This subject has come up lately, mostly from people attacking me for my views on it in my livestreams, and one of my friends approached me yesterday, which I’ll get into. Let me try it from an angle that doesn’t come from my perceptive. Where it’s not me hitting on some guy.
I got a message from Natalie the other day asking if she could text this guy I saw a few times. It was nothing special between us. He just got me off a few times and that was the deal. Proper filthy, mind-melting orgasms that left me shaking and stupid for hours afterwards. The kind that make your legs go and your brain shut up. I told her about it and she must have filed it away. Now she was asking permission like I had some kind of ownership over him. I just laughed at her. Proper laughed. The whole thing blew my mind.
I sat there staring at my phone thinking, what the actual fuck is this? The guy wasn’t mine. We weren’t dating. We weren’t even pretending to be. He turned up, did what he was good at, and left me in a state that made me question my entire personality for the rest of the day. That was it. So why was she asking me if she could message him? Like I was the gatekeeper to his pleasure. Like my casual arrangement somehow gave me veto power over who else got to experience it. I told her to do whatever she wanted. Obviously. But the fact she even asked stuck with me.
It made me realise how often we do this stupid dance. We treat people like they’re still attached to someone else even when they’re not. We ask invisible permission from exes, from mutual friends, from old group dynamics that stopped mattering the second the original relationship ended. We hold ourselves back from something we actually want because we’re worried about how it might look to someone who isn’t even involved any more. And the wild part is, most of the time that someone doesn’t give a shit. They’ve moved on. They’re living their life. But we’re still tiptoeing around like we’re going to break some sacred rule that only exists in our own heads.
The thing about Natalie asking was that it showed how deep this conditioning runs. She wanted what I’d described. She wanted to feel that same kind of undone. And instead of just texting him, she paused and checked with me first. Like my casual orgasms had created some kind of territory she needed clearance to enter. It was funny and sad at the same time. Funny because the whole situation was ridiculous. Sad because I recognised the instinct. I’ve done versions of it myself. We all have. We convince ourselves that wanting someone connected to our past is somehow disrespectful or messy or off-limits, when really we’re just protecting ourselves from the discomfort of being direct.
What’s mad is how much easier it is to stay in that polite holding pattern than to actually do something about it. You tell yourself it would be awkward. That people might talk. That it might upset the delicate balance of whatever social circle you’re in. But half the time those fears are just stories we repeat until they feel true. The ex has already moved on. The group has already adjusted. The only person still carrying the weight is the one who wants the guy but won’t let herself have him because she’s still performing loyalty to a situation that doesn’t need guarding any more.
I kept thinking about how often women do this to themselves. We get offered something good, something that makes us feel alive and wanted and properly fucked in the way we actually need, and instead of taking it we pause to consider everyone else’s feelings first. Even when those feelings belong to people who aren’t sleeping with us any more. Even when those people have their own lives and their own new arrangements. We stay nice. We stay helpful. We stay the bigger person on the outside while inside we’re quietly resenting the fact that we’re blocking our own happiness over rules that were never really ours to follow.
The truth is, most of the time the only thing standing between you and the person you want is the version of yourself that’s still trying to be polite about something that expired a long time ago. The guy isn’t property. The ex doesn’t get a say in who he talks to now. And the mutual friends probably aren’t losing sleep over whether you two finally sort yourselves out. They’ve got their own chaos to manage. But we keep acting like there’s this invisible contract that says we have to ask for clearance before we go after what we actually want.
I’ve watched it happen enough to see the pattern. The woman who keeps finding reasons not to message the guy she fancies because he used to be connected to someone in her group. The one who convinces herself the chemistry isn’t strong enough to risk the awkward group chat. Then months later she watches him with someone else and realises she talked herself out of something that could have been good. Not because he wasn’t interested. Because she was too busy performing respect for a dynamic that had already moved on without her.
It’s not about being messy for the sake of it. It’s about recognising when the thing holding you back isn’t actually a real boundary. It’s leftover etiquette from a relationship that isn’t yours. And sometimes the kindest thing you can do for everyone involved, including the ex, is to stop letting their old situation dictate what you’re allowed to want now. You can be a decent person and still go after the guy who makes you feel like your body is finally being spoken to in a language it understands. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
The window doesn’t stay open forever. People get taken off the market. Lives move on. And the version of you that keeps waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect sign usually ends up watching someone else step in while you’re still trying to be polite about something that was never your responsibility to manage in the first place. So if there’s a guy you’ve been circling, one who feels slightly off-limits because of old ties, ask yourself whose rules you’re actually following. Because nine times out of ten, the only person still enforcing them is you. And you’re allowed to stop.
I hope she does message him. He’s hard work, real hard work. He doesn’t see our attention like others do. He’s suspicious and having the roles reversed on us can be fun. But I think she’ll have a great time.
And Natalie, I want hear all about it 😉