How To Be the Perfect Girl

Be polite and courteous, but speak your mind in the right, gentle tone. Challenge and critique but not about the important things and certainly not the emotional ones.  Don’t push too hard too soon or too fast, don’t ask for anything, wait for him to ask you instead.

Let him make the moves.

Be aloof and airy, relaxed and racy — but don’t be reserved and don’t be overly confident. Be ballsy in a way that’s not threatening, don’t make him feel inferior to a woman. Show how you feel through touch and temptation but don’t give it up before three dates. And once you do (because you should, or he’ll think you’re a prude), don’t talk about it, don’t act like anything changed at all — even if for you, it all did. Know how to go down and go up, up and down, be great at what you do, in and out of bed.

But make sure he’s on top — when he wants to be.

Remember the little things and let him shine in the limelight — while you casually, subtly support him from afar. In fact be casual about how you feel, how you have sex, how the relationship progresses. But you can’t call it a relationship.

Even if you spend every night together, even if he tells you how much he cares, even if you go on multiple dates each week, even if you know it, he knows it and everyone you know, knows it– don’ t you dare say it.

Until he says it first.

So in the meantime, avoid being too available. Wait thirty minutes between texts, never be the last to respond —  and don’t text on Friday and Saturday night. You’re busy, remember? You’re actually incredibly busy and satisfied with everything. Your career, your friends, your life, your looks, you’re settled and you’re secure. You don’t need a man. You don’t want one, they’re just kinda nice to have, when you are feeling a little colder than usual. He doesn’t need to know you like the way his scent lingers on your sheets. Or that you like hearing his voice.

No, you’re not even that interested.  Really, you’re not. You could take it or leave it — your feelings aren’t involved yet. They won’t be unless his are.

That’s why when he sends emails that are cryptic and confusing — you can’t analyze them obsessively with your friends. Don’t be obsessive period, actually or try to read in between the periods of silence and the random moments that make you think he really likes you. Don’t over think it and don’t hold him accountable for his actions or his words, or the fact that his schedule is growing more conflicted, and time together only works around what works for him. Be understanding and go with the odd, eerie way he pursues you. That’s what his job is, he’s the man.

And you, you’re the perfect girl.

So be sweet. Leave little notes (that don’t make him feel pressured, but are sexy) that he will stumble across later and think of you. Be caring and kind, generous with your intentions without revealing them at all. Show him just how much he means but make sure those memories you’re making aren’t meaningful. They aren’t stages to the start of something that could be great or steps to the next big thing — they’re just…things.

Silly little things.

Have lots of those. Quirks and perks, interesting things that will intrigue and fascinate him. Things that will make him try to decode every last thing you say. Things that will make you seem like a gorgeous enigma that he wants to figure out. You should be like a scattered puzzle, with mysterious pieces sprawled out on the floor, mysteriously waiting to be put together.

Broken, jagged pieces- you don’t have those though.

You have no checked baggage and no fees that carry over — regardless of the new change you decide to fly with. You have no past, no former lover who was better in bed, no one who has ever made you believe a million impossible things, only to tear you apart in the demise. Those fragile parts, that only get tender when you sense the scent of something and it scares every last single piece of you into tiny little parts you didn’t know you could still feel.

Those insecurities, that vulnerability. Keep it to yourself. Don’t let that freak flag fly or he will be terrified to be anything more than your friend.

With benefits.

He’ll be happy to keep you sexually satisfied. To text you late at night when the darkness turns into loneliness and reminds him of the empty apartment he will come home to. When he wants to spoon you into oblivion  until his shape and your shape combine to form this amazing, passionate mold — even if it reeks of Scotch. A mold that’s complete and comforting, one that turns both of you on without engaging the most important organ of all.

Your heart.

That dicey thing. It beats and it leaps — way far away into imaginary dreams you drew in notebooks your mom has in the attic miles and miles away. It keeps believing and giving and hoping and praying for something better. Something existent. But if you tell him you want such dangerous things, you’ll watch him run. You can’t share those deepest desires and those timeless reminders of things you once thought were part of the course of your life, and now you’d just feel lucky to ever find.

But you. You perfect girl.

You who doesn’t intimidate or overstep. You who keeps those emotions to herself, off of your sleeve and out of his reach. You who can laugh on cue at things you doesn’t find funny, act interested in things that are frankly, plainly boring. You who doesn’t ask for anything but secretly hopes for it all. You who knows exactly how to play a game that you’re gotten good at — even if you wish you didn’t have to be a player in it. You have the right words, the right moves and you go with the right, painfully, slow pace that makes you neither exclusive or nonexclusive.  You are left wondering what you are, where you’re heading, if you’re on the same page or if you’re in completely different libraries. But you can’t ask him what he feels, so instead you give yourself away — to let him lead the way. No matter how long it takes.

Until one day — you realize that you’re not that perfect girl…because she doesn’t exist.

Because the perfect girl does want more. She’s confident enough to say she values commitment. She is honest with herself, with her heart, with the man she’s dating. She wants love. She wants the real, unquestionable, easy, uncomplicated kind of love. The kind of love that forgives her for being herself. Who likes that she says what she thinks and for demanding what she wants. That lets her walk or run at her own pace, no matter how swift or slow — and doesn’t make her feel bad about it. That realizes that a perfect girl who pretends she doesn’t feel things she does, or doesn’t want things she deserves, or doesn’t desire someone who desires her just as she is —  is a game of pretend that she’s grown out of.

Because she wants the kind of man who can stand up and stand by her side — and loves that she’s imperfect. Because he sees those so-called imperfections as human. As valuable and beautiful. As things that make him feel free to be the perfectly, imperfect guy that he is, too.