I have had my fair share of female drama over the last year and a half.  Most recently with a neighbor who felt like I was trying to take men from her.  Needless to say she hates me.  I don’t care that she hates me and that makes her hate me more.   I didn’t date for a very long time.  When I began to change things about myself and started losing weight, men started paying attention to me or at least I noticed they were.

I was infatuated with a guy I dated off and on so the male attention was nice but I never really saw it as anything more than ego boost.  I barely acknowledged it.   I liked flirting from across the room and having casual conversations with men I knew were attracted to me but I was really not interested in anything more than that.

Many of my female acquaintances seemed to harbor some silent anger toward me.  I was the butt of their jokes.  I was called a hoe, self-absorbed and many of the women I knew would remind me that not long before no guy seemed to know I existed.  I was dating someone and never engaged any of the men who bought me drinks or paid me a compliment with anything more than casual conversation.  I still managed to be labeled a whore.

When things fell apart with the guy I had been dating and I felt like I was ready to try and date, my mind was in a strange place.  I was still angry and hurt about the way I was treated by the guy I had been dating and I knew I needed to work on ensuring that didn’t happen again.  I needed to have better control over my emotions.  I needed to learn to guard myself against premature emotional connections.  I did it in an unconventional way.

I realized that I didn’t really have to try to get men’s attention.  I know I was a little slow coming to this realization but I was on a learning curve.  I could go out with friends and barely acknowledge a guy I found attractive.  We would make eye contact, he would come to where my friends and I were sitting and I would barely engage him.  He would talk to my friends; I would comment occasionally, accept a drink from someone else or even leave the table to talk to another person.  But at the end of the night, nine times out of ten, I was the girl whose number he asked for.

So for several months, I dated men casually.  I seldom felt attached.   I was just having fun and learning to better protect my heart.  I was learning to separate attraction from genuine connection, to alter the irrational idea that if a man slept with you he must really like you.  As I became comfortable with my understanding of what I felt and how I could control how much emotion I put into it, I began to look for something more substantial again.

Again the women in my life seemed annoyed.  I had been promiscuous and seldom serious about dating.  It was easy not to take me seriously.  The teasing and judgment was the same. No one was really supportive.  I had again reached the point where I wanted something more.  I wanted something longer term and committed.  I began dating with something more serious in mind.

To my friends, my behavior hadn’t seemed to of changed.  So when I settled on one man, they all seemed surprised.  I liked him and I really had no desire to see anyone else, so I didn’t.  After a few months things fell apart with him and he was simply lumped in with all the guys I had blown through (no pun intended) over the past few months.  The only difference was that I was genuinely hurt.  No one really seemed to care.  When I finally started dating someone else it became  a running joke amongst my friends.  After a string of failed attempts at potential long term partners I was teased about my inability to commit and about how often I changed partners.  To them, my behavior still seemed very promiscuous.

I paid them no mind and continued to date in the hope that I would find someone I really connected with.  I really wanted a relationship and I had to date to find a partner.  As some of my friends began realizing I was serious.  That I was really looking for something more significant they seemed confused.  Many encouraged me to casually date and others admitted they had been envious of adventures.  These women, who had been so mean and judgmental, wanted my life?  My friends in relationships wanted my life and I wanted what they had.  Many tried to convince me that what they had wasn’t so hot.  I tried to explain to them that dating just to date wasn’t always as fun as it seemed.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.  I really want a relationship and I took the hard road trying to find one and mean while all my “coupled” friends were living vicariously through my adventures.   I really do want just one.  I guess I am still entertainment and the women who envy me are content to see me as a slut.

Yes, attractive men like me. Yes, I have had a lot of partners.  And yes, I do date a lot but I am also really lonely.  Women hate me because as many have admitted, they wish they were doing what I was.  Shit!  I just want a boyfriend.