Bombing Sydney

Our first date was on a Sunday afternoon at a cocktail bar. I was late, and he was hotter than I thought he’d be. “You’re so handsome,” I said, flustered and hugging him. He laughed and moved the table so I wouldn’t be staring into the sun.

I’m an open person, and he was the same: We talked about our families, our past relationships, and what we wanted next. Two drinks in, I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. “Get your shit together,” I said. I had never connected so quickly and easily with anyone, and doing so now wasn’t the plan. After our third drink, he told me I was beautiful and leaned across the table to kiss me. When he found out my birthday had been the day before, he asked if he could take me to dinner the next week to celebrate. And at the end of the date, he opened the car door, drove me home, and kissed me again in front of my apartment.

In the span of four days, he took me to an expensive Italian restaurant, invited me to his place to watch a movie and eat the expensive leftovers, and brought donuts to my apartment the night before I had an early flight so I’d have something to eat for breakfast. He drove me everywhere and insisted on paying for most things. He told me he thought I was his soulmate. “I barely even believe in that concept,” I said, smiling so big. “But I really like you.”

I was gone for a week and we talked the whole time. When I came back, we met up with his friends to watch baseball, and a text from an unknown number showed up on my phone. I ignored it, knowing exactly what it was: A guy from Hinge I’d given my number to the day before. But he saw.

At the next bar, he asked me if I was ready for a boyfriend. “Not until next year,” I said. I’d been clear that I’d recently gotten out of a serious relationship and knew I wasn’t ready to be in another one. He brought up the text and told me I was being sketchy. I disagreed. “We haven’t defined this,” I told him. “And I’d rather not do so in front of your friends.”

He steered me into a corner and told me it wasn’t fair for him to put in so much effort if I wasn’t going to be exclusive. He said he had a waiting list of women who wanted to be with him, and he could easily date one of them instead. “But don’t you like me more than them?” I asked. He shrugged. “I’m really hot and cold,” he said. I started tearing up and he said he should take me home.

He drove me back, and we talked about the women who wanted to be with him. I was fiercely jealous—rare for me—but knew in my gut that ending it was the right decision. We were on different timelines and neither of us was going to be happy with the other’s pace.

But I’ve been through some stuff that’s made it hard to trust myself, and I started doubting my decision as soon as he left. I blamed my past for making me rigid, for not allowing myself to date a man who everyone wanted but who was putting so much effort into showing ME he cared. After he’d been gone for less than ten minutes, I called and said I changed my mind. He was elated and we were together—after less than three weeks.

During this time, I often felt like I’d found the perfect guy. He showered me with compliments and sent flowers multiple times. We were very different but had similar backgrounds, and we bonded over life experiences like working our way through college. When he asked me why I was in therapy, I told him everything, bolstered by the interest that seemed to come from a place of compassion. For the first time in my romantic life, I felt truly understood. 

But just as often, there were major red flags.

He pouted about not seeing me every day and asked to spend the holidays with my family. He talked about getting me pregnant and joked it would mean I was stuck with him. He told me not to dance with other guys because he didn’t want anyone to touch me. He sent a stream of angry, paragraph-long messages when I forgot to text him before I went to bed.

He began to use what he’d learned about my therapy to point out how dangerous the world was for me, asking me multiple times if I carried pepper spray and encouraging me to send him live updates when I took public transit. “You know what can happen,” he said, gripping my hand as we walked home from a bar. “But I’ll protect you.”

I was the queen of mixed signals. I spent hundreds of dollars on a celebratory dinner when he got a new job but told him not to call me his girlfriend. I put a hyperbolic letter in his suitcase before he left for a work trip and then dodged the topic of him coming to Texas for Christmas, secretly booking my own flights. I got drunk, told him I was falling for him, retracted it the next morning, and then carried on like nothing happened.

<<<<<>>>>>

In therapy, I started talking about the present, which was weird because my goal is to deal with the past. “Have you seen the movie Uncut Gems?” I asked my therapist. “It’s the one with Adam Sandler.”

“No,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Well anyways, everything in my life feels extremely out of control.” I ranted about my job and how anxious my cat was and she interrupted to ask how dating was going.

“Oh that’s great,” I said quickly, avoiding eye contact. “I’m very, very happy.”

<<<<<>>>>>

About six weeks in, he hosted a party for his friends, most of whom were young, stunning girls who told me how lucky I was to be with him. We went to a bar after and he brought up Instagram.

“She got mad that I made my profile public,” he told his friends, nodding at me and laughing. “Isn’t she crazy?”

“I just thought it was funny timing,” I said lightly. A tiny blonde asked why. I quickly explained that he’d gone public minutes after I first shared one of his posts in my story, giving all my friends access to his content—and a few had messaged me to ask about him. It was fine, but things were still new with us and I hadn’t expected it.

“Most girls would appreciate being with me,” he said, cutting me off. “All of my exes would’ve been so happy if I’d done something like that for them.” He barely spoke to me for the rest of the evening.

