When You Meet the Perfect Guy Too Early in Your Slut Era

Romance is all about timing.

A good time to meet your future husband: at least a year out from your last relationship, on a crisp November evening, at a candlelit wine bar.

A bad time: the first day of summer. Ten minutes into a night at the club. The day before your vacation to Fire Island (or P-town, or any destination of equal or greater gayness). In other words, the exact moment you’ve decided you’re in desperate need of a slut phase.

But that’s when it always seems to happen. Right when you’re primed to do anything but date, you encounter the rare genuinely dateable man. So what do you do? Risk your budding connection by continuing to play the field? Or abandon your slut phase before it even starts?

Too hot to handle

Pride party tickets that sell out in March and your most neurotic friend’s vacation spreadsheets both confirm: just because something is fun doesn’t mean it’s spontaneous. Having a good time sometimes requires preparation—logistically and emotionally.

Often, we go into a party, weekend, or season primed with a very specific vision of how it will go. And it can be jarring when that vision is interrupted—say, by a handsome stranger with a 401(k). 

The arrival of a perfect man when you were only expecting to mack on perfect strangers might leave you conflicted. Because you do want to find a partner… but not right now. Not in the ticket line for Whorebox Miami (or whatever).

Before deciding whether to keep your shirt on and get to know your eligible bachelor, it’s important to ask why your slut phase felt necessary in the first place. Was it just because you’d heard amazing things about this party? Because summer made you feel a certain type-a way? Or was it because you genuinely needed it—say, to rebuild confidence after a hard breakup?

If you’re a girl who just wants to have fun, read on. But if you were planning to fuck around because it’s all you can handle right now, you should probably honor that impulse. Demonstrate interest in the guy, while making it clear you’re not in a place to date just yet. Then begin your gorgeous, restorative, sticky healing journey.

Let’s make a deal

If there’s no deeper reason for your hoe season, however, it becomes a simple matter of priorities.

One summer in my early 20s, I was all geared up for LA Pride when my friend introduced me to a transplant joining our group for the weekend. He was perfect marriage material: handsome, funny, successful, and new to the city (read: he hadn’t already slept with all my friends yet). But… it was also 4pm on the Friday of Pride weekend. 

We made a date for Monday night. And that’s when the dilemma set in: what should we do until then? We were about to be in each other’s orbit for 48 hours, during which there’d be lots of flirting, dancing, and kissing. Were we still free to participate? 

Meeting the man of your dreams and then watching him put his tongue in other people’s mouths for two days didn’t exactly scream “meet-cute.” But I also didn’t want to be held back by someone I didn’t even know yet. That’s the problem: we all want to have our fun, but we also kinda want to believe our romantic prospects only have eyes for us.

I ended up bringing it up with him directly. We agreed that despite our obvious connection, we’d both prefer to live our best lives that weekend, do whatever we wanted with whomever we wanted, then meet on Monday to start fresh, and chalk it all up to the Gay Lifestyle™. 

In my mind, this was a mature-ish solution to what was, at heart, a scheduling issue. But in retrospect, it was also pretty clear evidence that the most important thing to both of us at that point in our lives was having fun. 

We both knew we were risking something—after all, there was a chance either of us could meet someone “better” before Monday rolled around. But we figured we could afford to leave true love on hold for a few days. 

…or no deal

I wouldn’t make that deal again today. Not because it went poorly—we indeed stuck to our plan and went on the date. (We didn’t get married, but in classic gay fashion, he’s now one of my closest friends.) 

But because I’ve since seen how a little delayed gratification can go a long way.

Years later, a friend of mine was in a similar situation. We’d spent six months planning a Eurotrip with some major gay hotspots. Two weeks before takeoff, he went on a handful of dates with a seemingly perfect guy. They hadn’t even discussed being exclusive yet, but my friend felt strongly enough to abstain from any fun (in the hookup sense, not the general vacation sense) for the duration of the trip, saving all his energy and attraction for Mr. Right.

Today, they’re married.

I’m not suggesting I’d have married my Pride guy if we hadn’t taken our vow of infidelity. But sometimes, you have to make room for the unexpected. 

Romance is about timing, yes, but timing isn’t some force beyond our control. It’s a choice: to be ready for connection when it comes, not just when it’s convenient. Giving a new connection a real shot might mean cancelling your wild weekend, or even your whole slut summer. But if you see the potential for something real, I say: make the timing work… even if it means you don’t have the immediate time of your life.