Temporary boyfriends and finding joy with someone you likely won’t see ever again
Love doesn’t have to last months or years to be real.
After a year and a half in Myrtle Beach, it’s easy to feel beaten down by the dating environment. Often, it feels like the only nice, single men on dating apps are the ones just visiting for a few days. It’s never someone that lives here.
For the second time, though, I’ve found men who are here for just a short while, but for weeks rather than days or hours.
The first time was in December. I hadn’t been on an interesting date in months and didn’t know when, if ever, that would happen in Myrtle Beach again.
On a whim, I messaged someone whose name on Grindr was “Haus of J.” I wasn’t expecting a response. There’s a strange cohort of attractive men on Grindr in Myrtle Beach that always seem to be on the app but never respond, at least to my messages. He looked like all the rest.
But he wasn’t.
We’ll call him Justin. He messaged me back almost immediately, and we started chatting nonstop. He was from New York City and was here performing as a dancer and singer in one of the local shows that tourists mostly frequent. I’d heard of the show but had only been to a couple of them months before this one ever opened.
I’m not big on having someone I’ve never met come over to my apartment. I usually like to meet in person for drinks, but I wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere. He seemed nice enough. Plus, he lacked the serial killer vibes of some of the other men that sometimes occupy the Myrtle Beach Grindr scene. I’d also already had one glass of wine, so I wasn’t leaving my apartment anyway.
Justin came over, and we drank a bottle of Matua New Zealand sauvignon blanc while we watched “A Christmas Prince,” a movie about a “journalist” who goes to a foreign country to write about the nation’s bachelor prince but … through a number of highly questionable actions, falls in love with the prince.
I don’t normally care for Christmas movies, or “journalism” movies that poorly showcase my industry. Movie dates are also questionable for first dates because you’re, what? Sitting in a dim room silent next to a virtual stranger and maybe awkwardly holding hands? But, the choice was strategic. “A Christmas Prince” was the perfect movie to talk over.
That’s exactly what we did. We laughed and chatted. I vented every time McIver’s character did something journalistically or ethically questionable.
I remember kissing him and thinking about how lovely the evening was going. I wasn’t spending another night alone, mindlessly scrolling through Grindr messaging a bunch of people I’d likely never hear back from.
That night in early December was one of the best first dates I’ve ever had.
And yet, it was a date that, from one point of view, led nowhere.
Justin and I are not dating. We were never boyfriends. We actually only met in person four times over the course of a week. It might’ve gone on longer, but I was traveling for most of December and by the time I got back to Myrtle Beach after New Year’s, he was long gone, back to New York City.
We haven’t spoken since.
I could’ve been sad after it ended. I really did like Justin. In another world, I could see him and I dating. We commiserated about how horrible dating can be in a small town where I lived, or big-city dating where he lived — where it felt like every person he met was a rich asshole who parties nonstop.
We both wanted something more, something permanent, but it felt so far out of reach for either of us. We both stood at moments of inflexion in our careers. To get what we wanted in life, we’d need to move on soon from the places we temporarily called home.
I knew I wanted to get out of Myrtle Beach. I knew if I found a boyfriend, it would be a conflict once the next step in my career came along. And he would have faced the same dilemma. It wasn't a realistic option for us.
Yet, just because we knew we couldn’t make it forever, that didn’t mean we couldn’t make something for now.
I think that’s why both of us loved our time together. Neither Justin nor I ever said it out loud, but we both knew that whatever this was between us wouldn’t last. It couldn’t.
Instead, we simply enjoyed the time we did have. For those four dates, we acted as if we were boyfriends, or something like that. He came over again after that first night, and I made us dinner.
On the fourth date, we went ice skating, and he held my hand while I attempted to not fall on my ass or curse in front of a bunch of children.
I think the fact that we never talked about what we were was what made it work. If we thought too deeply, it would break the spell. We would have to face the reality that we were two single people acting like something we were not.
Now, I’m in an all too similar situation. I’ve chatted off and on with Blake on Grindr over a couple months, but he had never been around long enough for us to make anything happen. He is in the Navy and visits periodically to see his parents and grandparents.
Last Sunday, we finally met for brunch. Brunch turned to drinks and drinks turned to him saying he wanted to see me again before he went back out for deployment.
He left Tuesday for a trip to Israel with his family. He’ll be gone for 10 days, and then he will be back in Myrtle Beach for two weeks before departing again.
Will we see each other when he returns? Will Blake become my next temporary boyfriend?
I recently spent time thinking about how I’m alone — though not necessarily lonely. And I feel like this is part of that process of filling in the gap.
What I love about these dates, flings or “relationships” is how they say so much in so little time. I’ve been single for nearly three years, and I plan to stay single until I leave Myrtle Beach for whatever comes next. Yet, I, like anyone else, crave connection. I just want to go on a date, have drinks with someone and maybe spend the night with them, even if it isn’t meant to last forever. There are easy ways to get at least some of that; Grindr is the land of one-night stands, but that can feel so transactional.
I use the phrase “temporary boyfriend” because it carries more weight than “having a fling.” When I think about flings, I think of them as shallow as the relationship is long. What I felt with Justin was something more than that, at least in my mind.
And no, I’m not trying to say I have some undying love for Justin. I’m not wild and crazy and falling in so deep for a man that I’m heartbroken five minutes later. When Justin left, I didn’t feel a drop of sadness. Instead, I cherished the fact that I spent those nights with someone I genuinely liked rather than with another idiot whose name I forgot when the sun rose.
I’m saying — at this point, what I miss more than anything about relationships is sharing and feeling emotion with another person.
What I know right now is this: Blake and I both like each other’s company, and we seem to have entered into that unspoken agreement I had with Justin — to love, or something like that, if only for a little while.
As an added bonus, he has really nice arms, loves the fact that I’m a journalist and plays video games.
Quote of the Week
Yes, I’m going to relish a man saying this for the rest of my days.
I’ve loved every minute with him so far. Do I want this to be how love looks for me for the rest of my life? Not in the slightest. Am I okay with this being my definition of love right now? Totally.
As I figure out what’s next for me, I might spend a few weeks watching movies in my apartment with his arm around me. I still haven’t watched the two “A Christmas Prince” sequels. I’m a tad hooked on the concept of an improbable love story, as you might have gleaned from this treatise on fleeting, rather than ever-lasting, love. And, I’ll admit it, I do love the pure insanity of the “A Christmas Prince” storyline. You think you’ve got a weird relationship? You could be them.
This story, this type of love, is like Taylor Swift’s “august” — but inverted. In the song, she writes about a fictional character struggling to understand her “summer love” with a man who belonged to another. For that character, the love was completely real, even if it was fleeting. I’m not finding love through hushed tones and secret meetings, but I am contemplating the meaning of a love that only lasts for a little while.
August slipped away into a moment in time
'Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August sipped away like a bottle of wine
'Cause you were never mine
Editorial help for this column came from Lynda M. González.
P.S. They both play Pokémon games like me. That’s the real thread tying all of this together.
Note: The names of the people in my columns have been changed to respect their privacy — and to allow me to spill a bunch of tea on all these people without remorse.