We went home and collapsed on the couch, both knowing A Talk was coming. I took a deep breath and told him that I was more anxious than I’d ever been in my life. I said that I liked him so much, but something felt off with us. “I’m working hard to trust myself,” I choked out, trying not to cry. “And I know it’s not normal to have this tension all the time.”

He told me that because I was in therapy, I couldn’t trust my feelings. “That’s not how it works,” I said.

He tried again. “You’re 32,” he told me. “Do you really think you have time to meet someone else?”

“You’re 40,” I snapped, no longer tearful. “Worry about yourself.” I stood up and started gathering my things to leave, wrapping the wine glasses I’d loaned him in dish towels and collecting my toothbrush from his bathroom sink.

He told me I’d be crazy to end things with someone who treated me so well. “You’ve never been in a mature relationship,” he said calmly, watching me from the couch. “Your exes treated you like garbage.”

My heart twisted. “That’s not true,” I said, stopping to look at him.

“Like when you gave up everything for your ex’s job?” he asked, looking concerned. “Do you want to risk going through that again?”

I gave up and went to bed.

The next morning, he apologized. We’d drank too much and said things we hadn’t meant, he said as we laid in front of the TV, hungover. He promised to give me more space.

I watched 90 Day Fiancé and didn’t say much. A French woman described how her American fiancé was pressuring her to meet him in Mexico during the start of the pandemic so they could try to cross the border to the United States. She cried and talked about how uncomfortable she was, but ultimately she decided to give into the relationship and what it demanded from her. She called this “surrendering.”

A part of me wanted to surrender too. It had been a long three years of breaking up and moving out and getting together and moving in and moving out again. There were parts of this relationship that I wanted, and I knew exactly what it demanded from me. It would be so easy to give in.

But our conversation the night before had woven weeks of red flags into a muleta—and I was an angry freaking bull. I hate when people act like alcohol is a lightning bolt that zaps meaningless words into their mouths when it’s actually the best way to learn who someone really is. And this man really thought he could manipulate me, Sydney Lewis, into feeling so old and desperate that I’d be willing to deal with his controlling behavior? He really thought that he could scare me into staying with him? BITCH I’M NOT SCARED OF NOTHING—AND NOBODY TELLS ME WHAT TO DO.

I got up and told him I needed to go feed my cat, but that I’d come over the next day. He whined about me leaving, and I reminded him that he’d just promised to give me more space.

At home, I sent him an article about love bombing. “I think we unintentionally did this to each other?” I texted him. “Maybe because we both wanted something intense after having stuff end during the pandemic?” He texted me back to tell me that our problems were easy and fixable. I said I’d come over the next afternoon to talk in person.

Nothing captures the essence of a breakup better than the last episode of the Bachelor. The first limo pulls up to the proposal site and you, me, everyone but the contestant climbing out knows they’re done. The power imbalance is shocking: One person decides, and the other person has no say. It rattles me to watch it, and it makes me sick to do it myself.

So when I walked into his apartment, I felt nauseous. He offered me a La Croix and we sat across from each other with the dumb, embarrassing letter I’d written him open on the glass coffee table in front of us. He cleared his throat and read from the notes he’d prepared on his phone, and I blacked out and let him talk too long.

Finally, I cut in. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I said, unable to look him in the face. “I’m losing myself.”

He cried and told me he couldn’t believe I could be so cold. “We’re both Virgos,” I said. “And we're very alike in this way.” I left his apartment and we never spoke again.

<<<<<>>>>>

When I think about rebounding, I think first about basketball. I imagine the jump, the stretch, the hands gripping the ball before the feet land lightly and race down the court to dunk. Or, a stock: up, to the right, and we’re all getting rich.

But this didn’t feel triumphant.

For me, us together wasn’t actually about us—it was about me and the guys before him. It was about proving that I could be a fun, sexy, vibrant girlfriend and that I could find a man who was excited to do anything for me. “I want someone who’s obsessed,” I told my friends before I met him. For worse, that’s what I got.

I don’t know what it was about for him. The internet says that when two people love bomb each other, one of them is probably a narcissist. I can’t decide what’s more disturbing: Me being the narcissist or me being empty enough to fall for one, but the latter seems more likely. So maybe it was about control.

This doesn’t make me angry; it’s just surprising. Surprising that he viewed my confidence not as one of my best qualities, but as something to crush into compliance. Surprising that I enjoyed feeling like a trophy even when it required a blood sacrifice at the altar of my independence. Surprising that I was able to see this for what it was and end it quickly—that’s growth, baby!

<<<<<>>>>>

A couple of days after leaving him, I had therapy. “I ended things with that guy,” I told her. “It’s a clean break.” She visibly sighed in relief, and I wished she would’ve just TOLD ME NOT TO DO IT, but that’s not her job. She asked how I felt, and I described the relief. “Ready to get back to work?” she asked me. I nodded and we dove back in.