going places. Living.

I haven’t spoken to anyone in days. Which, of course, makes it worse.
So I journal more.
Which of course, makes it worse.

Sometimes I just sit here and stare out at the oak trees beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I make a few videos about my current emotional turmoil. They go viral. The comments pour in. The likes. The shares.
I guess I keep making them because they make me feel less alone.

I surrender to the fact that I’m at least getting some good lore out of all of this. After all, the most honest writing almost always starts with a wound.

But still, the loneliness is stifling. I have to keep reminding myself that he was taking up too much mental real estate. That the brain fog was so dense I was practically wandering around my own life like a lost tourist.

Reading back through my writing over the past weeks helps to remind me that I’m not imagining it all. Because when you miss the high, selective amnesia sets in – you remember the rush but forget the comedown.

They say it takes ten days to detox from heroin. Ten days of sweating, shaking, headaches, hallucinations. Ten days of your body begging for something it knows is destroying you.

Blocking him feels like withdrawal. Like going cold turkey.

It’s not about punishing him.
It’s about containing me.

Because I don’t trust myself not to reach out. Not to check his stories.
It’s a way of holding myself back from breaking my own rules.

It’s also a kind of penance.
For letting it go this far. For knowing better, and still wanting it anyway.

---

I’m not a big drinker.
Which is how I know this date is doomed.

Fifteen minutes in, and I’ve already decided I’m going to polish off a bottle of red wine just to get through it. Not a glass. A bottle. Preferably something broody, — a Tempranillo, or whatever the house version is of “take the edge off.”

We matched on Hinge (shocker). His photos have the uncanny resemblance of someone who photographs better than they exist in real life. But he is tall. I’ll give him that.

He’s talking. About politics. Or podcasts. Or both.

“So what do you think of the whole Charlie Kirk thing?”
He launches into a monologue about “the culture war” and says things like “you’re very well spoken”, as if that’s a compliment.

We’re sitting in the corner of a basement bar in Soho on a Saturday night — the kind of place that markets itself as edgy but feels more like someone strung fairy lights inside a bin bag and called it ambience. The ceilings are low, the tables are sticky, and the acoustics are something between Wetherspoons bathroom and Boiler Room set recorded underwater. It’s aggressively loud — everyone shouting over what I assume is a tech house remix of a tech house remix. It’s relentless. That recycled, BPM-heavy, build-drop-loop nonsense that sounds like it’s been engineered specifically to trigger anxiety in people over 26.

For context, my Spotify Wrapped age is 77. I listen to Etta James, Nina Simone, and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack on loop. I like songs that make me feel something. That give me goosebumps. That break me a little and then stitch me back together.

This just gives me a headache. I can’t even hear him properly. Which is probably a blessing.

So why are you single?

The problem these days, he tells me, is that “the calibre of women out there is just... not it.”

I quickly realise: this is my personal hell. Too many eyes. Too many bodies. The kind of overstimulation that makes you hyperaware of your own pulse. And unfortunately for him, I’m the type of girl whose face has subtitles in every language. I’m draining my third glass of wine like it’s an antidote to poison. He’s surely clocked by now that I’m really not into him. At all.

Mentally I’m checked out. Drifting into that quiet internal place where I nod along, half-listening, half-daydreaming.

(Obviously), he’s still talking.
And I’m thinking about James.

Indulgently pulling vinyls from the mental archives — replaying everything good about the night we first met. The ridiculous spark (which was more of a jolt), a rare connection that makes your skin buzz.

Or maybe that’s just the wine?

At some point, we stumble up the narrow staircase and onto the street.

For some reason, it makes me think about Plato’s cave. Maybe it’s the lighting. The sudden exposure. The way we’ve just crawled out from a basement of flickering shadows and illusion, into something that resembles reality.

Or maybe I’m just drunk and grasping for metaphors.

