Dear Rebecca,
We need to talk about the guy in the band. Honestly, when have we not needed to talk about a guy in a band? But I’m getting ahead of myself. I mean the latest guy in a band. The one I drove three hours to another state to see play.
I sent you the usual debrief, expecting you to lose your mind with me and we’d do what we always do: dissect every delicious second of it. The eye contact. The ridiculous amount of physical chemistry. The flirting. Whether he was actually that hot or whether I was temporarily hypnotized by a thirty-two-year-old with a guitar and a voice apparently engineered in a lab specifically to ruin my judgment.
Instead, you got protective. All you could think about was the fact that I had driven three hours to see him. I crossed state lines for a man who hadn’t yet crossed the street for me. From where you were standing, I had started the whole thing by giving more than I was getting.
We went back and forth, but neither of us convinced the other, and eventually we moved on. Except I didn’t. I keep thinking about what you said. I’m beginning to think we may both be right, and that most women are somewhere between us, trying to figure out which desires are actually theirs and which ones were handed to them.
I’ve had a type since adolescence and, despite decades of evidence suggesting I branch out, I remain committed to the bit. I married a guy in a band. I divorced a guy in a band. My current partner is a guy in a band. I drove three hours to see a guy in a band. I like guys in bands. But having a type is not the same thing as knowing how to date it.
I didn’t really date when I was younger. I attached. Mormonism taught me that my desire was shameful unless it belonged to my future husband. I had spent so long reading other people for safety that I mistook attachment for love. I wasn’t meeting people and wondering what might happen between us. I was trying to figure out where I could safely stay.
My therapist was the first person to point out that I had never really dated. Instead, I attached to whoever made me feel safe, which isn’t the same thing as love. He told me to start dating, so I could finally find out what I want and what I’m actually into.
Driving three hours to see this guy felt like the first time I actually did what my therapist had asked me to do: following my desire without immediately trying to turn it into safety, love, or a future. That didn’t feel like giving away my power. I finally found out what my power was for.
The thing is, I’m not looking for another life. I already have one. I share it with a man I adore. We’ve spent ten years building something extraordinary together. I have children I love beyond language, work that lights me up, friendships that have reshaped who I am. I’m not looking for a replacement for any of it. I’m not interviewing anyone for a permanent position in my life.
The strangest part is realizing how long I’ve been asking husband questions to answer chemistry questions. Is he good with money? Would he make a good dad? Does he do his own laundry? Those are husband questions. Not chemistry questions.
Maybe that’s why I’ve always been fascinated by the invisible frameworks we use to organize human relationships. What if you stripped all of that away? Just two people, face to face. What happens then? What kind of relationship emerges when neither person is trying to force it into a familiar shape? Add chemistry, and I’m driving three hours.
For the first time in my life, I’m not evaluating whether someone would make a good husband or life partner. I’m asking a different question: What pulls me toward another human being? And why is romance never allowed to just be what it is without everyone asking where it’s going?
You and I never sat down and asked where our relationship was going. We just kept showing up for each other. We let the relationship reveal itself. All these years later, it has become one of the defining relationships of my life without either of us ever trying to force it into something else. Have we been taught that every meaningful relationship should eventually become a couple?
This guy? He can come or go. That’s up to our vibe, which always takes two people. It doesn’t happen very often, but when I do feel that zing, that strange pheromone thing where something ancient in me suddenly wakes up, I ain’t putting it back to sleep.
Look, I’m not giving this guy my future. He gets a Sunday. With me. Lucky him. That’s the beauty of it. We’re attracted to each other, so we explore it. Then we see if there even is a next. For the first time in my life, my desire belongs to me. That sounds like such a simple sentence. It isn’t.
It’s impossible to know this shit in your twenties. You have a body humming like a race car and the emotional maturity of a terrified kid trying not to get in trouble. Mormonism taught me my desire belonged to my future husband. My nervous system taught me to mistake safety for love. Then society gets its hands on you, and suddenly everybody has an opinion about what your body should want, how long it should want it, and who it’s allowed to want.
If you’re lucky, you spend years undoing all of that. And one day you wake up pushing fifty and realize you’re finally asking a question nobody ever taught you to ask: What do I actually want? Not: Who should I choose? Not: What should this become? Just simply: What do I want?
Maybe you and I decenter men differently. I don’t think driving three hours to see a guy in a band automatically puts him at the center of my life. Handing him my future would.
I understand why women are saying “decenter men.” God knows we’ve spent enough centuries organizing ourselves around them. I just don’t think the conversation ends there. Men aren’t going anywhere. They’re our sons, fathers, brothers, lovers, coworkers, friends. The question isn’t how to erase them from our lives, but how to stop disappearing inside them.
And you’re the person I come to when I need to figure out what that actually means.
I have sons. You have a son. We have male friends, partners, exes, and, apparently, an endless supply of guys in bands. I’m not trying to erase men. I’m trying to stop organizing my identity around them, which, if I’m being honest, is embarrassingly difficult.
That’s why I keep coming back to you.
This is what you and I have always done. We take an ordinary moment and refuse to leave it alone. We turn it over, argue about it, interrogate it, and ask whether we’re seeing ourselves clearly. We keep going until it reveals something neither of us could have found alone. Every time we do this, I leave seeing myself a little more clearly than when I arrived.
The guy in the band gave me a really great Sunday. You gave me a question I can’t stop thinking about: What does it actually mean to decenter men when we still love them, raise them, sleep with them, laugh with them, and occasionally drive three hours to watch one play guitar?
Mx
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