Unethical Non-Monogamy

I’m not a bad person.

I don’t take pleasure in lying to or manipulating people, it makes me quite sad actually. But I feel this need to add some stakes to my life, or none of it has any meaning.

I need to add risk. I need to trust people— give some girl the power to absolutely ruin me if she wants to.

Sadly, that’s the only kind of thing that makes me feel alive.

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This isn’t about me— it’s just a hypothetical. I work in marketing; this is just for research, it’s a focus group, it’s pure fiction. 

I’m just… writing a story about a guy who can’t stop cheating.

Writing a story about a guy who lives with his beautiful girlfriend, sleeps by her side every night, relationship hard-launched on Instagram and families met and social lives perfectly intertwined— and still, he cannot stop thinking about, writing about, dreaming about, staring at, flirting with, soliciting, seducing, fucking other girls. 

Worst Boyfriend Ever. His name is James Guilty, which people find ironic because in person he comes off as such a sweet, harmless guy— there’s no way he could treat someone so viciously.

He’s just “not the type” to do something like that. No way he could lie like that, so frequently, so naturally, about everything, to everyone, all the time. No, not my friend James. He’s one of the good guys. 

But he’s not. There’s something seriously wrong with him. You can see it in his face if you look hard enough, but he’ll gaslight you into thinking it’s you. Into thinking you’re stupid for questioning him. He’ll make you feel worse about yourself until you need him. He’ll make you weak, dependent, sick. You’ll love him for it. Everyone close to you will tell you he’s bad news and eventually even you’ll accept it, but by then, you won’t know where else to go. 

He’s the worst kind of substance— that insidious chemical you try on a whim when you’re too young to understand that what comes up must come down and so however wonderful your first day or week or year together may have been, that is exactly how crushing it will be when he finally reveals his true nature and lets you down, like your gut always told you he would. 

When you finally spot that hickey on his neck or catch him in a particularly egregious lie, when he says he’s in town but that stupid Snapchat map shows him 2 hours away. When you dig through his phone in the middle of the night and find what you’ve always been suspecting is true— no, actually, it’s so much worse. Not only is he cheating constantly, he’s loving it. He’s indulging in it. He’s even paying for it. 

What hurts the most is that he’s always talking about how precious his time is, how precious everyone’s time is. So reluctantly you give him space, but then he uses that space to entertain, sext, meet, and fuck other girls. Younger girls. Sluts off obscure dating apps. Girls at clubs. Prostitutes. You know he never tips.

You can’t help but mentally replay every suspicious interaction— every time you were sitting together at a diner and the curvy waitress walked by and his gaze lingered just a bit too long. The way he’d look down at that girl at the bookstore. That smile he no longer bothered to use on you. The cologne, the condoms, the sudden motivation to get back in the gym. The fact that he stopped sharing his writing. Everything you worried is real. 

Everything he ever told you is called into question. Every little musing about how the world works or what is or is not okay, every compliment, every i love you, it’s all for nothing.

Suddenly anything anyone ever told you is nothing also. Your map is fatally flawed. You can’t start over— you’ve come so far. He’s wasted your best years. He’s used you and he’s no better off for it himself. You hate yourself for being so easy, gullible, weak. For trusting so intently in such a disgusting spineless professional liar. You will never love again. 

Worst Boyfriend Ever. An anonymous autobiography. He can only write of himself, or some girl he wants to fuck. The only two people he could ever care for.