I give the bouncer a small knowing nod on the way out — the same one I flirted with on the way in, mostly because he had more chat than my actual date. It’s heaving outside. Bodies spilling onto the pavement, pub doors yawning open, cigarette smoke curling around faces like punctuation.

Thankfully, the late night air is enough of a sobering reminder to shake the thought of James from my bloodstream. A sharp, cold slap in the face.

You’re on a date!! Give this man a chance for God’s sake.

Mentally, I rehearse something neutral to say. A comment about the crowd. The music. The fact that the moon looks way too clean tonight.

But then he takes my hand, leads me across the road —
and grabs my ass.

“Shall we carry this on back at your place?” he grins.

Uhhhhh, were we on the same date?

Why do I feel like I’ve shown all the enthusiasm of a soggy biscuit and have somehow, still ended up here?

By the time I pull away and slide into the backseat of my Uber (ALONE), the inevitability of my next decision is already making its way down my spine.

I unblock James.
And break no contact.

---

My tongue is carpeted to the roof of my mouth. For a second I lie still, trying to locate myself. Sunlight is rudely filtering in through my blinds, my head feels like regret and of course, I need to pee. Desperately.

The thing about living in a mezzanine apartment is that it looks chic on Rightmove, but is wildly impractical for anyone hungover who struggles to descend a full flight of stairs just to reach the toilet. I miss the penultimate step and flop through the bathroom door like a newborn deer. The relief mid-flow is instantly gratifying. I relax and immediately start recounting the details of last night.

Memories trickle in like the first drops of rain before a full blown storm. The wine. The street. The Uber.

I didn’t. Did I?

I scramble to find my phone buried in the oversized blazer I threw across the floor last night like a teenage boy mid-tantrum. The screen is face down, like it’s ashamed of me.

A message from James:

We should talk in person.

---

I know some of you are reading this — or listening, or hate-scrolling — and screaming at me.

Through the page, through the timeline, through the unfolding disaster of this story.
Stay strong. Have more self-respect. Don’t be that girl again.

But I never claimed to be perfect.

This is what hopeless romantics do. We mistake absence for depth, withholding for complexity, and we think that if something hurts enough, it must be important. We romanticise Keats as aspirational, forgetting that he died young and miserable and mostly unanswered. We jump without nets because we like the feeling of free-fall.

In essence, we’ve all seen this story before, and I die in the third act.

When I ask when he wants to meet, he takes two business days to respond — like we’re negotiating a B2B contract instead of trying to resolve an emotionally feral entanglement.

At this point, I should walk away. Delete. Block. Vanish. Again.
But I don’t. Because I want ‘closure’. Whatever that means.

This will be the third conversation like this. And it’s not like there’s even anything left to fix. We’re not dating.
We’re nothing.

Eventually he comes back –
Sunday morning. Coffee.

Fine, I say. But it has to finish before my lunch plans at three.

---

Sunday, 04:04am: Finished late. Can we do 2pm instead?

Ok. Please aim for 13:30 so I’m not late.

Sunday, 13:08: Got caught up. Can we do later?

When I receive his text, I’m already at our agreed spot — waiting for him. It takes me an hour to travel across to the other side of London. He knows this.

Once again, I know I should decline, move on, give up.

But reluctantly, I agree.

Ok fine. I’ll let you know when I finish lunch.

17:37: Still with [friend]. Time’s gotten away from us. Can we do next week instead?

Next week.

Next week.

Next week.

On the list of this man’s priorities, I fall somewhere below sniffing dog shit.

The whole saga is sobering. Like someone has dropped me into a bucket of ice water. I don’t know if I feel sick from reading the message, or from running around and waiting for him all day, or from the violent reminder that I’ve done this to myself — again.

Even the universe is getting bored of testing how many times it has to remind me.

This time I don’t block him. Because silence feels like power.

---

After two months of silence, I’m proud.

Focus is returning, like taste after a head cold. Colour is seeping back into the world. I can feel myself again — sharp around the edges, creatively restless, a little dangerous.

