Chapter 8: Loving Men Who Don’t Love You Back

AI animal videos, Le Apartment 4F, and the curse of wanting men who don’t want you back

Something crazy happened to me this week.
I looked in the mirror and didn’t immediately flinch. I actually felt… confident. It startled me the way seeing yourself in a store window sometimes does, like, who is that woman and why does she seem comfortable in her own skin? At SVB the other night, I somehow ended up explaining my obsession with those AI videos where a cat leaves its cat partner for an alligator, they have a child, discard it over a bridge, and then head into the sunset. They’re absurd short stories of love and chaos that usually end with someone being arrested or their fur shaved. People stared at me like I was glitching in real time. Then I said my ideal ice cream sundae is strawberry with Butterfinger and whipped cream, which didn’t help my case.

This isn’t my attempt to say “I’m not like other girls.” It’s just the first time I didn’t contort myself into whatever personality I thought would blend into the room. And honestly, it felt good, almost freeing, to not care. To say the strange things I like. To not perform “dateable” or “normal”. I’m not sure I’ll ever be invited back to that dinner, but I left thinking that if I keep showing up like this, there might actually be a lane in the world where I fit. One that isn’t me trying to pass as someone else.

So as of today, I’ve decided I’m going to show up 100 percent as me.

I saw a guy I went out with at Le Apartment 4F. He bought me an iced coffee with pistachio milk and commented on how trendy I am. I still think about him even though he made absolutely no effort to date me. I keep telling you I run into men I’ve gone out with on the streets of New York, and I’m starting to think it’s intentional on the universe’s part, like it’s placing them in my path to see who I’ll become around them.

There are two men like this. They pop in with a half-hearted “how are you,” ask about art, send a last-minute “want to go to remedy place?” and then vanish. They exist in that irritating almost-zone, enough to feel like something and never enough to actually be it. And I can’t tell if I like them or if I’m addicted to the comfortable ache of wanting men who don’t want me back.

Part of me wonders if I like unavailable men because they let me stay in control. You can’t disappoint someone who never shows up. It’s easier to obsess over a guy who texts once every three weeks than deal with the terrifying possibility of someone actually caring. If they don’t choose me, I get to be the tragic heroine instead of the woman who might have to show up emotionally. Unavailable men are like your dream NYC apartment. You walk through it once and suddenly picture your whole future there, even though it was never actually available to you in the first place.

There’s a Tom Ford quote I think about constantly:

I replay nights with these men like they’re scenes from a film I once had a cameo in. It fills a space I pretend isn’t there. Surprisingly I’m not in a rush to settle down, even though the second I get pregnant a doctor will stamp me “geriatric.” I genuinely believe the person I end up with will appear the moment I’m aligned enough to recognize him. I imagine him standing on the corner of Canal and Bowery, very Lumineers-coded. JK, I’m rarely in the lower east side.

Meanwhile, I have about three consulting jobs on top of everything else and I feel like I’m managing a small army of content pieces explaining how to go viral and get views. The irony is that I need to be doing all of that for myself. The HTF podcast is starting. Our first event is happening in December. I’m excited because it feels like the first project I get to show up to as the version of me I’ve been trying to find.

Do you ever wonder if single people these days have fewer of those Tom Ford moments? Fewer nights of connection that make everything else in your life wash away?

I’ve reached an age where nothing in my life has gone the way I thought it would. And weirdly, I’m not panicked by it anymore. There is a kind of peace in not knowing what’s coming. I’m becoming more comfortable with the idea that my life might unfold in directions I never planned for, maybe even directions I couldn’t have imagined. And that realization isn’t frightening, it’s almost exciting.

I saw a house for sale in the Paris countryside the other day. One day I want to buy an old house in France and remodel it. Artists move through different environments for different creative eras. Why shouldn’t I?

Cynthia told me recently, “I’m trying to get you into my world, and you’re trying to make what I’m saying fit into yours.” She was right. I’m always trying to intellectualize spirituality as if it’s something you can get an A-plus in. So this week I stopped trying to make it logical and started trying to actually experience it. If we’re manifesting constantly, presence matters. Thoughts matter. One tiny spiral and suddenly you’re creating a version of your life you never asked for.

So for now, I have surrendered and I am letting the universe decide where I go.

People talk about jumping timelines with the ease of ordering a matcha, and I swear none of us actually know how to do any of this. If manifestation worked the way the internet says, we’d all be millionaires living in passive-income villas.

On top of that, my body feels like it’s trying to communicate in Morse code. I’ve been doing my supplement routine, eating like someone who has been exiled from joy, and pretending my gut reset is spiritual instead of just necessary. Cynthia is convinced if my health finally stabilizes, my mind will follow. Or at least stop trying to sabotage me.

For once, I’m not running.
I’m not trying to be a cooler version of myself or curate the parts that feel too weird or too earnest. I’m not forcing a timeline or an identity or a personality. I’m just here, in my life, looking in the mirror and not hating what I see.

I guess that’s what becoming actually is.
Not a reinvention.
Not a dramatic SATC plot twist.
Just the moment you stop abandoning yourself.

Somehow functioning,
Jilly

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