As a college freshman, determined to find my husband the same way my older sister had — in a dormitory laundry facility — I became an over-zealous, premature seeker of “The One.” Barely eighteen and a few weeks into my first year of college, I thought I had found Him in my first crush. We didn’t meet in the laundry room, but we did meet in a dorm room over orange lines of crushed up Adderall and Natty Light-filled Solo cups, which was good enough for me. It was love at first sight, and we were going to be together forever, just like my big sister and her husband. Until, that is, he dumped me two years later. Apparently, I just wasn’t “The One” for him.
When I read Tobin Levy’s personal essay about being dumped with this exact same line, it spoke to me, as I’m sure it will for many of you, too:
“The number of people I'd slept with could be calculated on the hand of someone who'd lost a few digits to an auger. I wanted to date, experience innocuous trysts and, as much as the phrase now makes me want to walk off a roof, the "sex and the city" lifestyle. For the next five years, I did.”
Although I may not have been pushing thirty when I got served, it was just as painful when my roommate handed me a copy of He's Just Not That Into You in hopes of convincing me to stop sleeping with the idiot….I wish I’d just read Tobin’s essay, instead.
— Alexandra Godfrey