Issue 21: Alient
Dear Wellington, it's not me, it's you.
It might’ve been my emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend who ended up secretly dating my best friend. Maybe it was the guy who bit my vagina. Perhaps, it was the guy in 121 who pulled my undies down under my skirt in-front of everyone :) To anyone who cares, I’m no longer dating. I have officially signed off. Fuck you Wellington.
To those who are still interested in dating in this intergalactic realm and don’t want to end up like auntie Frank, listen up.
This city has made me emotionally jaded. Whenever a friend tells me about a person they like I'll say something like “yeah, good luck mate,” cigarette dangling out of my mouth, hands down my warehouse track-pants. I no longer clean my room before a night out. I delete all my dating apps once a week and re-download them to be sure that Tinder isn’t miraculously disgusting anymore.
Being disappointed from the age of 13 is finally starting to take its toll.
From my experience traversing this dangerous romantic territory, I have adopted a couple of guiding principles to avoid heartbreak, let-downs, and everything in between.
You cannot catch feelings first.
Lemme tell you how. Don’t text them first more than 50% of the time. Operate under the presumption that they hate you. A guy texted me last week an hour after our date—my friend said that’s “murderer vibes”. This city really does produce monsters.
When you start to catch feelings, ask yourself: am I prepared to ruin my life for this emotionally repressed fuckwit whose defining character trait is their aversion to safe-sex (or frequenting Swimsuit cafe)? Or do I play it cool, play it safe? Over the course of a few months, I found myself developing a little crush on this Bumble sweetie. We spent some great evenings together when one night he asked me to go on a day trip with him the next day to Red Rocks. When he was 24 hours late to pick me up I realised maybe it was over and that it was time to grow up—to finally become jaded.
Expect to bump into them; everywhere.
This one took me a while to get equipped with. My first few months in Wellington I had too many run-ins with past lovers. I bumped into one at Princess Bay whilst wearing a heinous white playboy bikini that was 300 sizes too small for me. It was cool until I realised I got my period and that he'd definitely seen it. Not quite as bad as that time a single tit fell out when I bent over in front of my ex in broad daylight.
Befriend your ex-lovers’ exes
It’s one thing running into your ex—a whole other running into your exes’ exes. I have made friends with about 6 of my ex’s exes. All are lovely girls who’ve heard the exact same dialogue as me. “I love you so much, you’re the best thing that's ever happened to me… please never leave me.” We are a sisterhood of tunnel buddies who realised there might have been a lot of crossover between us.
One thing Wellington has taught me is to not take anything too seriously, even if you’re as jaded as I am. Obviously, the blouse-wearing, fine art student with three black nails never wanted anything more than a muse for his final exhibition. Knowing that now has only made me more equipped for Wellington’s cruel dating culture. We are operating in a different galaxy where monogamy is not the default setting. I guess, the question is how can we be smart and realistic in this city without being completely closed off? Don’t play the victim, keep growing and even if you don’t think it, you are that bitch.