I’ve been celibate. Two months. No dating apps, no flirty texts, no casual validation, no porn, no toys, nothing. I’ve taken a vow of emotional nunhood. I’m trying. Really fucking trying. I even cracked open Attached again. Read a few pages. Put it back down. Baby steps.

Not a single day has gone by where I haven’t thought about him. I know that’s sad, but it’s the truth. Not in that obsessively, nauseating, checking-his-stories kind of way. But wondering what he’s up to. If I cross his mind in traffic.

I pour energy into my friendships like it’s religion. Girl dates. Long dinners. Loud laughter. Attempting to “de-centre men”.
Which is hilarious, really, because I love men. But apparently that is what we’re supposed to do now.

Eliza and I end up at an open mic night in Mayfair — something between a jazz bar and a speakeasy. Low ceilings. Warm lighting. Tables crowded close enough to touch knees with a stranger. It’s intimate in the way that makes you feel like you’re part of something — like a dinner party. We’re seated at a small rectangular table at the back of the room with two other girls we met 15 minutes ago, perched directly under a pair of small yellow spotlights (which make us feel oddly important).

Suddenly, the room pulses with tiny syncopated snaps, little ripples of affirmation. Apparently, in spoken word when a line hits, you don’t clap — you click. The poet on stage is magnetic. He drops lines which land like bricks: about gentrification, about healing, about loneliness and the politics of desire. Every punchline is met with a chorus of mmm-hmms. It feels like church, (or at least, what I imagine church feels like). For the first time in months, I’m belly laughing, exchanging glances with Eliza like, This. This is what we needed.

And then James walks in.

I wish I could say I feel nothing. That I barely notice his presence.
But my eyes are instantly drawn to him. Like a flower turning toward the sun. He spots his friends in the corner opposite us, and seems to deliberately avoid looking for too long in my direction.

Still, I swear he sneaks glances at me between punchlines. Expression unreadable. But the room is packed. Dark. Shoulder to shoulder. Eliza insists he sees me. Definitely.
But I don’t know. I changed my hair. Maybe he doesn’t recognise me. Maybe he forgot his contacts.
Or maybe I’m delusional.

I used to picture it. Walking into a room like this with him. Not just at a bar or a low-lit house gathering with his inner circle. But really out — in the open. Where people might watch and take note. Would he rest his hand at the small of my back as we move through the crowd? Would his eyes linger from across the room? A quiet sort of intimacy that says, she’s mine, without speaking a word.

The kind of subtle gestures that make onlookers think, God, I hope I get that one day.

Not because it’s performative. But because it’s unmistakable. Because it’s felt.

But not tonight. Not like this.
Because tonight, I don’t even know if he’ll acknowledge me.

The show ends on a high and we’re waiting to say goodbye to the host. James is only a few metres away, mid-conversation, making himself busy.

I linger by the door. And wait.

Eliza is fidgeting. I know she thinks I’m embarrassing myself. I pretend not to notice. Pretend I’m still waiting for an opening with the host. But really — I’m waiting for him. To look up. To see me. To do anything.

But he doesn’t.

So we leave.

And I don’t check to see if he watches us go.

---

The tube is too loud. Eliza and I are crammed into the corner of a packed carriage. I’m whisper-yelling, ranting about how I’ve never felt so invisible in my whole life.

Which we both know is a lie.

The same man who once looked at me like I was rare now doesn’t notice me in an open room.

It is so impossibly hard to imagine that everything between us was a fantasy that I concocted in my head.

So I run through all of the possibilities again.

Maybe he truly didn’t see me. His eye sight really isn’t that great. And I do look kind of different with boho braids now. Maybe I mistakenly thought we made eye contact — he was across the other side of the room after all.

EMILY. HE DEFINITELY 100% SAW YOU.

Yeah. You’re right.

Isn’t she?