Over the last few months, readership on It’s Not a Match has increased, like, a lot. Which is amazing, truly. I am shocked and thankful to have so many of you visit and write me each and every day. You guys are the best. I wanted to make sure, however, that my new readers got a chance to see some of my older work, which is, let’s just say it, Pulitzer Prize worthy stuff. So, from time to time, I will repost some of my favorite It’s Not a Match columns for new folks to discover and old timers to cherish as the rich cultural heirlooms they are. Today is one of my favorites.

The Girl Who Cried During Sex.

Perhaps from reading this site you’ve gotten the impression that Internet dating is just one disastrously awkward first date after another. Not true! Sometimes there’s a disastrously awkward second, third, and fourth date as well. And, if you’re really lucky, on rare occasion you may achieve a full-fledged disastrously awkward long-term relationship! But that’s only if you reallllllly apply yourself. Thankfully, on one or two occasions, I have been so determined…

I met the Sex Crier on a rare two-date evening. It’s something I try to avoid, but if scheduling becomes difficult or I’m particularly eager to meet someone and feel like I can’t wait another day (I know, I’m unimaginably romantic), I will plan two dates on the same night. It’s not a great idea, but if you stick to the Two Drink Rule it can be done. Just avoid telling the same stories or jokes to both of your dates, because no matter how big a cad you are, somewhere deep inside your soul will break. But Sex Crier was the second date on a two-date evening, and within minutes she blew the first woman entirely out of memory.

I still remember what she was wearing and even what she smelled like, in as unserial-killer a way as possible. I had to talk her into the date, as she was reluctant to date a smoker and an actor, and I was guilty of both. She was an actress too, you see, and she felt the two didn’t mix. Boy was she wrong. Us being actors had nothing to do with us not getting along. It was the more the constant 100% insanity that did it.

On our first date she made me laugh immediately, which usually means I’m hooked. And she was outstanding to look at, which never hurts, but there was something a little…off about SC. Her stories were a little crazier than they should’ve been, her frankness was a little frankier than it should’ve been, and she just had a strange little energy going on. You know when you meet someone and just sense right away that they’re not like other people, but can’t figure out whether that’s a good or bad thing? That was her. She was what 75 year-old people call a firecracker, and warned me in no uncertain terms that I should stay as far away from her as possible. “I’m crazy,” she said, after I walked her home from our first date. And apparently when I told her she didn’t seem that crazy to me, I meant it as a compliment, but she took it as a personal challenge.

We dated for a few months, and I think broke up eight times. Which is a lot considering I don’t believe we ever explicitly said we were together or agreed to stop seeing other people. She just liked breaking up, and was constantly honing her craft. She worked tirelessly at it, forever trying new techniques and approaches. She was the Tiger Woods of ending things, the Bill Gates of deciding we’d be better off as friends. Wanna break up in a crowded restaurant at the top of your lungs with tears and profanity so everyone stares at you? She’s got a move for that. Split up via text message for a reason she will not explain and very possibly doesn’t even know? Please, Sex Crier can do that in her sleep. Or, and this was my personal favorite, break up after a homeless man has asked you for spare change and you’ve said “Sorry, man” in an insufficiently caring fashion? Sex Crier owns the copyright on that shit. That’s her Sistine Chapel, and let me tell you, seeing it in person…it’ll take your breath away.

Anyway, she liked drama. And because that made our relationship fairly volatile, I thought it best to hold off on having sex for a while. I still tend to attach, you know, personal feelings to the making of whoopee, so – as she was breaking up with me on a weekly basis – I felt the need to self-protect. Why did I keep dating her at all? No idea. She was smart, funny, and pretty – what am I supposed to do against that? I was powerless against her, and ultimately, finally, agreed to cash in her one-way ticket to sexy town. And yes, that’s what I called it. You can see why she found me difficult to resist…

So we’re in bed and we’re doing the stuff and after a bit we start triumphantly, heroically, having sex. Then, almost instantly, and without any notice, she starts crying. Deep, baleful sobs, like her dog just died. She wasn’t in pain, and it wasn’t because the sex was just so gosh-darned good either, believe you me. Even the women in my fantasies are only barely tolerant of my love-making technique – so it wasn’t that she had just realized how good sex could actually be. She was just upset. About something she categorically refused to discuss. The next ten minutes or so played out like this…

Me: Is something wrong?

SC: Yyyyyesss.

Me: Can we talk about it?

SC: No.

Me: Please, I’d really like to talk about-

SC: Just keep going!

….Aaaaand repeat. I’m telling you, you haven’t felt true sexual satisfaction until you’ve done it under duress while being drenched in a shower of your partner’s tears. For the older gentlemen out there, if you ever run out of Viagra, just encourage your lady to start desperately weeping while forcing her body upon you. It’s a one-way ticket to erectiontown (it works for everything!!).

Every few minutes, Sex Crier would be overcome and need to take some time to focus on the crying. I would try to be supportive and ask her if she wanted to talk about it, while quietly celebrating what was clearly the end of the awful intercourse. She would ignore my question, cry a bit more, and then initiate more tragicsex. It was like getting raped by Judy Garland.

Finally, mercifully, after maybe twenty minutes, my body decided that I was done having sex for the evening. In my head I was high-fiving my genitals, but Sex Crier was upset. Which makes sense because clearly she was having such a good time. She flopped down on the bed next to me and sighed with disappointment. “That’s it?” she said. “Yup” I replied. “But I haven’t finished,” she declared. I decided to go with silence as my response to that one. “So you’re just…done?” she asked angrily. “In more ways than you know,” I thought to myself and wished I had the balls to say out loud. Instead I went with “I’m sorry, but if we can’t talk about what’s wrong then I think I should just go to sleep.” That was the last straw. Apparently after inexplicably crying on a guy for a half hour, she was used to being dutifully brought to climax. Great deal if you can get it, but that wasn’t going to be happening with me. She rolled over, looked me straight in the eyes and said “I can’t believe you!”. She then got out of bed and disappeared for an extended period of time.

When I like a woman, I give her a lot of leeway. Too much sometimes. I don’t know why. It’s just that being with a great girl makes me really happy, and if she’s got some quirks and rough spots, well I’m open to working that out. We’re all imperfect, and hell, I’ve got more rough spots than sandpaper – I mean, I said “erectiontown” back there – so I try to be flexible. But tonight would be the end of my flexibility with the Sex Crier. I walked into her living room and found her angrily reading a book, which I didn’t really know was possible. She looked up, said “I don’t want to talk to you, I’m too upset” and returned to her novel. That was when I decided to show her a break-up move that even she had never attempted.

The “have sex while being cried on for a while, get yelled at for not delivering orgasms under those conditions, sleep over at the girl’s house because I’ve got a meeting nearby in the morning and what’s the point of shlepping all the way home to just shlep back, and then break up with her immediately afterward on the phone because I’m afraid there’s a chance she might kill me” break up was patented that fine day, friends, and it was a beauty. There was crying, of course, and a lot of yelling, and a lot of telling me that I was a son of a bitch. It lacked evidence as an assertion, but I was in no mood to quibble. I had been with The Sex Crier and was happy knowing that our ninth breakup would be the one that stuck.

Ooooh stories. Aren’t they great? But here’s the thing, I actually left out the best part. The Crier, when we finally split, warned me, “The last time someone broke up with me, I tried to kill myself.” No doubt she thought I would reconsider. She was wrong.