Wow, No Thank You - Samantha Irby Page 0,29
the confidence of this perplexed single man. How does one build up nerve like this?
My husband has an extensive sexual history. He has had sex with more than eighty partners. All the encounters were from when he was in high school and in his early twenties. Most were one-night stands with female friends. When we met, he was honest, and I was understanding. He didn’t keep in touch with any of those women (pre-Facebook). But now he’s friends with several of them on Facebook, and while he doesn’t “talk” to them, he comments and “likes” many of their posts. This makes me uncomfortable, because I don’t feel that past sexual partners should be part of one’s life once someone is married. I’m not jealous or insecure, I just think it’s disrespectful. Am I controlling?
You know what feels like a lot of pressure to me? Being the sole object of one person’s affections. Stay with me—I’m not about to surprise you by pretending to understand what being polyamorous actually means. I’m saying that I spent many, many agonizing years desperate for someone to pay attention to me, and now that there’s a spotlight on everything I do, it’s like, “Hey, babe, should we get you a girlfriend?” I’m not as interesting as I thought I was. I mean, is anyone? It’s one thing to be cool and glamorous on date night once a week, but when you have to see a person Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday: I do not have enough party tricks for this.
Every time I glance over and my lady is texting someone, my brain screams, THANK GOD, I HOPE THIS BITCH IS GOING OUT!!!!! “Wow, sweetie, are you liking someone’s Instagrams? Would you like to talk to that person while I try to do literally anything I can tell you about later?” I am flooded with relief every time I walk in the house and she’s on the phone with someone I’ve never met. You know why? That takes the heat off my ass for five minutes. Listen, I’m not posturing as one of those ~cool girls~ who is supremely confident and doesn’t get jealous. I just don’t get jealous of my wife double-tapping some stud in cornrows and boxer briefs on her pocket computer. What’s the harm? Is she going to leave me for her? Probably not—all her shirts and canned tomatoes live here!
Control is a wild concept. I think the one thing I’ve learned from my many exes—most of whom I do not follow on social media, because it’s fine if they have a better life than mine, but I don’t need to fucking see it—is that you just can’t have it. Short of imprisoning someone, it’s just not possible. There is no such thing as total control. And if you’re a reasonable person, you probably don’t even really want it. It’s a lot of work being in charge of a whole other person and their Facebook likes.
One day, you should secretly add up all the minutes he spends online, surreptitiously favoriting pictures of women named Debra and Jackie as they pose in front of slot machines on the riverboat with Virginia Slims dangling off their lips, and imagine he’s spending all that time focused on what you’re doing instead. Watching you pick at your cuticles, and try on old pants, and giggle over dumb gossipy shit in the group chat, and eat peas out of the can, or whatever silly shit you like doing without an audience. Disconcerting, right? Let him have his likes! You’ve got episodes of Basketball Wives clogging up the DVR.
We’ve only been married for a couple years, and our love life is still pretty hot if you ask me, but why won’t my wife have sex with me in the shower?
Probably because she values having intact front teeth. If life were a movie, you would return home after a grueling day at the office, sexily loosen your tie as you drop your briefcase in the mudroom, brush past the towering stack of overdue credit card bills on the kitchen counter, and take the stairs two at a time up to the master bedroom where your beloved sits weeping over a “hey just thinking about u” text from that one dude she really thought she was going to marry back in 2007. Ignoring her attempts to