Why I’m giving up boys for Lent

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Why I’m giving up boys for Lent

What are they good for? Absolutely nothing

Boys. Who needs them? All they seem to do is make me cry and doubt myself. That’s why, this Lent, I’m giving up the entire male species.

Okay, not the entire male species. I’m keeping my male friends. I wouldn’t last two seconds without them. In the past, my guy friends have bought me cheesy chips to cure heartbreak; carried me when I couldn’t walk in heels any longer; stood waiting without complaint as I spent ages poring over which mascara to buy. I have their backs as much as they have mine, and they’re all essentially the brothers I wish I had. I’m keeping them.

And my dad, of course. The man who will drive for miles up the country to see me if I’ve had a bad week; the man who makes the best pancakes in the world; the man who will fork over money without grudge or grumble after I admit over a painfully embarrassing phone call that I appear to have spent my student loan on tickets to Fruity. I’ll continue to send him history-related memes, even if (bless his soul) he doesn’t fully understand all of them, and I’d sooner die than give him up for Lent. No, my dad stays.

I’m talking about the boys that message me solely after midnight. You know the type: the ones that still put kisses at the end of messages; the ones that only text you when they’re drunk; the ones that try to booty call you but then make 0 effort to meet up during the daylight hours. Backburners. You’ll open your doors for him at 3am but he can’t even text you back when you ask to go for a coffee the next day? I don’t think so.

It’s on, it’s off, you’re seeing each other, it’s off again – the one thing that is consistent is that you are consistently not in a relationship. Take a step back and realise the cons far outweigh the pros: he compliments your nudes and you feel good for 0.032 seconds, but you also spend 70% of your nights crying because he liked someone else’s profile picture. You get carried away with yourself: maybe one day, one day he’ll get his act together. You envisage how your Facebook timeline will look, brightened by the marker of you two going ‘official’. But no, it never happens, and it never will.

You’re sick of it, we’re all sick of it. What’s the point? You have alright sex, granted, and you may well ‘get on’ – but it’s not going anywhere. He might have been acceptable as a friend to begin with, but once he tripped and fell into your bed that kind of stopped being an option. So here you both stand in relationship limbo, and there you shall remain.

Maybe you don’t even see him in person: someone you got with long ago who now uses you for nudes. He’s never going to ‘pop up and visit’ like he says he will, and he certainly won’t give you as many orgasms as he promises. The subtext behind ‘convince me to come up ahah ;)’ is really just ‘I’m never, ever coming and I just want to see your tits right now’.

After month six of responding to his 2am ‘how you doing? X’, you really ought to consider ditching the dead wood. And that’s the beauty of being ‘with’ guys who you aren’t in a relationship with: there’s no need for a messy break-up. Just delete some numbers, be liberal with your Facebook unfriending, block a few Snapchats and you’re done.

Fuck Lent: give up those hangers-on forever.

@serenasaysrelax