I met Whitney the way I wanted to meet a man. I was sitting at a bar in Seattle, reading Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, and waiting for a literary open mic to start. She, like my fantasy man, knew exactly who Roxanne Gay was, wanted to discuss the book, and looked forward to hearing—but not sharing—pieces of literature. (My fantasy man appreciated writing, but was not a writer himself; this way he could lie to me about my literary merit.)

Also similar to my fantasy, the small talk did not last long. After ordering identical pork sandwiches, we hunted down an open booth and successfully darted into leather seats. We discussed past relationships and future ambitions, then I went up to the microphone and read an essay about self-esteem issues, one I thought I’d only be sharing with people I didn’t have to talk to again. When I came back to our booth, slightly embarrassed, she touched my hand and said, “That was gorgeous. Thank you.” It was a gesture I wished the men I’d dated had given, instead of their, So, I don’t know if you want a critique, but….

At the end of the night, like a successful pick-up, we exchanged numbers and started meeting regularly for drinks. Over the course of these platonic dates, I started noticing her permanent fixtures: the septum nose hoop, blonde buns, and long pauses that ended with a grab of my arm—a sign she was about to give unsolicited advice—and her preface, “Now. Remember. This is your big, beautiful life.”

Over grilled cheese sandwiches and gin and tonics, we discussed estranged relationships with parents, wrote haikus about whiskey, and talked a lot about men, not because they were the most interesting parts of our lives, but because, as she said, “aren’t they the most puzzling?”

One night she met me at Sully’s Snow Goose Saloon, a local dive that could’ve doubled as a truck stop. When she walked into the establishment I had since regretted choosing, I immediately noticed her outfit. Like displays in an art gallery, her clothes always demanded thoughtful reflection, and tonight she wore a green, wool sweater with white lines across the chest. It etched a map of a simple neighborhood with fluffy trees, two-way roads, and the sign for a store, 24-Hour Market.

She grabbed both my arms, urgently. “How aaarre you?”

So it began: us having the types of conversations we would never have, but maybe should have, with the men in our lives. She was the real-life version of my fantasy man, here to discuss the men we were actually dating.

We both now had a glass of wine—mine white, hers red—and were waiting on our grilled cheese sandwiches while I talked about the man I had been dating for a couple months. I was excited about him, which naturally meant I needed to analyze all the potential reasons not to be excited about him. “It’s the humor. I feel like I’m here and he’s here.” I held up my hands, parallel to each other. “One time we had a really serious conversation in a restaurant, and when we walked outside, I pulled at the hood of my jacket and said, ‘Whew, was it hot in there?’ Then he paused and said, seriously, ‘Well it was probably because of our deep conversation.’”

Her eyes and nose pinched with laughter. “He’s a literalist.”

“Yes. Except I’m not nice enough to date a literalist. Because I’m secretly horrible and dark and sarcastic.”

For the next two hours, we continued to explain our innermost thoughts and feelings about our respective relationships with men, periodically checking in. Was that too aggressive? Am I talking too much? Tell me about you. How are you? I love it. This is beautiful.

“I did take him to a reading,” I continued. “And I guess…hm. I guess he did say he was proud of me. And that he liked my piece. But one of the first things he said was, ‘Now it’s time for my critique.’ What? I literally said, ‘I don’t want it.’ But he gave it anyway. Not on my writing, but on my delivery. Which I had already told him I thought was terrible.’”

She gave a validating headshake of disbelief. “So, you already acknowledged that you were nervous and delivered it poorly. And he still critiqued you on it.”

“Yes. Exactly. I just don’t understand.” I put my face in my hands. “So much of the time when I’m dating a guy, I think, ‘Would I say this?’ and about 99% of the time, it’s ‘No.’”

Later in the evening, during one of our mutual, contemplative stares into the distance, she asked, “Can we take 30 seconds to look around this place?”

It was only then that I noticed the bike hanging on the ceiling above my head, the “HELP WANTED! BUT NOT IF YOU’RE IRISH” sign, and the tennis ball with a face drawn on it sitting atop a taxidermy deer. It was one of those questions she asked, like any number of the phrases she said, that made me think, I wish I could have these types of moments with the men I’m romantically involved with.

Was it Whitney, her full, bright being that knew exactly what to say and when to randomly stare at a ceiling? Was it because she was a woman? Or was it because I didn’t give men a chance to respond to my genuine thoughts? There was power in vulnerability, but there was also power in withholding your honest feelings; there was power in turning around and telling your friend how your romantic partner didn’t ‘get’ you. Wasn’t it because you were smarter and funnier? I felt stuck in this painful split—mentally drawn to Whitney while pulled to a man who may have found my inner thoughts disconcerting. And the pain of him potentially not ‘getting’ my honest thoughts seemed far greater than not saying them in the first place.

Or maybe I was too greedy, wanting more than what was possible in a single relationship instead of allowing the combination of them to be fulfilling. Maybe I needed to accept that the division of what romantic partners chose to say to each other were like my parallel hands, always just slightly off.

After I came back from the bathroom too authentically saloon-like for my comfort, Whitney gave a different set of directions than what appeared on her clothes. She provided gentle caution about my “big, beautiful life,” to be wary of “power dynamics” and to build a “safety net in case things go sour.” I didn’t tell her that my safety net was trying never to like someone as much as they liked me, a net made out of steel instead of mesh.

At the end of the night, we hugged goodbye and my hands met the soft wool, the back of the 24-hour market. “Remember that you always need to win. And I only say that to my lady friends.”

“You mean keep the power?” I asked.

“Yes!”

After she walked back to her car, my phone buzzed. It was a long, sweet message from the man we had been talking about, the man who took me literally, but also the man who made me smile in a way I had to bite my bottom lip to stop. The text ended with, Megan, you are perfect.

My first instinct was to send it to Whitney with the caption, oof.

Someone thinking I was flawless gave me power. But I didn’t want it. Having it meant I could wield it to keep myself from liking him as much as he liked me. It was a calculated decision that kept me alone, a place I thought I was most comfortable.

I also wanted more than compliments. I wanted someone to take 60 seconds to look at the ceiling and contemplate death-by-bicycle-falling-on-top-of-your-head. I wanted someone to listen to me at an open mic and tell me I used “all the right words” but that “even if I used different words, they would’ve still been the right words.” I wanted someone to use diction like self-sabotage and emotional labor and wear wool sweaters with maps on them. But wanting a man to be just like her made me worse than dark and sarcastic; it made me unfair.

After a few moments, I cancelled out of the screenshot I was about to send to Whitney and went back to the man’s message. I returned the sentiment in my own words, using what I thought was an adequate amount of heart emojis. Then I wondered who was more wrong: the man who thought I was perfect, or me, the woman who thought we were both far from it.