Champagne Confessions

When pleasure comes easy but clarity feels impossible, is it really worth the wait?

 

I used to count the hours between his messages like I was keeping time with my pulse, quiet, urgent, always waiting. There was no schedule to his affection. Just brief jolts of charm that lit up my body like a match to dry kindling. Then silence. Then hope. Then silence again.

We met six years ago. The chemistry was immediate, addictive. In bed, we didn’t just connect, we combusted. Outside of it, we lingered in that tantalizing in-between: not quite strangers, not quite soulmates. It was all suggestion, no solidity. A shared illusion we both agreed not to puncture.

I thought I could live there. In the warmth of almost. In the ache of not quite. I told myself I didn’t need the title, the rules, the routine. I just needed the space we built with our bodies, the temporary escape from the emptiness I wouldn’t name.

They call it a situationship. I used to think that meant freedom. Now I see it for what it is: a slow bleed. A limbo where you perform all the rituals of closeness, sex, comfort, shared silence, without the dignity of intention. It feels like connection until it doesn’t. Until you realize he’s never asked who you are when you’re not naked. Until you realize you stopped asking yourself, too.

The truth? I didn’t just want sex. I wanted to feel chosen without being claimed. Touched without being held responsible for wanting more. I told myself I had the power because I never asked for his love out loud. But the silence? That was its own kind of begging.

And I waited. Because waiting felt safer than walking away. As long as I was suspended between the last kiss and the next reply, I didn’t have to face the truth: this was not love. It wasn’t even care. It was proximity. Familiarity. The illusion of closeness with none of the weight. And I clung to it, because I feared that if I asked for more, I’d confirm I never had anything at all.

We say men are afraid of commitment, but I wonder, aren’t we just as afraid of clarity? Clarity ends the fantasy. It forces you to accept that a man you dreamed about on Sunday mornings might never think of you outside of the dark. That he liked your body but never planned to learn your soul. That maybe the sex was real, but the meaning was always one-sided.

So I stopped reaching out. Not because I stopped caring, but because I finally started. For myself. For the version of me who deserves more than a man who communicates in breadcrumbs and orgasms. A woman who no longer confuses emotional starvation with romance.

To the ones who left me waiting, thank you. You taught me the difference between craving and connection. Between being touched and being seen. And to the one who never texted back: I forgive you. You never promised more. I just wrote you into a story you were never capable of living.

This isn’t an anthem or a warning. It’s a quiet reckoning. A surrender of the fantasy in exchange for peace. Because letting go isn’t about power. It’s about finally telling the truth: I want more. And I’m no longer ashamed of that.